At The Risk Of Sounding Naive

Flashbacks of a Fool

2011-03-29T01:11:00.003+05:30

If you haven't watched Flashbacks of a Fool, I'd recommend you do. One of my favourite quotes from the movie:

"I used to think that the only thing you needed courage for is going forward, and then I learned that the only thing you need courage for is standing still."

Can't stop thinking about that line. I'm at a point where I'm still contemplating what to do with my life. I have certain notions of what I want to do, but I'm sure those will change in another 5 years. As I contemplate taking a leap and throwing myself into the unknown, this line comes to mind, and I start questioning whether it's a lack of courage to stand still that propels me to take the jump now ...

The movie reminds me of early adolescence and how it never really stops being part of one's life: friends, notions of romance ...

Pearl Jam

2011-02-23T20:45:00.002+05:30

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about good music, and the lack of it in the current day. He happened to mention a band that I had oft heard mentioned, but had never really paid much attention to, Pearl Jam.

The conversation stayed with me, and I got around to discovering this gem of a band today evening, while winding up work. I started listening to the popular ones, "Even Flow", "Alive", "Jeremy" and the like, and then I chanced upon this acoustic version of "Cordruoy":

And boy, am I completely blown away. Thank God for digital records & YouTube. Music fills a void in us like nothing else can.

This is serious classic stuff. The passion with which the song is sung, and the simple haunting melody of the song captivates you. I started reading up on the literature of the song & the band.

Apparently the band stayed away from making music videos, the biggest marketing tool for a band, because they wanted their listeners to form their own mental images when they listened to the music, and did not want to stilt the imagination of the listener by the commercial video (probably the reason I didn't pick it up earlier).

How awesome that a band should risk losing millions in sales, for the sake of principle!
This is what great music is all about: extremely personal, pure in principle, lending expression to people, and to paraphrase Jack Black from The School of Rock, "Stick it to the man".
It is what inspires a kid to pick up a guitar, to shake us out of your comfort zones, and to lose ourselves, if only once in a while.

The other music that shaped my taste and has kept me company the last few years (while I toiled away for the man) was Pink Floyd, Queen and Led Zepp.
Of late, I'd started looking beyond these, for want of new material. But nothing quite hit the spot like this one did.

And although embarrassed, I'm kind of thankful that Pearl Jam didn't happen to me until now. I can now look forward to listening to some fantastic material over the next few months.

peace out !

Warm Regards and Gentle Reminders

2011-02-18T18:06:00.004+05:30

These are two phrases that get me worked up these days.

The significance of effective communication in the workplace, cannot be undermined. Especially when interacting with counterparts across the seas over mails, it is important to maintain a degree of decorum and civility.

However, there is a thin line between being civil and being overcautious.
Qualifying greetings with Warm, Cold, Hot, Gentle etc .. somehow reeks of psychophancy and servitude.

Not only is this incorrect grammatically, it also manages to make the regular non-qualified usage of these phrases unpleasant.

The fact that people have started getting used to these forms of communication makes the correct usages that much less acceptable, to the point where I have to now think twice before I send out a reminder mail without mentioning the word "Gentle".

The warmth or the Gentleness of a piece of communication is and should be determined by the style of communication and the content therein, and not merely by dangling an adjective in front of the word.

Please leave it to the recipient of the mail to decide if your letter felt warm or gentle or oily or wet. In the meantime, on your part, please focus your efforts on making that mail convey the point as well as possible.

Does it get better ?

2011-01-29T00:31:00.000+05:30

When does one get past a mundane existence and jump into an exciting one ? When does one get past the rigmarole of routine, and start doing the things they really want to do, the things that add meaning, that gives them happiness ?

The experts say, it takes roughly 10 years of repetitive routine for anyone to become really good at their chosen field.

It's irony at its worst. Just when you start getting better at something, another phase in life comes in, parenthood for instance, and you spend another 10 years trying to be good at that. It's futile.

I'm reminded of the starting monologue from Annie Hall. It goes thus:

Two elderly women are at a resort, and one says to the other "The food at this place is so terrible", the other woman responds "yeah, and in such small portions too"
That's essentially how I feel about life, full of loneliness, and suffering and misery and unhappiness, and it is all over much to quickly.

In some less philosophical musings, I'm quoting movies instead of people and books. Welcome to my world & my generation !

Biryani@koramangala

2009-08-17T22:08:00.003+05:30

Mighty impressed with this little shack of an eatery, Biryani@Koramangala, located opp. E-Zone in the 4th block. You'll find this small place, next to it's more popular italian neighbour, Fiorano .

The biryani is quite filling, both in quantity and taste. And although it doesn't quite make the cut when compared to authentic Hyderabadi Biryani, it does strike a chord with the Biryani lover, trying to deliver the spicy Andhra (Guntur) version of the Hyderabadi Biryani.

Not only is the biryani sumptuous, all modern day entrepreneurial aspirants will do well to take a leaf out of their book.

Here are 9 things I like about this place :

1. Not held up about appearances.
2. Very sure about their target demographic.
3. Not trying to satisfy everyone. Operates in its own segment.
4. Reasonably priced.
5. Very courteous, right from the man who sits behind the counter, to the waiter, down to the delivery boy. One wonders if it's all the same family.
6. Extremely accomodating. Not too stuck up on minimum order amounts, delivery radius, and such.
7. No visible power struggles.
8. Genuine interest in understanding their demographic.
9. Eager to please the customer.

R.I.P MJ

2009-07-05T22:06:00.005+05:30

As I sit down to write this post, I feel it would be redundant. Better writers have paid richer tributes to the King of Pop.
However for me, the connection I feel with MJ is a deeply personal one. And if I dont pen this down now, I'll always feel I denied an old friend his due.

When a friend messaged me the news of his demise, I hoped that it was one of the cruel jokes that the media seemed to play out from time to time.
Fighting reality with blind hope, I turned to the internet, only to have the worst reaffirmed. MJ had died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 50.

Involuntarily, thoughts played back in my mind when as a kid, my dad introduced me to this phenomenon. As I watched Thriller on VCR in continuous loop that summer vacation, I fell in love with the persona of this man, who moved like magic, whose feet seemed to have a life of their own.

There was something indescribably smooth about the way he danced. Each step just seemed to naturally flow into the next. There was no abrupt stop and shifting of steps. Nothing. Just pure continuous fluidity of movement.

This was no circus performer either. This was not a person who tried to be famous by bending his body in unimaginable angles. Dancing seemed to be a natural extension of his personality. MJ seemed to have the ability to transform every mundane act into an exquisite dance step. Everything about him was graceful. Heck ! he could do pelvic thrusts without making them look vulgar!

For me, that did it. My disconnect between western pop had just been bridged.
Like countless other kids at that age, I practised the moonwalk, threw up my right leg in his signature style, bought slip-on shoes, and tried to get the pants stitched a little short of the ankle, and entertained family and friends, well atleast until I grew a little older ...

However, even as I grew older, I never grew tired of his music, and he never stopped entertaining. As news that MJ was coming out with "Rock My World", after a long hiatus, spread, I remember the eagerness with which I awaited glimpses of the video on music channels. His appearance had changed now, but for me, his dance still had the supple smooth flow, I had witnessed for the first time almost a decade ago. Even the music was still very characteristic of him, although not his best.

Like Mozart to music, Da Vinci and Van Gogh to painting, to me Michael Jackson represented everything that was the highest in his art, and more importantly the purest. Try as anyone else might, they would only end up as imitations. He was there first, he paved the way !

They say that Thriller remains unsurpassed in all-time record sales till date, with over a 100 million copies sold. However numbers don't do justice to this man.

I'm always going to remember MJ as someone who made the times in which I lived exciting, someone who has given me permanent boasting privileges, to those that come after me, about having shared the same time in history with the greatest performer there ever was, someone who made growing up fun ...

RIP my friend. You deserved better !

2009-01-30T14:12:00.004+05:30

How to take your dog for a dump, and write it so it reads like a Hitchcock thriller.

Respite from telemarketers

2009-01-28T19:48:00.006+05:30

Hopefully this will act to serve as a stern reminder to all the relentless and often frustrating telemarketers, who have no respect whatsoever, for the customer's privacy or wishes.

Now, if only the courts in India would follow suit, or better still, if Country Club would end in financial ruin ! Ah, what bliss ...

Are You Ready ?

2009-01-18T14:37:00.007+05:30

So, when is going to happen, and more importantly what is it going to be ? My pulse is racing, I'm gasping for breath, the tension in the air is palpable ! Oh what a story this will make.
The conditions are perfect, the timing impeccable, the expectations at an all time low, everyone has been left with a bitter taste in the mouth, doomsday predictions float all around, markets take a downturn, environmental pollution is at an all time high, not a single ray of light is in sight!

The stage is set for a story of epic proportions, one that will redefine the way things work. The tale will be told for generations forth, of humble beginnings(, in a garage perhaps ?).
A story of trying times, especially to fund your idea, of finding the right people, of undying perseverance, of uncompromising values, of true genius shining through, of an idea that was so obvious, it'll leave people wondering how they missed it, but only in the aftermath of its success, of an idea whose time has come !

Like a whiff of fresh, crisp air announcing Spring, it'll cut through your senses and bring you back to life. It'll shine like a beacon to those without hope. It'll lead from the front, and exhort everyone to join the fight. An industry will be resurrected, a civilization, awakened to new possibilities. The bar of innovation will be pushed a mile further.

My pulse is set racing again. So, are you ready to think? And more importantly are you ready to work on it, and lead from the front ?

The Graveyard Shift

2009-01-05T10:32:00.007+05:30

Graveyards have always caught my imagination. The first time I went to the graveyard was back in Hyderabad, when my grandfather passed away. I was 10 years old at that time. And more than the funeral ceremony, I found myself interested in wandering around the desolate graveyard, reading the epitaphs of all the people who had been laid to rest. Since then, every January, I have eagerly looked forward to visiting the graveyard for grandfather's anniversary. While mom and sis, cleaned away the dead leaves from the tombstone and dusted out the cobwebs, I went on my walk.

Of particular interest to me was the older section of the graveyard where expat Britishers from the British era in India, were laid to rest. Some of them, I imagined were soldiers.
It was all too fascinating for me to think about where their travels had taken them, during the course of their lives, and how they ended up below the ground in a land they had set out to conquer. Most of the graves in this section were of people who had died in the 19th century. For me, this just spiked up the enigma quotient of those graves. They seemed so far removed from my own existence.

My own thoughts wandered away to their descendants, and I wondered if they had settled down in India, or if they made it back to their own country, and if they were aware of their own blood resting in a far away land. It did set the stage for some very compelling stories, if you let your imagination wander.

The big old banyan trees which provided ample shade, the peace and quiet of the graveyard that soothed your nerves, along with the light breeze blowing in from the open spaces all around was a refreshing change from the noise of the city.

I find it fascinating to imagine what kind of lives the buried had led, and how they met their end. Calculating their age by their date of birth and the day they were laid to rest, all of which wa s mentioned on their tombstones, was another absorbing exercise.

It was also interesting to observe how much importance people attach to the tombstones of the departed. Tombstones of all sizes and shapes, some made of marble, others of granite, and some with plain concrete, all of them held a novelty I can't describe. Some of them sported very ornate and intricate designs while others were simple and plain.

Most of the epitaphs were quotes from the scripture with a stress on eternal life, while others were quotes very plainly intended to get the members of the family through the tough time.

Given that things are how they are, I decided to pay the cemetery in Bangalore a small visit yesterday. The cemetery road is en route to Cubbon park when you go from Koramangala via Adugodi. There are around 4 cemeteries located on this road. I decided to stop at one of them and see if I could get any good shots. However, I wasnt sure that I'd get permission to shoot pictures inside the cemetery from the cemetery office. So, I decided to walk right in and shoot, and hope I didnt get caught.

The time was around 4:30 in the afternoon, and I knew that I was just in time for the "Golden Hour". There were some boys playing cricket in the far corner of the graveyard, and the watch man was sitting on a grave, smoking a beedi , absorbed in the match. I took my chance and quickly got a few shots. It's understandable that some people might consider it offensive to shoot photographs. So, I wanted to be as discreet as possible as I went about the shoot.

A bunch of noisy mynahs kept hopping from one tombstone to another and finally settled down on a small tree nearby, and engaged themselves in animated chatter.

A jungle crow flew down from its flight home, to take a sip from the small pool of water near the sump. The cobwebs, adorning the graves, glistened like fine threads of gold as the sun started to set for the day. The caretakers 'mongrels stretched themselves one last time on the black granite of a tombstone, trying to make itself warm one last time, before the harsh chill of the winter night set in the graveyard.

Getting Through The Recession

2008-12-15T14:40:00.000+05:30

Three of my colleagues were "let-go" last week. Doesn't seem like a big number, until you take into consideration the fact that the total strength of the work-force at my office, here in Bangalore, is 50-odd.
Needless to say, the news had most of us reeling in shock for a while.

Here's some advice on getting through these trying times.

1. Invest in yourself.

Brush up on your core skills. Learn, sketch, design, code, write, do whatever makes you better at your job.

2. Be frugal.

This one is more pertinent to those of us, living in the metropolitans, where not visiting the mall on the weekend, or watching a weekend movie show for 250 bucks, or dining at that expensive restaurant, or binging on Mr. Mallya's precious produce, has us feeling strangely guilty and cheap.

Presh Talwalkar explains what it means to be frugal here, along with loads of other excellent advice.

"The word frugal is widely misunderstood. Frugal does not mean being cheap or saving money. Frugal means avoiding waste and being efficient."

He goes on to quote Theodore Roosevelt on frugal living :

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

3. Take time to unwind and relax.

Its easy to let the pressures of the work-place get to your nerves, what with all your customers crying their throats hoarse all the time.
With the Christmas season closing in, it's a good time to take some time off, to spend with your family, and give yourself some time to collect your thoughts, and put things in perspective.

Enhancements on Flickr

2008-12-12T18:25:00.003+05:30

A few enhancements that I'd like to see on Flickr:

1. Maintain a default set of recently uploaded pictures, with a refresh rate of say, 2 days.

2. A way to maintain a list of people whose work I'd like to follow on Flickr

Through the Flickr blog, or through "Explore", I often come across the profiles of some very gifted people whose work I'd like to keep track of. As of now, there seems to be no other way of doing this other than by adding them as a contact.

What I'd like to see is a feature by which I can mark a set of people whose work I'd like to "follow" on Flickr, and get updates from them, the way you get updates from your contacts, but without really having to add them as a contact.

3. A way to auto-publish content at specific points of time in the future

One of the inherent dynamics of User Generated Content is that, a profile attracts more attention when it is updated regularly, than if the same amount of content were to be posted at one shot.

To elaborate, let's consider the case of blogs. If you were following Seth Godin's blog, would you rather that he posted 30 blogs over a particular weekend, every month on a variety of topics, or that he posted one every day(, or for that matter one every few hours) ?

One of the secrets to having a successful blog or any community-based profile is to post regularly.

When you post content regularly, you not only give people who follow your work, time and space to digest what you are posting, and ruminate over the subject matter, but you also give them a reason to expect more.

Google gets this, which is why blogger seems to provide a feature of auto-publishing content at pre-defined points of time in the future.

It would be great if Flickr could follow suit and allow such a feature, allowing you to auto-publish your pictures at specific dates in the future.

4. Last of all, I'd like to see a wee bit more intelligence on Flickr, in that it doesn't scream out, "Please come back, We Miss you ! Renew Your Pro membership." , even for a first time Flickr user, who's never been Pro to begin with.

Also, I feel the line itself sounds very affected, and has scope for improvement.

A Vision For Photography

2008-11-27T23:59:00.006+05:30

Philosophy Alert !!

I was reading through the comments of an old interview on the strobist blog, interviewing the phenomenally talented 17 year old Joey L . One of the comments that stuck me was when someone remarked that Joey's pictures had a singular vision. A vision that seems stamped into each photograph featured on his website (seems to have some issues with Firefox3, be warned), giving the viewer a sense of assertion of Joeys ownership of his pictures. Ownership, not just in the material sense of the term, but in terms of the vision.

Joeys' pictures are depressing and incredible at the same time, to most people over 17, depressing because you hadnt heard the term SLR yet, when you were 17 and incredible because, ... well, because they are incredible, take a look !

The picture of the dead bird, lying in the gravel, with its belly facing the sky, while a group of similar birds take to the skies in the background. The wandering Holy Men of India, defining their own boundaries of thought, all in the name of enlightenment, the tramp who refused to step down from posing until the photographer left, the beggar holding out his jar in the middle of the busy thoroughfare, the young couple that had tattooed most of their body lying on the ground ...

All powerful images, conveying a powerful vision ...

So, all of this got me thinking.

Thinking about whether the pictures I shoot have that vision, heck, any vision. In case they dont, if I should be thinking of adopting a vision (yeah, I know that sounds ridiculous).

Then there's this quote by the Greek philosopher Whitehead that has stuck with me for a long time.
It goes "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things."

He then' goes on. to explain, "This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."

The way I understand it , Whitehead seems to say, that tragedy is implicit in the way things work. An effort to focus on unhappy events to merely depict tragedy is simply redundant. All life itself is a tragedy. OK, so maybe thats stretching it, but you do see my point, don't you ?

Not really? Well, here then is what I'm trying to say.

Would a vision that focused on the tragedies of everyday life, translate to a good vision, because it depicted reality ?

Or would it be more powerful, if not inspirational, if my pictures were to focus on the small victories, triumphs and the hopes that also seem to dot the tragic landscape of life that we all inhabit ?

Distributed Production Grade Systems

2008-11-18T17:09:00.000+05:30

When do web applications move beyond being hosted on proprietary production grade systems, and move to more wide-spread "production centres" distributed world-wide, a la CDN. Would that not help with lightning fast responses to serve user content ?

Similar to having distributed data centres, but hosting production level servers, where code could be deployed securely and remotely.

One argument against this could be that syncing all the distributed content would be difficult.
Another could be that production grade systems need to be absolutely secure, and impregnable, but couldn't systems evolve to tackle that ?

Chasing monsoons in Goa

2008-10-26T18:44:00.001+05:30

My two month overdue Goa post :

I had always wanted to go back to Goa since my first trip there last year, when I stayed at Anjuna. This time around, we stayed at a place near the Candolim beach.
The onward journey was a complete nightmare, owing in part to Bangalore's notorious traffic jams, and a lousy bus, which had no shock absorbers whatsoever.

However, once we got to Goa and had taken some much needed rest, we lazed around, drank made merry, sat staring at the Ocean till well past midnight with a bottle of Zinfandel, took long walks on the moonlit deserted beach, wondered at the abandoned mysterious "River Princess" anchored and left desolate in the middle of the ocean, the dark silhouette of a ghost ship, just off limits to the people on the beach.

Late in the evening, gorging on tuna sandwiches, fried fish and the ever-dependable beverages churned out by the flamboyant Mr. Mallya, sitting by a shack half open to the breeze blowing in from the sea, and listening to some good old live music, I was convinced I was in paradise.

Fortunately for me, my cell phone conked and refused to start no matter what I did, worked well for me. With no one to bother me, I felt totally liberated. From chasing peafowls perched on stark tree tops early in the morning, waiting for the sun to shimmer down and dry the dew of their beautiful feathers, hoping no one would notice them, to observing fishermen returning to the docks early in the morning after a night out on the violent sea, unloading their catch, an early morning drive through Goa is a revelation in itself.

Soaked to the bone by the monsoons, devoid of too many tourists, hotels that are not too over-priced, and with only the occasional junkie touting heroin and ecstasy, Goa I discovered, is just a slice of pure heaven in the off-season.

So, so you think you can tell ??

2008-10-26T16:13:00.002+05:30

Don't you just love it when you rediscover the brilliance of an absolute gem of a song that you had long dismissed for a cliche', and whose musical value you had equaled to no more than the drone of a house fly !

The flip side of the combination of cheap digital storage and "sophisticated" music players , is that you end up with all these gigabytes of songs lying in your hard disk, but do not devote enough time to let them grow on you. The songs just play in a sequence, and you hardly ever pay any attention to the music or the lyrics.

Given that I don't consider myself a luddite, it would be stupid, not to mention futile, to oppose the innovations in the field of digital storage technology.

The need of the hour, is therefore, either better design, or more intelligence in music players.
Something that can make it easy for listeners to organize their music, by tagging, intelligent rating, or ways of creating playlists that people can actually use.

Cover Art :

Album art, is another feature, that is in jeopardy of being lost into oblivion with the rise of digital technology, and is in desperate need for a revival by means of integration with music players.(fortunately there has been some relief in this aspect with most major players recognizing this need already, notably Apple, Winamp etc ...) .

Informational Tidbits or Trivia :

Often I have noticed that when I like a song, its not just because of the music or the lyrics, but also because of the history behind that song, or what you could call trivia. It helps people relate to the song, and helps create a more lasting impression.

Some examples of these that stand out for me, are U2's "Stuck in a moment ..." as a tribute to INXS' Michael Hutchence. Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" incident where Syd Barrett walked into the studio, where they were recording the song as a tribute to him, after an absence of seven years.
The more popular one, might be Don McLean's "American Pie", the interpretation of the lyrics for which, radio stations devoted entire shows.

It would be great if there were meta-information of this kind, that is released along with every album which contains tidbits on the songs, including but not limited to the history of the band, the composers involved, the circumstances that led to the composing of the song, the kind of guitars or pedals or other relevant instruments used, the lyrics of the song, the music sheets for the songs, and any other relevant information that they might consider significant from the perspective of the enthusiasts who buy their albums.

Considering that before the advent of the digital age, most of this information was part and parcel of the physical album art, I am at a loss to understand why this most straightforward of all adaptations has been overlooked when producing digital media. The absence of it just makes everything that much more fuzzy.

The meta-information could either be hosted on a site for music players to retrieve online or could be embedded as part of the cd itself, or perhaps both (Considering not all music players have access to online information) Either way, the goal is for music players to integrate and use this information and provide it to the end listener.

The benefits of adapting this way are bidirectional. It would greatly aid the cause of the musicians by helping them fixate the impression of their albums in the minds of their fans. It would help music enthusiasts differentiate between different genres, understand the music they listen to, figure out what kind of music appeals to them ...

In short, it would help people understand the music they like.

Or, maybe its just me ? :)

Run Baby ...

2008-10-20T18:28:00.007+05:30

You, in your track suits, and your plugged-in ipods, when will you learn to run up to your lofty gymnasiums, enclosed in its air-conditioned, glass-walled goodness, blaring Ricky Martin on surround-sound, high-wattage speakers .

'cos that's the only way you're ever gonna lose those extra jiggly pounds.
Not by driving up in your swanky air-conditioned car with your tinted windows pulled up, nor by buying a two thousand dollar 8 in 1 home work-out machine.

Run baby run ...

Been there, done that

2008-09-29T11:12:00.000+05:30

Dressed in black tees, and blue jeans, the two men must've been pushing their late fifties. Both of them sport elegant gold rimmed spectacles. One of them is semi-bald while the other one has managed to keep that damned of all human phenomena at bay.

Surprisingly, for their age, both men are refreshingly lean, and have not given way to the corpulence that seems to accumulate with passing years.

They sit at the bar now, leaving it to their waiter to worry about a table. They don't seem to mind the exuberant chatter of the bunch of boys, seated a little distance apart, waiting along with them. Not as long as the beer keeps coming, and the music is not too loud, and no one interrupts their peace.

As if from a distance, the discordant chords of jazz waft in. One of them takes out a cigarette and smokes. The other one joins him. Obviously they don't take the statutory warning on the pack too seriously.

They don't exchange much conversation. They probably don't feel the need for it. All they seem to want is some time off, to sit abstracted from the bustle of life, and the incessant demands of whatever it is they do for a living.

A word now, then a smile in agreement, and a smoke more ...

Walking The Line

2008-08-31T15:12:00.000+05:30

I'd seen the little girl a couple of times before, She must be around 8-10 years of age, always in the same clothes, a green and red dress, accompanied by who I reckon are her brother and mother. Around the narrow lanes of Eejipura they wander, setting up their little make-shift setup for the show.

The setup is simple. A couple of wooden poles are placed a few feet apart, each supported at the base by three small pieces of wood. A rope is firmly tied between the poles and the little one is hoisted up. Slowly and steadily, she gauges herself and makes some adjustments for balance.
With small steps, she starts walking the rope, initially with the help of a horizontal wooden pole in her hands for balance, which she then proceeds to do away with.

The mother of the family slings around her neck, a hollow piece of wood covered by some cheap leather that passes for a drum, and starts off with a song. Passers by stop to check what the commotion is all about.
Soon a small crowd gathers around gaping open-mouthed as the little girl performs her tricks. I wonder what they goes on through their minds. the sight they witness today is by no means uncommon . Yet they gather and stand and gape in what I like to call "stoned" amazement. I guess it's part of all that "diversity and culture" that we boast about and wear on our sleeves and are so proud of as Indians. The little girl , though is unruffled by the crowd; a true professional, she does her act with elegance, poise and precision.

It's then time for the second part of the act. The beat of the drums reaches a feverish pitch. Her brother tosses over a steel plate. One arm out, she catches it. She now balances herself on the steel plate and with short rhythmic movements of her feet, she starts walking the rope on the plate.

On slow days, when the gathering is few, she is made to sport a cheap pair of sunglasses. It works like a charm. Today is one of the bad days. The poles have been just set up by a busy thoroughfare. The girl is hoisted up. She starts to walk. The drums are played with extra vigor. People stop to watch her as she precariously walks forward and back.

And then suddenly it happens. In a split second, the poles give away with a screech. The child loses her balance and lands on the hard asphalt with a thud. The crowd lets out a collective gasp. At first, she doesn't realize what has happened, but as she slowly comes out of the shock, she realizes shes hurting, and starts wailing. Her brother and mother rush to her side. Her brother frantically rubs her forehead, in an effort to alleviate the pain, but the child is inconsolable.

To me, the child's crying seemed to go beyond physical pain. It was as though she was crying out at her existence, and at what she had to do to earn her bread, at time never spent on playing, at time spent walking the streets under the hot sun, at the lack of an opportunity to get an education. The mother tries to hush her up. Experience has taught her that the crowd is not sympathetic of cry-babies, and sympathy doesn't help anyway, not in her line of work.

The crowd is unmoved. People walk on. The circus has come to an end. Not the perfect start to the day, the trio had hoped for , but by the looks of it, this was not something new. They fold up , it's time to move on a few blocks down, put up the poles and go about walking the line one more time.

Photographs and Flickr ...

2008-08-22T13:49:00.000+05:30

Something about an instant in time, and the ability to freeze and capture it, that cannot be paralleled by any other form of art. Something about beauty in sophistication of an SLR, about that indescribable sound of the electro-mechanical components working in tandem to create something artistic.

It's been a little over two months since I bought my camera, and I have developed a healthy respect for Flickr, in particular and the concept of user generated content in general.

Many people have this misconception of Flickr as yet another online photo storage application, a la Picasa.

1. The subtle difference is that although you can upload your pictures to Flickr like with any other photo-sharing tool, Flickr mandates you to focus on the quality of your uploads by imposing limits on monthly uploads (atleast for non-Pro accounts).

In doing so, it indirectly prompts the user to pick only a subset of pictures that can narrate his story.

2. Flickr provides support for Creative Commons meaning that the user gets to choose the "Some Rights reserved" paradigm as opposed to the "All Rights Reserved".

This helps promote and realise the true power of user generated content, by encouraging users to build upon others content, and express it in a different way.

3. The other thing about Flickr is that it has taken off in a way that promotes learning.

One of the important features in this regard is Flickr's support of EXIF data. For the uninitiated, when you look at an photograph, and wonder what settings were used to achieve the effect in the picture, the EXIF can give you a few pointers in the right direction.
That is of course, assuming that the photograph was not retouched by a software application such as Photoshop or Picasa.

Communities are another of Flickr's greatest assets. The active reponses to queries, and the eagerness with which people share their own secrets of photography are quite inspiring.

4. Lastly, as Flickr is positioned specifically to appeal to amateurs, hobbyists and photograph lovers in general, and does not have much of an appeal for people who just want to vent out their disgust, it has managed to somehow remain sublime, and has not attracted any of the distasteful comments that YouTube cannot seem to shake off.

Latest discovery on Flickr : The Bokeh sets. Have fallen in love with the beautiful Bokeh pictures out there, especially when colored serial lights make up the background, just cant seem to get enough of those. I feel the desire to learn how to shoot some, or maybe upgrade to some lenses that can help me achieve and experiment with that effect like for example this one
Hawaiian Rainy Bokeh by AppleJan .

Gmail conks on FF3

2008-07-10T12:37:00.000+05:30

Observed Gmail conking on FF3 today. Haven't been able to reply or Compose a mail, shows up "undefined" in the list of autocomplete suggestions in the recipient text area. Seems to just work fine on IE though.

The US Presedential Hopeful

2008-01-10T14:04:00.000+05:30

Barack Obama makes you want to sit down and weep your heart out. This guys got great oratory skills !!

An excerpt from one of his election campaign speeches :

"Hope is not blind optimism, It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead, or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that consists despite all evidence to the contrary something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it and to fight for it. ... "

Chowrasthas, traffic signals, bus-stops and traffic jams ...

2007-11-20T12:11:00.000+05:30

Chowrasthas, traffic signals, bus-stops and traffic jams ...

Events-Calendars Confluence

2007-11-13T11:14:00.000+05:30

One of the things I love about Bangalore is the wide range of cultural and technical fests and events that take place on almost an every day basis in different corners of the city. The impetus on art, especially music, both classical and western is remarkable. In the last 15 months alone, Bangalore has played host to some of the biggest rock bands like Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, INXS, Sepultura, while at the same time presenting an eclectic line-up of music artists from around the world like Frank Gambale and Maurizio Colonna who played at the Good Sheperd auditorium late last month.

The internet, of course plays up its role of harnessing all this information and delivering it to you, with the help of sites like this , to be used at your disposal.

When I come across a post about an event, which I might be interested in attending, here’s what I do.

I sign in to my Google calendar.
Click on the “Create Event” link, on my events calendar.
I now enter the following information in the fields provided.

What -> Name of the event
When -> date of the event
Where -> Venue

Click on ‘Save’

Now, to come to the point I am trying to make.

With the plethora of information on events that go on around the city, it would be very neat if I could mark a specific event that I come across on a web-page, on my Google calendar directly with the click of a button.

There are multiple ways in which this could be achieved, but I’m guessing the easiest would be to create a widget, that resembled the Skype extension for Firefox, shown below

This widget would single sign on with my Google calendar, (using the relevant browser cookies), and use the APIs to directly mark the event.

A script would run on every web-page that picks out dates in different formats and uses some primitive intelligence to detect location information, and other "event-attributes", and render the widget for the collection of this information.
A click on the widget would now enable this information to be written directly to the calendar. Optionally, in case of multiple calendars, the widget would even give a drop down of available calendars, and allow the user to select one of them.
In this scenario, ideally, of course, you would want to mark one of the calendars as the default, instead of prompting the user to select one, every time he wants to mark an event.

Crossroads

2007-10-01T17:19:00.000+05:30

Every once in a while, you find yourself at the crossroads in life, taking stock of everything thats happening to and around you.

At this tender age of 24, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself doing exactly that, and here are my musings :

India has finally won a cricket championship, which by-the-way, did not include the likes of The Netherlands, Tumbuktu, and all those other countries, which have no colorful colonial past. (Although, I must admit, I was secretly praying India wouldn't have to face Bangladesh again)

It'd been quite a while since I graduated to listening to Pink Floyd, Coldplay , The Beatles, Elvis, Muse among others, which, by the way, does not include any band that has the word "boy" in it. (the last of the above-mentioned bands is a bit depressing. Listen to it at your own peril.)

I haven't combed my hair in 4 months (My handy foldable comb-cum-backscratching device has apparently been misplaced when I shifted houses 4 months back) 'mind you, that does not necessarily imply that I haven't washed my hair in all that time.
I do it regularly, which is to say, every day. Thank you.

Talking of hair, of late, I have noticed that there's more of my hair on the spanking new vitrified floor at my new home, than on my head. Sweeping the floor clean everyday doesn't help either. It gets filled up faster than I can say "Twenty-Twenty".

I can't get myself to don the fancy accessory-helmet that I bought along with my new bicycle a coupla' weeks back, and by the looks of it, I doubt if I ever will.

The chick downstairs still gets to decide what decibels my sound system at home is allowed to hit.

And life rolls on ...

iTunes - Thoughts on Usability

2007-09-20T10:36:00.001+05:30

'Have been trying to play around with my not-so-old ipod, and my efforts with syncing it with iTunes and configuring the ID3 tags of the songs have given way to the following list

1. Why can't I use the trackball to scroll within the iTunes playlist.

2. While selecting multiple songs for deletion, using the keyboard alone, is there a way I can unselect songs . Normally I would select multiple songs using the "Shift + Down" key combination .

For example, say, I selected the songs 6,7,8 and 9 using the intuitive key combination mentioned above, and then realised I did not intend to select the song 9, I would typically use the "Shift + Up" arrow key to unselect it. However, doing this only results in song no. 5 getting selected as well.
This is utterly frustrating. Whatever clever workaround iTunes has to unselect songs, which I might not be aware of , I would think it highly counter-intuitive.

3. Anyhoo, once the songs that I wanted to delete have been deleted , I use the "Down" arrow key to traverse further down the list, right ?.... wrong !! it takes me back to the very first song in the list, instead of the song after the last one to be deleted.

And since the friggin' trackball doesn't work anyway, I have to drag my mouse pointer all the way to the dull grey scroll bar to actually come back to the song I was at.
The other alternative is that I can just have a paperweight put on the "Down" arrow key, go cook my breakfast, and come back just in time, to arrive at the point where I was hijacked.

4. Finally, it would be nice to have a plugin, that could configure the ID3 tags of the songs
, by itself off the net, which could provide seamless integration.

An update here :)