Shanmuga's Blog Space

Background Hum Article

2012-01-26T11:44:00.000+05:30

My article on HDR Imaging appeared in Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay magazine called "Background Hum". This article aims to cater to a wider audience with minimal technical details. I had posted the earlier version of this article in my previous blog post. The article - "High Dynamic Range Imaging - A Technical Overview" appears in the fifth page of the recent issue of Background Hum.

The e-copy of Background Hum can be accessed from the IIT Bombay website here.

Dev Anand - The Eternal Hero

2011-12-10T19:34:00.002+05:30

"I am not a fan of Dev Anand. But I like many of his classic old movies." I think this would be the state of mind of anyone who has seen a lot of classical Bollywood movies. I started liking a lot of old Hindi classics and started building a collection. The songs in the movies and their placement in those movies propelled my interest in the old movies. It was also due to the poor quality of songs in present Hindi movies that I developed keen interest in the old ones.

Dev Anand deserves a special place in the history of Hindi movies. He was monotonous in his movies in his own unique way. But it still worked. His best work till date is undoubtedly, "Guide" starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rahman. Based on RK Narayan's novel of the same name, it was a very subtle romantic movie with great songs like "Gaata rahe mera dil", "Din dhal jaaye", and "Aaj phir jeene ki tamannaa hai". Kishore, Rafi, Lata, and SD Burman would have taken the songs of this movie to a different plane altogether. A must watch movie for anyone even after almost 50 years since it was first released.

The second best movie of Dev Anand is the thriller, "Jewel Thief". Being one of the best crime thrillers of that era, it starred Dev Anand, Ashok Kumar, Vyjayanthi Mala and Tanuja (Kajol's mom). Suspense, romance, and crime made it a compulsive watch for millions. Songs tuned by SD Burman were again major attraction of this movie. Songs of this movie such as "Yeh dil na hota bechaara", "Aasman ke neeche", "Dil pukaare", and "Hothon mein aisi baat" are still favorites of Hindi film song lovers.

Another movie of Dev Anand which I liked is an underrated love story - "Tere ghar ke saamne" starring Dev Anand and Nutan. Though the story is a simple comical romance with lot of melodrama, it had some stunning songs tuned again by SD Burman. My personal favorite is Rafi solo, "Dil ka bhanwar kare pukaar" which was shot exquisitely inside Qutub-Minar. The expressions of Dev Anand and Nutan in this song are a treat to watch. The title song, "Tere ghar ke saamne", a Rafi-Lata duet is also still popular.

Other movies I loved of Dev Anand are CID, Asli Naqali, and Hum Dono. Some of the memorable songs of Dev Anand are "Main zindagi ka saath", "Phoolon ke rang se", "Shokiyon mein ghola jaaye", "Hum hain raahi pyaar ke", "Chod do aanchal", "Accha ji main haari", and "Abhi na jaao chodkar". He died few days back after leaving us memories of his unforgettable movies over decades. We should thank him for leaving behind to us so many great movies with a lot of eternal melodies over time. There can never be another Dev Anand in Hindi films.

High Dynamic Range Imaging - A Technical Overview

2011-11-13T15:43:00.000+05:30

Due to the digital revolution, analog cameras are rarely used these days. Digital cameras provide us sophistication in the sense that one can review the shot picture immediately apart from making any changes to the picture. Cost and expertise required for one to use digital cameras is minimal. These benefits of digital cameras over the analog cameras have made them ubiquitous in the imaging. Digital imaging has become the most wide used term at present and no one bothers much about analog imaging.

Real world scenes have a range of brightness levels so high that common digital capture devices are unable to capture the entire range. This drawback is mainly due to the restriction of capacity of the each sensor element present in the camera sensor array. Analog cameras can however capture higher range of brightness levels than common digital cameras, as the brightness levels are recorded in a continuous form through burning of oxides in the film.

There are digital cameras which can capture high dynamic range (HDR) scene information in a single snapshot such as Spheron VR camera. However, such cameras are very expensive at present. The challenge is to enable common low dynamic range (LDR) digital cameras to capture the HDR information. We shall now look at the new imaging paradigm called HDR imaging which enables one to capture higher dynamic range even with the common LDR capture devices. The advantage with such an approach is that the cost is less compared to re-designing the imaging sensor.

A real world scene which has both brightly and poorly illuminated regions is said to be a HDR scene. If we take multiple images of the scene using a digital camera by changing the exposure times, we would be able to capture all the details of the scene. Auto-Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature in common digital cameras let one capture this sequence. However, the details of the scene are now distributed across all these multi-exposure images. We need to appropriately weigh the intensity values of these images to capture all the details in a single image. This process requires us to remove any non-linearity introduced by the digital camera before weighting the intensity values.

Many commercial software products perform this task. Some of them are HDRsoft Photomatix, pfstools, and Adobe Photoshop (CS2 onwards). Even recent releases of Matlab has functions such as hdrread, hdrwrite, makehdr, and tonemap to achieve basic HDR image operations. HDR images are encoded in formats such as Open EXR (.exr) and Radiance RGBE (.hdr) which store a floating point value at each pixel location. The generated HDR image is then subjected to a process called tone mapping for display in display devices which can understand only LDR content.

Problem in multi-exposure image capture arises when one needs to capture a dynamic scene. Real world scenes are dynamic (objects in the scene are in motion). Even an expert photographer does not have any control over the movement of objects in the scene while capturing multi-exposure images. If the scene changes are not detected in the multi-exposure images, the final HDR image will have artifacts called ghosts. Several de-ghosting algorithms have been developed which eliminate such artifacts due to motion in the scene.

The real challenge for HDR imaging in future is the development of fast algorithms which can produce artifact-free HDR image corresponding to both static and dynamic scenes. Real time tone mapping operators are also a challenge which can then enable HDR images to be visualized in common LDR displays. Inverse tone mapping techniques, which enable existing LDR content to be visualized on HDR displays, are also of much interest to the research community.

Reconstruction of High Contrast Images for Dynamic Scenes

2011-11-13T15:32:00.000+05:30

Our recent work titled "Reconstruction of high contrast images for dynamic scenes", published in The Visual Computer journal, provides a novel solution to the high dynamic range (HDR) imaging problem for dynamic scenes. The journal articles are accessible to all without subscription till Dec 31st 2011. So you would be able to download the article from the link The Visual Computer article. I have posted a review article, "High Dynamic Range Imaging - A Technical Overview" which I wrote for IIT Bombay magazine called "Background Hum". The review article would motivate one to read this recent journal article and understand it better apart from providing a glimpse of the research I have been doing for the past five years.

Change of Momentum?

2011-09-27T12:17:00.003+05:30

Men's tennis is in a major transition period due to the unexpected but well deserved rise of Novak Djokovic to the top of the rankings. No one would have expected Novak to win 3 Grandslams at the start of this year. In 2010, Nadal won 3 Grand slams and Federer won 1 Grand slam and the ATP tour finals. I was among those who felt that the Federer-Nadal rivalry will continue in 2011. This Djokovic era has certainly made following tennis even more exciting.

Djokovic has raised his level of tennis from the Australian open and has never reduced the intensity. This probably took both Federer and Nadal off guard. Djokovic's winning run made them rethink their strategy as both used to dismiss of Djokovic quite easily over the past 4 years or so. The only major loss in a completed match for Djokovic was against Federer in the French open semi finals. It was more due to the exceedingly better performance of Federer that day than anything else. I never thought Djokovic would perform this well in clay even though he lost the match.

Apart from that, Djokovic has dismissed Nadal in all the matches of 2011 including the finals in Wimbledon and US open (on all surfaces). Nadal probably does not have any answer at present to the constantly improving tennis of Djokovic. Even Federer was never beaten by Nadal this consistently over the years. Only man to come close to challenging Djokovic this year was Federer. Federer should have won the US open semi final match having held 2 match points on his own serve. However, Djokovic has slowly imbibed the habit of rising from any position to win matches which is the hallmark of any true champion. Unfortunately, Federer and Nadal are at the receiving end now.

ATP tour finals is just about two months away. Top 4 (Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Murray) have already qualified. Djokovic goes in as a clear favorite in spite of his recent injury woes which made him retire against Murray and Del Potro. Federer has always been a man to beat at ATP tour finals having won the year end tournament five times. Further, he is a defending champion this year. I expect a strong battle between Djokovic and Federer in this year's event. Nadal can never been discounted as he has simply been outplayed by Djokovic. Nadal beat Federer in French open finals and is surely a worthy contender for the title.

The real test for Djokovic will start from Australian open next year as he will have considerable points to defend over the entire year. Federer and Nadal have done it consistently in the past and are therefore hailed as all time greats of tennis. One needs to wait and see if Djokovic also has that extra will power to thump others consistently to stick to his top ranking. Early signs show that he indeed has that capability to raise to the occasion.

The arrival of Djokovic as world number one is a welcome sign for Tennis. We will be treated with some more exciting matches in ATP tour finals and Grand slams in 2012 with Djokovic-Federer-Nadal trio trying to outperform each other. Murray might also spring a few surprises if he plays up to his full capacity. Even though I am a Federer fan, my heart says that Djokovic will most probably keep others at bay to continue his reign at the top in 2012 as well.

IIT Bombay Diaries - 1

2011-07-31T18:34:00.000+05:30

I recently defended my PhD thesis and I would be leaving IIT Bombay after a long stretch of 7 years. As I am spending last few days at IIT Bombay, I plan to write a series of blogs about great as well as not-so-great memories over the past 7 years. To start with, I list some of the things I would definitely miss when I leave IIT Bombay for good.

Friends at IITB - PD, RamP, Swana, Dotto, Debu, Srini, etc.
Unlimited high-speed Internet and file sharing
Mumbai rains
Powai lake view from my room (A-505, Hostel 12)
Watching cricket and tennis with the H-12 gang
Roaming around the campus with T-shirt and shorts without taking bath
Traveling by tum-tum unlimited number of times a day
Gulmohar, Laxmi and Thambi restaurants
Buying and reading a large number of books
Printouts of e-books from H-12 shop at reduced rates
Pleasant students in and around the hostels :)
World cup matches in the convo hall
PAFs at OAT
TT with RamP
More to come ...

KO - Movie Review

2011-05-01T08:24:00.002+05:30

I must first thank my nephew Raghavan who propelled me to watch this Tamil movie a couple of days back. Apart from the movie, I enjoyed the newly renovated Pandiyan cinemas in my town Kariakkudi. It has dts surround sound and seating as good as any multiplex. A fight sequence involving Suriya and Anushka in the recently released movie, "Singam" (Ajay Devgan is remaking it in Hindi.), was shot at Pandiyan cinemas. It was a nice little trip with ever charming Raghavan since we had stormed some key locations in Bengalooru 3 years back.

KO (meaning King) is a realistic take on the present day politics. What makes it very relevant is that it is centered around the Tamilnadu assembly elections which was held a couple of days back. Ashwin (Jiiva) is a photo journalist who likes to do adventures to expose both the CM (Prakash Raj) and the opposition leader (Kota Srinivasa Rao) before the elections. There is another guy called Vasanthan (Ajmal) who heads the elite group of young guys who also pitches in the fray for the elections. Ashwin also finds time to romance his colleagues in the office - Karthika and Piya. Jiiva's paper contributes to the rise of Vasanthan and fall of the other 2 major parties. What transpires next is told as an edge of the seat thriller.

KV Anand is an intelligent film maker which was evident from his first film, "Kana Kanden", where he portrayed the realistic view of irregularities pertaining to academic research and PhD in India. In this movie, he explores the power of the media and how it can impact the political scenario in a very interesting manner. The camera by Richard captures the actions in a stunning way. Some of the fights and chases have been choreographed very well. Happenings of recent politics such as cash for votes, invading newspaper office, etc. are depicted well. KO is a visual treat with a thrilling screenplay.

Jiiva and Ajmal are the real stars of the movie with power packed performances without any punch lines. Jiiva fits the role of a photo journalist extremely well. Ajmal is a highly underrated actor with great talent. Karthika (daughter of actress Radha) makes a solid debut with the natural portrayal of a journalist. Piya overacts but is okay. Prakash Raj and Kota evoke laughter whenever they come on scene.

Music is good, with "Ennamo Edho" song being a great hit from Harris. Some other duets could have been avoided which pop up arbitrarily. A few other songs remind some of the earlier songs of Harris and Yuvan. Re-recording is perfect, though. The movie does not have any major comedians, which is a major plus as the comedy would have lead to digression from the main plot.

KO is a must watch movie for those who want to see the dirty politics prevalent in Taminadu through the eyes of a journalist. It is an irony that Karunandhi's grandson Udhayanidhi Stalin is distributing this movie and the movie is publicized widely in Kalaignar TV (caught in a corruption scandal following 2G scam). It seems politicians like publicity whether they are being admired or being laughed at.

Scilab in India

2010-12-09T21:01:00.000+05:30

Scilab is a free computation software available as an alternative to commercial software like Matlab. The Scilab India group is based at IIT Bombay and it is part of FOSSEE group. Prof Kannan Moudgalya, Prof Madhu Belur and Prof Mani Bhushan are actively promoting Scilab in India. I recently associated with this group and the association helped me to explore image processing toolboxes compatible with Scilab.

I gave a talk on image processing using Scilab at the National Workshop on Scilab held in Mumbai last week. My talk slides can be found in the webpage of this workshop. This workshop was aimed at college teachers and creating awareness among them about Scilab. There were lot of talks over a week's time on how to use Scilab for diverse areas like ODEs, Signal Processing, Chemical Engg, Electromagnetics, Neural Networks, Wavelets, Image Processing, Control Systems etc apart from some spoken tutorials.

It is indeed a nice experience working with this group. It is always better to promote free software which can be made available to any user. I wish the Scilab team good luck in their future workshops. The website 'scilab.in' provides complete details about activities regarding Scilab in India. Interested readers of my blog might want to check this site frequently for various events and materials regarding Scilab.

Roger Federer - The ATP World Tour Finals Champion

2010-11-29T17:13:00.000+05:30

Roger Federer is the greatest ever player to have played Tennis in this planet. However, he is also human and mid-year slump started to become a worry. Fans and critics were equally worried if he would ever be able to beat Nadal. This doubt was partially cleared when Federer demolished Nadal with high quality Tennis at London O2 last night to lift the ATP world tour finals crown for the record equaling fifth time.

The most important feature of this achievement of Federer is that he was unbeaten in the whole event and in the process defeated 5 of the top 8 in the world. Except Nadal, no one could even steal a set from him. The manner in which he thumped quality players like Murray, Soderling and Djokovic in straight sets was indeed a great sight. Nadal was in terrific form this season winning 3 grand slams and it took a special effort from the master to derail him in the last match of the season.

The title for Federer would surely keep him in good shape for defending his Australian open crown early next year. He was very aggressive in the whole tournament and used his backhand slice sparingly but effectively. The vintage Federer was clearly visible in the final against Nadal. Nadal, though tired, had little answer to the series of forehand and backhand winners Federer showered on him on all parts of the court.

Federer is 29 years old now and has good four to five years of top level tennis left in him. This is indeed a very good sign for Tennis and more youngsters would try to practice classic Tennis shots to succeed. I would like to see a single-handed backhand player like Federer and Sampras to rise to the top in few years. These players are a delight to watch. Federer's rise at the year end show down is a very promising sign for the future. Paul Annacone has contributed quite a bit to the renaissance of Federer.

The next year is going to be not-so-easy for Federer as he would start the year trying to defend his crown at the Rod Laver Arena. Nadal is certainly in the form of his life. Murray has to transfer his immense skills to win key matches. Djokovic is bit inconsistent though he is a solid player on some days. Berdych, Soderling, Del Potro, and Roddick also are playing well. Australian open will be yet another challenge for Federer to sail through these guys.

Regaining No 1 crown seems to be a fair distance away as there are still more than 3000 points between Rafa and Federer. Seeing the incredible tennis played by both these guys, we are certainly going to have a treat in 2011 as the rivalry continues. Seeing the devastating form Federer displayed over the past week, I feel that he still has it in him to become the top player and rule the world for more time. 2010 clearly belongs to Rafa and Federer as they have won all the top tournaments between them. Year-end form shows that 2011 will not be much different either.

ATP World Tour Finals - Preview

2010-11-18T00:00:00.001+05:30

ATP World Tour Finals (WTF) Tennis championship is just 3 days away at London O2. Top 8 players in the world are lined up for taking their momentum into next year. Last year's champion Nikolay Davydenko could not make it to top 8. The draws are out and there are 2 groups of 4 each. Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Tomas Berdych, and Andy Roddick form the first group. Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Robin Soderling and David Ferrer are in the second group. Top 2 from each group qualify for the semis. We shall now look at the chances of these players in this year's final tournament after which there is a 4 week break.

Nadal has had a great year with 3 grand slams to go with the world No1 crown. He is just coming off tendonitis and it would be interesting to see if he has lost any power because of this injury. Having said that, he is the favorite to win this tournament on current form. He is also placed in a relatively easy group which should see him sail easily into the semi finals. Djokovic cannot do anything right at this moment. Having lost his No 2 ranking to Federer, he is back to his No 3 days losing more finals than winning. He has the ability, but has the tendency to miss out in crucial matches. I expect Nadal and Berdych to give him tough matches. However, Nole normally screws up only on big matches.

Berdych is not in that great form since his heroics in French open and Wimbledon. He is a man to watch out for even though he has lost to innocuous opponents in last few months. His power hitting will be a treat to watch in hard courts. Roddick is not in good form either. He just made it to top 8 just because other contenders were worse than him. It is interesting to see how this ageing former world No 1 fares against the likes of Nadal and Djokovic. I expect Nadal and Djokovic to make it to semi finals from this group.

Federer was in good form in US open notwithstanding his unexpected loss to Djoker in the semi finals. He has won 2 crowns since then and the only blip being his loss to Monfils in BNP Paribas. He is not able to convert his match points in the recent past which has hurt him the most. We want to see the Federer of the past who used to grind the opponents down without lending any chance whatsoever. Murray is in bad form losing his No 4 ranking to Soderling. He has all the makings of next Tim Henman as his career is shaping up. He can defeat any player on his day and has the tendency to lose to any opponent as well. Lot of improvement needed in this tough group.

Soderling is the man to watch out for as the contender to lift the crown next only to Rafa. He has just won BNP Paribas Masters and is in good nick. He will certainly create problems to Federer and Murray in the round robin matches. Like Berdych, his power hitting should suit the hard courts in London. I expect him to reach the semis quite easily. David Ferrer is the dark horse in this group. I can not imagine him beating any of Federer, Murray or Soderling unless any of these players have a terrible off-day. Still he somehow scraped into top 8 and can surprise many if he gets into groove. I feel that Soderling and Federer will make it into the semis though Murray is also serious contender in this group.

Next week, it is going to be one final match-up between top players in the world with some interesting matches lined up. Also there are 1500 ATP ranking points at stake. I expected Federer and Nadal to clash in US open final. I am now eagerly waiting for another match between Federer and Nadal in the ATP WTF after more than a year. But there are other stunning players in the draw this year which can make this highly expected clash not to happen yet again. The champion will surely gain a lot of momentum into Australian open next year.

Goodbye, Vodafone!

2010-10-03T17:52:00.000+05:30

I started using cellphone in 2003. Today I got one of the most stupid SMSes I have ever received. It was tough to make out what it meant for a while. It was written in English but the sentences were to be interpreted in Hindi. I was surprised that a professional company like Vodafone can send such an SMS to its pre-paid customer for past 7 years. I reproduce the SMS here.

"Jaruri soochna. Bharat sarkar ke naye niyamonke anusaar aapke khate ko update karne ke liye aapke recent documents ki jaroorat hai. Issliye aapke Vodafone number ki outgoing seva kal raddh ki jayegi. Iss seva ko activate karne ke liye kripya apne self attested identity proof, address proof, sim copy copy aur 1 passport size photograph, aapke nazdiki Vodafone store/Mini store mein jama kare. Saath mein original documents le jaye. Dhanyawad"

One can see how ridiculous the SMS is written. It roughly translates in plain English like this.

"Important Announcement. According to Government of India rule, your recent documents are required to update your account. For that, your outgoing call service will be barred tomorrow onwards. To activate this service, please submit your self attested identity proof, address proof, sim card copy and one passport size photograph in nearby Vodafone store/Mini store. Bring original documents along with these. Thank You."

I had already submitted all these documents while getting my pre-paid SIM. I had resubmitted them some 4 years back when they asked. This propelled me to ask many questions to the customer care executive whom I called immediately after understanding what this silly SMS meant. Here are they.

1. Recent documents are required by you again and you have lost the already submitted documents somewhere, why to cut my outgoing call service for your blunder?

2. Is it not your fault to activate my connection for 7 years without submitting proper documents to the government?

3. What did you morons do with my already submitted documents twice? Did you give connections to someone else on my documents?

4. If at all the documents are required again, is it not your duty to send your representative to my address to collect them if I agree to give?

5. If I want to terminate your connection right away, how can I get back the remaining amount in my pre-paid account?

The customer care fellow did not give proper explanation to any of these queries. It has become a routine for these mobile service providers to blackmail the customers at arbitrary times for the mess they themselves create due to their fraudulent activities.

I am fed up with such unethical behavior of Vodafone. I finally decided not to submit any of the documents to Vodafone. I will submit them to some other provider like MTNL to get a new connection. I will use this Vodafone number for incoming calls till they terminate that also. I will spend the remaining amount in this prepaid account while roaming by receiving calls.

Goodbye, Vodafone!

Swarnalatha's Hits

2010-09-18T17:37:00.000+05:30

One of the most versatile singers of Tamil film songs, Swarnalatha expired last week. Here is few of her songs which I like the most. We will miss her for sure.

1. Maalayil Yaaro - Kshatriyan

2. Ennai Thottu - Unnai Nenaichen Paattu Padichen

3. Usilampatti Penkutti - Gentleman

4. Chinnanchiru Killiye - Neethikku Thandanai

5. Maya Machindra - Indian

6. Hai Rama - Rangeela

US Open 2010 - Preview

2010-08-24T14:59:00.001+05:30

US open, the last Grand Slam of the year, starts in less than a week from now. US open courts are the fastest among the slams and suit big servers a lot. Defending champion Del Potro has officially withdrawn from the men's singles championship. Seeding were announced yesterday. Now the qualifiers are going on and the draws are scheduled to be out on 26th August. Irrespective of how the draws pan out, here we shall look at the potential contenders for the US open crown this year.

Rafael Nadal is the world No 1 and is seeded No 1 in US open as well. He is the reigning French and Wimbledon champion and he is the clear favorite for US open title. If he wins US open this year, he would be completing the career slam as only the seventh person to do so. His hard court form is not that great having been knocked out of Rogers cup and Cincinnati Masters. However there are rumours that US open court might be slowed down for reasons unknown. If that happens, one need not look beyond Nadal for this year's champion.

Roger Federer regained his world No 2 ranking last week. He has been in good form in hard court events like Rogers cup and Cincinnati masters. He seems to have come out of the shock defeats he had to endure in French Open and Wimbledon this year. He is still the Australian Open champion and fancies his chances in faster courts where his serve and volley approach works quite well. He has no pressure whatsoever entering US open, as he is neither the defending champion nor the world No 1. Federer certainly has the form and history (five time champion at US open) to see him through.

Andy Murray, the British hope, was in terrific form at Toronto where he defeated Federer to take the title. However he got beaten up by unseeded Fish at Cincinnati. Murray has a good all round game which simply suits hard courts. As always, media pressure mounts on him once he reaches the semi finals of the slams. US open also won't be that different. If he can surpass the outside pressures, Murray can not get a better opportunity to lift a Grand Slam crown which he fully deserves.

Novak Djokovic is a good player. That is all about him. I stopped having any great expectation about him as he has the habit of getting kicked out surrendering meekly to arbitrary opponents. On his day, Djokovic can defeat any player on earth. He is too inconsistent to expect him to lift the US open crown. There are quite a few valid points behind backing Djokovic to enter the semi finals atleast.

Robin Soderling is a good player with great forehand and he also lacks consistency. Andy Roddick is growing old and his game has become too predictable. Tomas Berdych is improving with every slam and he has the game to surprise a few top ranked guys. Nikolay Davydenko is a fighter and I do not expect him to go too far into the torunament. Fernando Verdasco has the game to trouble even Nadal, but on present form he stands less chance against top ranked players.There are other potentially good players on hard courts like Marcos Baghdatis, Marin Cilic, David Nalbandian, Lleyton Hewitt who can trouble the top seeds on their day.

I expect the top 4 ranked players to reach the semi finals of US open this year. From there on, it will be any body's title. Nadal is slightly ahead of others in the title race. I would back Federer to win this US open to add to his already five wins at the Arthur Ashe stadium. We are in for a treat during the first two weeks of September and some great matches are about to be played. I am geared up to witness another potential final between Federer and Nadal.

Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan - Review

2010-08-19T22:03:00.000+05:30

R K Narayan's novels, which involve various types of people from a fictitious town called Malgudi, are a delight to read. "Waiting for the Mahatma" is another realistic novel set during the freedom struggle days. I was surprised by noting R K Narayan handling a romance genre in his novel. However after reading this novel, I am amazed how well he brings out the emotions in romance as well. This novel is a stunning representation of freedom struggle movement and its impact on the lives of numerous Indian people.

The novel is about a boy of age around twenty called Sriram. He lives with his grandmother in Malgudi. Sriram tries to explore the outside world himself to figure out what interests him the most. He is drawn towards a beautiful and patriotic girl called Bharati in a local festival. He tries to woo her and comes to know that she is working under Mahatma Gandhi for the freedom struggle. He somehow manages to sneak into the freedom struggle movement even though he has no clue initially what it is for. The story unfolds as the experience of a conservative guy entering social life and his romance with a bold and beautiful girl.

Sriram deserts his old grandmother and travels across different villages of rural India along with Bharati to spread the message of the Mahatma. His encounters with different set of people like the shopkeeper who sells foreign imported biscuits is amusing. Sriram comes in contact with a terrorist called Jagadish and the consequences of his associations with him have been realistically portrayed. At some point of time both Sriram and Bharati are destined to be shut in jail indefinitely. Whether Sriram could get the acceptance of Bharati to marry her and whether Mahatma approved their marriage are interestingly narrated.

The best aspect of this novel is the capture of the simplicity of the India and its citizen prior to gaining independence. The ongoing freedom struggle which alters the lives of different people like Sriram makes one feel about the numerous citizens who were forced to abandon their families for their country. The comedy of errors associated with the death of grandmother are thoroughly enjoyable. The novel also provides an insight into the minds of cunning people like Jagadish who manipulate and drag others into their troublesome ways. Having Mahatma and Netaji as characters in the story adds credibility to the story.

Though the backdrop of the story is freedom struggle, R K Narayan makes it relatively light through his impeccable narrative style. The caring grandmother and the shopkeeper Kanni are characters one can easily find in Indian villages even today. I enjoyed the novel as much as any other novel of R K Narayan. The manner in which he brings out the subtle emotions associated with romance is brilliant. I doubt whether any of the present Indian writers have the capacity to match Narayan. This novel is a must read for anyone who wants to delve into the lives of Indian citizen before independence.

Roger on the Move

2010-08-18T22:59:00.001+05:30

Roger Federer regained his World No 2 ranking last week in Toronto. But he lost to Murray in a rain-interrupted final. He looked in better shape last week. Today, he enters Cincinnati Masters as the defending champion. With US open just more than a week away, there is very less time for Federer to regroup and regain his lost momentum. He was nearly unbeatable in US open for 5 years till Del Potro defeated him in the marathon final last year. Does Federer has any realistic chance of winning US open?

At the age of 29, Federer needs to be more accurate to compensate for his lost agility. The serve seems to have lost some of the sting it had during his years at the top. This was quite evident in his final loss to Murray in Toronto 2 days back. The ease with which Murray repeatedly broke Federer's serve was appalling. In a fast court like US open, the accuracy and speed of serve plays a major role as most points won with serve. Federer certainly needs to fine tune his serve. These are the areas which Federer needs to fight within himself.

There are opponents who feared once upon a time facing Federer. Same guys are increasingly confident of beating Federer nowadays. The list includes Nadal, Murray, Soderling, Berdych, Del Potro, Djokovic to name a few. These guys, except Nadal, were repeatedly beaten up by Federer in the Grandslams few years back. Federer having started using his backhand more often now gives power hitters enough fodder to pounce on his returns. Now reaching semi finals of a grand slam has not been a formality for Federer.

Rogers Masters at Toronto revealed that Murray, Djokovic and Berdych are confident of stretching Federer in even the fastest courts. The Cincinnati Masters which is presently underway will give more insight as to where Federer stands in the favorite list to lift the US open crown. Having said that, I feel all is not lost for Federer as yet. He has hired a new coach, Annacone, who has the experience of coaching champions like Pete Sampras.

I feel that self-doubt which comes with age is the only problem Federer is facing at present. If he overcomes that, he has it in him to lift few more slams and even reach World No 1 again. Federer was in similar situation in 2008. He bounced back superbly to lift 2 slams in 2009 besides reaching the finals of the other two. Further, he is the reigning Australian open champion.

These facts are enough to motivate Federer to have another go at the US open. I expect stiff fight for Federer to reach even the semi final of US open. Having watched Federer all these years, I feel that he has it in him to emerge victorious in the second week of September. The tennis fans are, nevertheless, going to have a treat yet again for a couple of weeks from August 30th. I am eager to join the fun cheering for the one and only Roger Federer.

Wimbledon 2010 - Preview

2010-06-19T14:07:00.004+05:30

Wimbledon - The Grass Slam, is just 2 days away. The draws were out yesterday for the Men's singles. Barring any upsets, the draw for Quarter-final should be Roger Federer-Nikolay Davydenko, Novak Djokovic-Andy Roddick, Andy Murray-Fernando Verdasco, and Rafael Nadal-Robin Soderling. This Wimbledon is going to be very interesting as Nadal has returned to his best and is a serious contender to challenge defending champion Federer.

Federer is not in any sort of dream run since Australian open in January which has already cost him the No 1 ranking. However, he enters Wimbledon as No 1 seed thanks to his superior performance in grass over the past two years. He suffered a shock defeat to Lleyton Hewitt last week in a match he should have won comfortably. But it is too early to write off Federer as he comes with something special in Wimbledon every year. It was evident in last year's final when he defeated Roddick even when not playing that well. Federer is not 100% certain to win this year, but he will surely try to fight his way towards the glory.

Nadal is on a dream run after returning from his injury. He regained French Open and also the No 1 ranking. The only blip being his loss to Feliciano Lopez last week. I feel that only Federer has the game to consistently challenge Nadal on grass or any surface for that matter. I expect Nadal to cruise in to the semi-finals of Wimbledon without much trouble. He would meet Soderling in Quarter finals if Soderling is able to survive till then. That match would be an interesting one. Nadal would be fully geared up to cement his No 1 ranking by winning Wimbledon this year.

It is a mystery why Murray has not yet won a Grand Slam. He has the game to win a Grand Slam in grass/hard court. Media gives too much hype to Murray whenever he reaches a semi-final and he eventually gets beaten up. I hope Murray comes up with his best and the insane British media keeps quiet this time around. If Murray plays to his potential, I will fancy chances of Murray bumping out Nadal in the semis.

Roddick should have won the Wimbledon crown last year. He really deserved it having played some wonderful tennis. His form has dipped since then and I am not sure how he would fare this year. We need to wait and see his form in the first few matches to check if he can go the distance.

Djokovic is the joker of tennis. After watching his matches of Djokovic for so many years, I am still not sure what his strengths are. He loses to insignificant opponents often from winning positions and rarely ends up troubling the top seeds. If he meets Roddick in Quarters according to the draw, I would give 70-30 chance in favour of Roddick as he is a more complete player in grass than Djokovic.

Soderling is not that effective in grass and Davydenko is pretty inconsistent. Verdasco is a fighting player rather than a dominating player. There is very little chance that these guys would trouble other top seeds. Tsonga, Berdych and Cilic are also good players who can give a fight. However, I expect Lleyton Hewitt to trouble the top seeds this time. He has just beaten Federer on grass. He would certainly believe that he can beat Djokovic in the fourth round.

Wimbledon this year would be a tough fight for the glory among these players. On past history and form, Federer and Nadal should match up in the final. If that happens, we would definitely get an amazing final to watch.

French Open 2010 - Review

2010-06-07T21:13:00.001+05:30

As expected, Rafael Nadal has won fifth Roland Garros title by blasting away Robin Soderling in straight sets. By doing so, he has regained the No 1 position in the world. Nadal has stopped Roger Federer at 285 weeks as No 1 just 1 week lesser than Pete Sampras. This French Open had quite a few surprises, however the climax was hardly surprising. Rafa, the king of clay, is again on the top of the world. Though the way he plays tennis does not please many tennis fans, his power-hitting does the job at the end of the day.

Soderling played well throughout the tournament but could not repeat his heroics against Nadal. This kind of inconsistency is what separates great players from the mortal ones. Soderling has some more distance to go before he can consistently challenge the top players. Federer did not have a great title defense. Still, he did not play that badly either. Soderling played exceptionally went exploiting the rainy climate to defeat Federer. Federer would now gear up to defend his title at Wimbledon on his favorite grass court.

The disappointments of the tournament are obviously Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, ranked 3rd and 4th respectively. While Murray went down to Berdych in a spectacular capitulation, Djokovic made himself look stupid when he lost to Melzer after winning first 2 sets and a break up in the third. Djokovic is slowly turning out to be a real joker and any player would fancy his chance to beat Djokovic. Murray has been relegated to more of a pedestrian player in the clay court and should have been in first round by Richard Gasquet. It would be interesting to see how these two fare in Wimbledon.

Andy Roddick also suffered a surprise loss to an unseeded player which was not an ideal way to exit a Grand Slam. Jurgen Melzer and Tomas Berdych are decent players, but may not reach a Grand Slam semi-final ever. Other clay court specialists like Fernando Gonzalez, David Ferrer, and Juan Carlos Ferrero lost without troubling any top players which was bit of a surprise. Nicolas Almagro played some good tennis and with some more effort could have defeated Nadal.

Wimbledon starts in just 2 weeks from now and in faster courts, one would expect players like Murray, Roddick, Djokovic and Tsonga to play aggressive tennis. The king of grass, Federer, will also try to regain his No 1 ranking in Wimbledon. Nadal will again challenge him. Wimbledon will definitely provide some power-packed tennis and I expect some surprises there as well. I just hope that Federer comes back to his own and treats his fans to some great tennis.

Books from Simon Singh

2010-05-31T13:09:00.000+05:30

Here are the books which I read/have been reading over the past few weeks. All the books are written by Simon Singh. Simon Singh is a great writer with deep insight on scientific history.

Airtel Super Singer Junior 2

2010-05-30T14:01:00.000+05:30

Airtel Super Singer Junior 2 (ASSJ2) is a singing competition (reality show) telecast in Star Vijay 9-10PM from Monday till Thursday. This competition is entering finals the winner of which will get a home worth Rs 25 Lakhs. The judges of this competition are Chitra, Mano and Malgudi Subha. There are also a few part time judges. Apart from prize money, this competition features some of the best child singers. I used to watch this one when I was at home for few days. Courtesy another blogger, I am able to watch ASSJ2 regularly over Internet.

ASSJ2 has already 3 finalists - Alka, Roshan and Shravan, all of them are amazing singers. One wildcard finalist will be announced tomorrow to make it four finalists. In my opinion, Priyanka deserves to join as the fourth finalist. Anyway, it will be decided based on public voting. Other worthy singers to become fourth finalist are Srinisha and Nithyashree. I think they keep bringing Srikanth every now and then just to increase ASSJ2's TRP using his comic antics.

Though ASSJ2 is well received and features some of the best child singers in Tamil Nadu, I was not very happy with some of the decisions made by the judges. There is another singing competition conducted by SPB in Kalaignar TV called Vanambadi which is of the highest quality. These competitions have made many young people take up singing. ASSJ2 is more fun and I am eagerly waiting to watch the finals of ASSJ2.

Shravan is a very good singer with strong voice and carnatic background. Roshan has a melodious voice and it is always very pleasant to hear his songs. Priyanka (if she qualifies) has also a great voice and she excels in melodies than anyone else. However, I believe that Alka will become the Super Singer because of her versatility and flawless singing ability. It will surely be a treat to watch these four compete to win the grand prize. I am expecting few more great performances by the best child singers of Tamil Nadu over the next few weeks.

Crossword Vs Flipkart

2010-05-29T14:48:00.001+05:30

Reading general books had never been my passion till 2007. I have a huge collection of technical books, many of which I use as reference and rarely read them sequentially. I had no clue then why people were so crazy about reading fiction and non-fiction books. As a part of my syllabus for Hindi exams I had read quite a few novels by the likes of Premchand. Those books did not interest me so much to make reading these novels a habit.

I did not know what to do with my huge collection of technical books due to lack of motivation and mindset to read. Many of the books I own, I could not understand much and did not have that much patience to hang on with them. I shifted my focus towards reading fiction and non-fiction books. I initially used to go to Crossword book stores to look into the books and buy a few. Though I could view the books inside for a longer period of time before buying, Crossword never used to give any discount on the books. Their membership program also was not that worth monetarily to join. Odyssey is one such shop located in many malls.

Then I came across some online bookstores like Fabmall which were not that established before 2006 and the discounts were less. We have a campus bookstore called Book World enterprises which provides 15% discount on any book. I used to check if a particular book is available there before proceeding to Crossword. However in the last few years, the growth of online bookstores has been phenomenal. Fabmall became Indiaplaza. Flipkart and Infibeam also joined the race. Slowly Flipkart has overtaken others and is now pioneering the online book trade in India.

The only drawback with bookstores like Crossword is that they do not give any discount for the books. For a low paid person like me, it hurts a lot to buy books at MRP. After much speculation, I have decided look inside the books using Amazon or Google books and based on the user ratings/comments in Amazon I would judge the book. Mostly this approach has worked for me rather than going to Crossword where I would be oblivious to what other readers feel about a particular book. I have been able to land on very nice books on varied subjects by proper researching on the online user comments.

I nowadays order books from Flipkart whose service is amazing. They deliver most of the books in 3 days with upto 30% discount on any book. There is Cash On Delivery option as well which is quite helpful at a nominal fee of Rs 10 per book. Further I do not like the book I would be buying to be turned over by hundreds of customers which is the case in retail bookstores like Crossword, Odyssey etc. On the other hand, online bookstores supply a fresh copy with nice packaging at my doorsteps.

I think there would surely be a time in future when the retail bookstores have to come up with new tricks like discount in order to stay in touch with the online bookstores. It is a healthy competition for voracious readers who would get very good discounts on the books of their interest. When the original prints of a particular book itself is available in discounted price, people would slowly move away from the pirated copies which would certainly be a welcome change.

Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh - Book Review

2010-05-23T14:34:00.001+05:30

Fermat's Last Theorem - The story of a riddle that confounded the world's greatest minds for 358 years is a science history book written by Simon Singh. Being a PhD graduate from Cambridge himself, Simon Singh has written this book with so much simplicity that even a person without any mathematical background can appreciate the content. This book is one of its kind as it addresses only one theorem from the start to end. It narrates the struggles Andrew Wiles had to undergo before proving the theorem completely in 1995. This book also gives an account of other mathematicians who were involved.

Fermat's last theorem is nothing but an extension of the Pythogoras theorem. Fermat claimed that there are no whole number (non-zero) solution (x,y,z) for the equation

for n>2 upto n=infinity. Fermat was a mischievous mathematician who rarely gave complete proof for his theorems. He, therefore, claimed that he had a complete proof for this theorem and died before disclosing the solution. The race for proving this theorem started soon after.

This book starts from around 500BC when Pythogorean brotherhood headed by Pythogoras were the front runners in the mathematics. They formed a close community and did not let any of their inventions to the society. Singh has nicely illustrated the incident where Pythogoras executed his own student for proving that there were irrational numbers. Pythogorean brotherhood got eventually destroyed by another student who had been ignored citing his incompetence.

This book has a few more very interesting events like how Taniyama committed suicide before proving his own conjecture which would have eventually proved Fermat's last theorem. Also, there is an interesting account of Wolfskehl whose life was saved by Fermat's last theorem and about the award instituted by him for the person who would solve Fermat's last theorem. Further, the book lucidly explains the complexity of the theorem itself and the various failure attempts in proving it.

The most stunning part of the book is related to Andrew Wiles, the Princeton Professor, who secluded himself from the research community and conferences to focus on achieving his childhood dream, i.e. to prove Fermat's last theorem. The logical reasoning as explained in the book which Wiles took in order to prove the theorem would appeal even to people who have limited exposure to rigorous mathematics.

The turmoils and pressures he faced after 1993 when it was found by the reviewers that there was a small gap in his initial proof are really well narrated. All the key persons involved in the proof apart from Wiles like Nick Katz, Shimura, Ken Ribet, Richard Taylor and others explain the steps taken by Wiles in their own words. This makes the book even more accessible and credible. The book concludes by giving an account of how Wiles finally releases his paper with the complete proof of Fermat's last theorem in 1995.

On the whole, I loved reading every page of this book. I just completed reading this amazing book on a classical theorem. Simon Singh is an amazing writer and keeps the reader engrossed throughout. This book is highly recommended and is a must read for anyone interested in learning about a great mathematical theorem and its proof. Even people with just high school mathematics knowledge would love this book. I am already into reading Simon Singh's other books: The Code Book and Big Bang.

Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications

2010-05-21T21:32:00.001+05:30

Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications

By Richard Szeliski

The final draft of the big book on Computer Vision by Richard Szeliski is finally out. It contains enormous number of applications and algorithms. It is great that the ebook is available free of cost. This book should really be a delightful read for any Computer Vision researcher or practitioner.

French Open 2010 - Preview

2010-05-21T10:06:00.004+05:30

I found this preview in Mint. Please have a look.

http://www.livemint.com/2010/05/19214453/Redhot-Rafa-ready-for-clay-se.html

ICC T20 WC Disaster

2010-05-12T22:32:00.001+05:30

As expected, India has been blown away from the ICC T20 World cup for the second year in a row. Here are some of the reasons why India got kicked out in rather embarrasing manner.

1. IPL - It played havoc in Indian players' fitness and skills. The team was picked mainly based on IPL performances and all the flat track bullies made it to the squad. It didn't help that the players played against each other in IPL.

2. Reluctance to Learn - India made the same mistake last year and got hammered. One has to learn from mistakes.

3. Bounce - Indian players have pathetic technique while playing fast short pitched deliveries. Players dont try to learn how to play such balls. Even players like Raina are content with thrashing sixes on flat tracks.

4. Jadeja, Yusuf Pathan, Yuvraj - All these 3 players should not have been in the squad based on form or skill.

5. Lack of Pace - India left out fast men like Ishant and picked military medium guys on pacy, bouncy tracks.

6. Commitment to National Team - Players were worried rather very much during losses in IPL matches. I didn't see any emotion on losing for the nation. Money matters more than national pride.

7. Crowd support - Except the final super eight where west indian crowd wanted India to win, they hardly got any support. But the players didn't realize that entire nation is supporting them watching TV.

On the whole, it was a shame to exit a global tournament without putting up any fight. I hope that here onwards Indian players are more committed to National team than some crap event like IPL which hardly tests true skill of any player.

Australian Open Final - Preview

2010-01-29T17:33:00.000+05:30

After 10 days of tennis, the big match everyone awaits is scheduled on Sunday. The best players of Australian open this year, Federer and Murray, will clash to get the grand slam crown. Federer has already achieved a lot and is incomparable in tennis open era. Though not in his prime, he is still able to produce some of his gems every now and then. Murray is a British tennis hope. He has to somehow win one grand slam title for the British and he would be glorified as the greatest ever to have played tennis immediately.

Both the players are in top form. One should expect an electrifying final. Murray leads head-to-head 6-4 with Federer. As everyone is aware, Federer always tends to raise his game on big matches. Federer disposed Murray in straight sets to win the US open 2008 title. Murray is very young and manages to take out some top ranked players in the grand slams. This year also he eliminated Rafa from the Australian open.

The major weakness for Murray is the ridiculously high media hype. As Federer told after defeating Tsonga today, "I know [Murray] would like to win the first for British tennis in... what is it? Like 150,000 years?", British media is crazy about Murray. This sort of hype has already ruined the career of a good player called Tim Henman. One has to wait and watch how Murray is going to handle all this. Murray has the game and tactics to defeat Federer consistently, execution is the major problem on big events.

Federer does not have anything to lose in the Final. Just by being positive and keeping Murray under constant pressure, he can sail through it. His touch was evident in the way he defeated Tsonga today. Murray also expects a tight match with Federer. Murray is not a left hander like Nadal to trouble Federer on his backhand. An advantage Murray has is that he has 2 days rest before the final while Federer has only one. Given that Federer hardly sweat today, it should not be a major concern.

All these facts make the Sunday's Final very special. Murray has to play for the pride of his country and Federer has nothing to lose. I expect a very tight finish to the final and somehow get a feeling that Federer will have to fight using all his experience and skill to defeat Murray. As a die-hard Federer fan, I would love to see Federer getting his 16th grand slam title at the Rod Laver Arena on Sunday. Murray might come with other plans though.

Google Crawler - Please find me!

2010-01-02T19:18:00.000+05:30

Google crawler crawls through the web and helps the Google search to index the web pages. My site was up on a different url till few months back, it was visible in Google search. When the url got changed, my site vanished from Google search, though it appeared in Rediff search.

Thanks to Swanand and Nikhil, I used some script in my index.html page and also verified the site with Google webmasters few days back. These activities also did not propel the Google web crawler to visit my site till now. I read in help that my site has to be linked from some other sites in order to be visited by the crawler. Here is my silly request to the Google crawler.

Hey Google crawler!

Here is my complete information. Please visit and index my site as soon as possible. :)

Shanmuganathan Raman
Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology IIT Bombay
website: http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/student/~shanmuga

I hope this works and my website appears in Google search soon. Any other suggestions to make my site appear in Google search are most welcome.

Plans for 2010

2010-01-01T13:18:00.001+05:30

New Year 2010 has arrived and I also turned one year older a couple of days back. I wonder what is in store for me in 2010. The year 2009 had been a mixed year for me. Lot of achievements and struggles to keep up with the not so pleasant march towards another three letters near my name (or two letters before my name). Following the plans for 2009 did not help the matters much, although it helped me endure some of the critical situations. Here are the new set of plans for 2010.

I started reading a couple of technical books and papers. I usually get quite a bit of doubts/queries when reading some of the great technical books I own which get answered over time. I hope to dig more into some technical things to keep myself busy and rejuvenated.
Lot of fiction/non-fiction books I had bought remain unread still. I have to read them one by one and complete atleast by the end of this year. These include some of the novels by RK Narayan.
I plan to release myself completely from the prison I presently reside and get a new lease of life outside sometime this year. Need to put some effort on that front as well ignoring some crap issues which turn up every now and then.
I am totally turned off with the academic research based on the motto of Publish or Perish. I feel that I need to stay away from this stuff for a while after I complete formalities here. I plan to put attempts towards improving my general creativity skills. That should make my life really blissful!
Started listening to a lot of old hindi film songs especially by Rafi. His voice is divine. I plan to build a collection of his memorable hits and dump in my Tsonic player.
I need to have fun as usual with the rapidly increasing number of friends. Trouble PD, Shwaana a little more. Learn some spiritual fundamentals from Harsha. Apart from having plans to add more people of the other gender as friends, I plan to roam more.
Having already become quite adept at cooking, I want to explore more on that front with new vegetarian recipes. I have even aspirations to become a cook at home in future.
Providing moral support to Federer The King in his 2010 expeditions. I am sure Federer would deliver some more memorable matches in 2010.
Slowly stop following T20 and one day cricket and restrict myself to only test cricket.
I hope to continue my table tennis assignments with RamP. I plan to improve my Table Tennis game by adding different new shots in my repertoire.

Wish you a Happy New Year!

Vettaikkaran - Movie Review

2009-12-31T13:39:00.000+05:30

I just happened to see the movie Vettaikkaran few days back. It was an ultimate torture to see the movie for the entire duration. The story and incidents are blatantly lifted from some previous masala movies of Vijay and others. There is nothing new in the film whatsoever.

Vijay has a police officer as his idol similar to Vikram having a Dada as idol in Bheema. Vijay keeps failing in 12th standard like Dhanush in Padikkathavan. Likewise, each and every scene of the movie is lifted from previous movies of Vijay and others. There are some similarities with Thiruppachi as well. Vijay tries to clean up the society without wearing khakee uniform. There are few love scenes with Anushka in between Vijay's action scenes. Even romantic scenes are handled badly.

Vijay does the routine stuff. The usual charm is slightly missing. Anushka is very bad and looks like an aunt to Vijay. Even Vijay's son dances with him for a song. Other actors in the movie are just average. The music is very ordinary though 2 songs are hummable. The story, screenplay and direction are very poor and there is no trace of originality.

It is high time Vijay does a movie with some novelty. Movies like Vettaikkaran are just waste of time for the viewers. This movie may become hit commercially but joins the league of Vijay movies like ATM, Villu, Kuruvi in terms of content.

Yokohama Conquered

2009-12-28T10:33:00.003+05:30

I went to Yokohama, Japan last week to attend SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 along with my advisor and a couple of dual degree students. As expected, the conference was amazing though I could not attend most of the sessions because of my own comitments there. I gave an oral sketch presentation and we had 2 posters as well. I am seen with my posters in the picture. Some of the moments I encountered during the trip are presented in this blog post.

Air India service

We took Air India flight from Mumbai via Delhi to Narita as it had the lowest fare. The inflight entertainment was good as it had lot of decent movies, both new and old. However, most of the joysticks were not in good shape. Some of my co-passengers had problems getting non-vegetarian food. I got good vegetarian food in the flight. Even vodka was served in the flight. Couple of DD guys who came with me had a blast with vodka.

The cabin crew comprised mostly of uncles and aunts in the late 30s and 40s as expected. Getting serviced by them was quite a task. Even when I pressed the button in joystick asking for the cabin crew, they did not turn up any time. Moreover, they used to switch off my request lamp from the back. I later learned that they were taking rest at the back and I decided not to disturb them again. I went myself to the pantry to even drink water. This attitude is common in any government firm I suppose.

Yokohama

Yokohama is the second largest city of Japan and is very close to Tokyo (~30 min by bus). Yokohama is a major port city. We landed in Narita airport and took a bus to Yokohama which is 1.5 hrs trip. SIGGRAPH Asia was held in Pacifico Yokohama located at the tip of the city facing Pacific ocean. The hotel was well equipped to hold a mega event like SIGGRAPH Asia. We stayed at Grandsun Yokohama which was 30 minutes walk from Pacifico Yokohama.

Yokohama had abundant eating places and there was even an Indian restaurant by the name "Mohan's". Food was very expensive everywhere. I entered only one Japanese restaurant on the last day to taste some veg noodles. Articles were quite expensive. We entered a 100 yen shop where all articles have a fixed price of 100 yens and picked up few goods. I got a lot of chocolates in that shop and brought them for my IIT friends.

The city was very busy and very well maintained. The temperature was around 3 degree Celsius during my trip.

MTR to the rescue

As a vegetarian, I knew that I would have some trouble with the food there. I had picked up some MTR ready to eat packs and some Britannia Nutrichoice biscuits with me. Out of various flavors of MTR packs, I only liked the pongal and the kesari bath. Others like sambhar rice, pulao, dal tadka were very spicy and I left them at my hotel room in Yokohama. I managed to get some bananas and oranges. Breakfast was good in the hotel where I lived. I got some breads, buns, butter, jam and milk. Rest of the day I consumed the MTR stuff, fruits and biscuits. Bottomline is that I returned to India without any major food problem. :)

The trip was good but I did not enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

3 Idiots - Movie Review

2009-12-26T13:49:00.002+05:30

I watched 3 Idiots with my friends yesterday at Huma.

3 Idiots is a spectacular movie addressing the key issue of following one's dream. The story of the movie is based on the novel "Five Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat. I did not like the novel very much as it was quite vulgar at times. Thankfully, Raju Hirani has just borrowed incidents from the novel and has rewritten the entire script with ample fun and suspense. I am not going to tell anything about the story or any scene in the movie as it would become a spoiler.

Aamir Khan is excellent in his great role with great support from Madhavan and Sharman Joshi. Kareena and Boman Irani also deliver great performances. Above all, Omi is the man to watch out for - he is extremely funny. The script is amazing which keeps one engaged for the entire 3 hours. Music, cinematography and direction are top class.

I loved the movie very much as it addresses some of the key issues in the top technology colleges in the country. 3 Idiots is a must watch for everyone as such movies which entertain along with subtle message are rare these days. I am going to watch this movie again in a couple of days.

Aal Izz Well!

SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 - The Pulse of Innovation

2009-12-10T22:37:00.010+05:30

SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 organized by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is scheduled to be held on 16-19 December at Yokohama, Japan. It is the largest graphics event in the world along with SIGGRAPH. It feels great to have contributed substantially for this conference. I will write more about SIGGRAPH Asia after 20th December.

Meanwhile, you may visit my homepage for more details on my works towards this mega event.

Men's Tennis 2009 Review

2009-12-03T19:00:00.005+05:30

Tennis season for the year 2009 are complete with only a few Davis cup matches remaining. In this article, I shall review how the year was for the top players.

Federer should be happiest of all looking back at the year. He regained No 1 ranking, reached all grand slam finals, won 2 grand slams, completed career slam, and also became a father of twins. He could not have asked for anything more. He himself would not have thought that he could have got all this in 2009 when he became emotional after the Australian open final against Nadal. Though not in top form, he would probably stay at the top of the rankings in 2010 as well.

Nadal started 2009 very well by winning the Australian open. Everyone thought that he would be No 1 throughout 2009. However, Soderling had other plans. No one expected Soderling to defeat Nadal at the Roland Garros that too in the fourth round. It was a shock for Nadal as well worsened by his knee injury. Nadal lost his No1 ranking, missed Wimbledon and got beaten by Del Potro in US open. He is not the same Nadal who ran and returned every ball which came on his side. Unless he changes his game a bit to not stretch himself too much, he will struggle to be in top 3 in 2010.

Del Potro had a great year. He was on the verge of spoiling Federer in Roland Garros and ended up upsetting him in US open final. In fact, he defeated both Nadal and Federer and promptly crowned US open champion. He is slowly getting the consistency which was missing from him in 2008. This tall man is the one to watch out for in 2010. He has it in him to upset Nadal and Federer on his day.

Happenings in 2009 proved that Murray has all the ingredients in him to become the next Tim Henman. He is a great player, make no mistake. However, he ends up losing to arbitrary players at unexpected matches. He is very inconsistent at the grandslams which is evident as he did not even reach a single grand slam final in 2009. He has to undergo a lot of hardships in 2010 to prove that he is indeed capable of a grand slam title.

Same can be said about Djokovic. Though he played well towards the end of the year to reach No 3 rank, his performance in the grand slams were poor by his standards. Tough times ahead for him in 2010. He is capable of giving headaches to Nadal and Federer in some matches.

I have to really feel for the performance of Roddick in the epic Wimbledon final. He played far better than Federer but ended up losing. He has to improve a lot to compete with others at the top. For that to happen he has to overcome his fitness hurdles because of age.

Davydenko finally won his first match against Federer in the 13th attempt. He is in form and is a great fighter. He is also a player to watch out for in 2010.

Soderling is an amazing player who knocked out Nadal from his empire, Roland Garros. He is improving with every tournament and he should be an exciting player to watch in 2010.

In my opinion, 2010 would be the year which could bring a momentum shift in world tennis. It is going to be a year filled with lot of very close matches. Whoever comes out as victor, would rule the tennis for the next few years. My heart tells me that Federer is going to be that person. My mind says that it is going to be someone else. An interesting year of tennis ahead of us with these players gunning down each other. Australian open 2010 promises to be a cracking tournament.

Federer - The ATP Tour Champion

2009-11-25T19:09:00.002+05:30

Federer delivered a great tennis to outclass Murray yesterday. In the process, he became only the second player after Ivan Lendl to regain the ATP tour champion title. It is always difficult for one to regain a world number one title after losing it. It takes high motivation and competitive spirit to achiever that. Federer just has them in him. Apart from that, he raises his game to astronomical levels when he is put under pressure. This is the hallmark of great champions who appear very rarely.

Federer, without any argument, is the world's best male tennis player ever to have played the game. This achievement just shows that he has it in him to scale newer heights in the years to come. However, for a fan the most likeable thing about Federer is that he has entertained and made them enjoy his unmatchable tennis over the past few years. Some of the grandslam finals he played are still etched in my memory. My sincere wish is that he continues delivering such a visual treat for few more years.

Federer inches closer!

2009-11-24T19:29:00.005+05:30

With Federer coming from behind to defeat Verdasco, he has almost sealed the year end No. 1 ranking. Another factor which favors him is that Nadal lost in straight sets against his nemesis Soderling. For Nadal to displace Federer, he has to defeat both Djokovic and Davydenko in his next 2 matches. For Federer, he needs to win atleast one of the matches against Murray and Del Potro. Then, he need not worry about Nadal's mataches.

Today's Federer-Murray match is significant as Murray has a 6-3 record over Federer. If Federer wins today, he will be the second person after Ivan Lendl to regain year-end No 1 ranking. Can Federer rise to the occasion to regain the ATP tour champion title?

Mohd Rafi - The Singing Legend

2009-11-22T19:19:00.004+05:30

Mohd Rafi was a brilliant singer who has offered us a lot of ever-green melodies. Rafi was the voice of Bollywood music for 3 decades. His voice is so unique and it is extremely difficult to match his finesse. He has sung even very difficult songs with minimal effort. His best songs were for Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor. I am a great fan of his timeless melodies. He is the best male singer of Indian film music without any doubt. In this blog, I list some of the melodies of Rafi which I love the most. Watch them in YouTube and enjoy!

Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhaatha (Hum Dono)
Dil Ka Bhanwar (Tere Ghar Ke Saamney)
Diwana Hua Baadal (Kashmir Ki Kali)
Pardesiyon Se Na Ankhiyaan (Jab Jab Phool Kile)
Aaj Kal Tere Mere (Brahmachari)
Aaja Aaja (Teesri manzil)
Tum Bin Jaoon Kahan (Pyar Ka Mausam)
Chura Liya Hai (Yaadon Ki Baaraat)
Kya Hua Tera Waada (Hum Kisise Kum Nahin)
Dard-e-dil (Karz)

2 States by Chetan Bhagat - Quick Review

2009-11-21T22:20:00.004+05:30

Chetan Bhagat has always been an entertaining modern writer ever since his first novel "Five Point Someone". His novels are usually full of fun in every page. His latest offering "2 States" is no different. This novel narrates the love and marriage of Krish and Ananya from Punjab and Tamilnadu respectively. Though the basic theme of the novel is reminiscent of a latest tamil flick "Abhiyum Naanum", the novel is very different in the content.

Chetan switches to IIM Ahmedabad as premise for this novel and carries forward a character from Five Point Someone. The happenings at the management school set the tone for the novel. However, the ultimate fun starts when Krish joins Citibank after completing his post graduate diploma in IIM. Krish's encounters with his stupid boss Bala, who makes Krish scapegoat for his blunders, are a treat to read. Also, Krish's entry into Ananya's family evoke a lot of laughter. Romantic sequances between Krish and Ananya is much westernized which is not that realistic. It may be due to the fact that they are students of IIM.

The major factor which makes this novel realistic is that Chetan uses all real world entities like IIM, Citibank etc. He does not even spare SPB and Hariharan. Chetan even takes a dig at the atrocities of the auto rickshaw guys in chennai.

On the whole, this novel is a very light and worthy read. I loved every page of this novel. I strongly recommend this novel to any one who likes to chill out for a while on a weekend.

ATP World Tour Finals 2009 - Preview

2009-11-21T13:20:00.003+05:30

Barclays ATP world tour finals are about to start from tomorrow. This tournament is famously dubbed as the year end championships. This year it is held in London. Top 8 seeds participate every year. The winner of this tournament has more probability of becoming year end world No 1. This year this tournament is more significant as Federer and Nadal have the chance to achieve year end No 1 rank.

The tournament is divded into two groups of 4 each and there is a round robin stage. Group A has Federer, Murray, Del Potro, and Verdasco. Group B has Nadal, Djokovic, Davydenko and Soderling. Top 2 from each group would reach the semi finals. Here is the scenario for Nadal in the world tour finals to regain world No 1 crown (Federer is No 1 at present).

Group A is the tougher group. Federer is not in form as he lost to Del Potro in US open finals, lost to Djokovic in Basel finals, and lost to Benneteau in Paris Masters over the past few months. Though he seems vulnerable, he can lift his game at any moment. Murray also is not in good shape. He will find it difficult against Del Potro and Verdasco apart from Federer. Del Potro had an injury scare few weeks back. But having won the US open, his confidence will be very high. Verdasco is the dark horse in this group and can upset any of the other 3 on his day. I expect Federer and Del Potro to march into semi finals, though the matches would be very close.

Group B boasts of 2 great players: Nadal and Djokovic. Nadal is not at his best after his knee surgery. He lost in straight sets to Del Potro in US open semis. He lost to Djokovic in Paris. Further, Nadal has never done well in the world tour finals previously. With world No 1 up for the grab, he might find his groove. Djokovic is the man to beat in this tournament. He won both Basel and Paris in last 2 months and is in great form. Davydenko is a fighter but is vulnerable if the opposition plays to his best. Soderling became a hero when he upset Nadal at Roland Garros. He is also an amazing player. I think Nadal and Djokovic would move to semi finals without much of a fuss from Group B.

Semi finals and finals can be anyone's game. I plan to watch the important matches of this tournament. It is surely going to have some great tennis played. As a Federer fan, I hope he wins this tournament and seals the World No 1 crown for few more months. It would require a huge effort from Federer which makes this world tour finals even more interesting.

US Open 2009 - Preview

2009-08-20T11:09:00.004+05:30

As I write this blog post, Cincinnati Masters is underway as the warm-up to US Open 2009 which starts in a week's time. All the top players use this Masters tournament to find their rhythm. In another tournament, Rogers Cup, which concluded last week, Murray played amazingly to lift the crown. Federer and Nadal lost before the semi-finals. In this post, I will analyze the chances for the potential contenders for the US open 2009 crown.

Roger Federer will start as the defending champion. Last year, he dismissed Murray in staraight sets to win US open. He was in very bad condition last year having lost all the majors coming to US open. He is in a far better position this year having won French open and Wimbledon apart from regaining the World No 1 title. However, he is not in good form in hard courts this year. He lost the Australian open final to Nadal. He also lost the Rogers cup match last week to Tsonga which was sort of a collapse. With Federer, one never knows. He can lift his game to very high level in Grand Slams. I think he is the favorite to win US open.

Rafal Nadal has come back from a knee injury. He was scratchy in Rogers cup and lost to Del Potro in straight sets. But having won the Australian open this year, he will be confident of turning out well in US open as well. My only concern is that Nadal has not changed his game in spite of the knee injury. I do not think that running around after every ball is going to help his knees either. Nadal, however, is a master tactician. He will certainly come out with some new game for the US open. Having pushed to No 3 in the world, he does not need any other motivation to deliver his best in US open.

Andy Murray has been playing amazing tennis over the past 2 years. The only glitch is that he is not able to win any major till now. I am sure that he will not want himself to labelled Henman V2.0. Murray has the perfect game for the hard court. On current form, I would label him as the favorite to win US open next only to Federer. Murray's only weakness is that he tends to stutter against weaker opponents in major events. I am sure he would be careful in US open. Having become No 2 in the world, Murray would want to set up a title clash with Federer which will surely be a cracking one.

Andy Roddick is the former World No 1 and former US open champion. He is coming back after that epic Wimbledon final defeat to Federer. Roddick played amazing tennis at Wimbledon and played some exceptional tennis in the Semis and Final. He has improved his game at nets. His serve as always is very tough to break. I hope he will give very tough fight to the top 3 in the world.

I think these 4 will set up Semifinal clashes at US open depending on the draw. Other than these, there are few others who may upset any of these 4 in the earlier rounds.

Novak Djokovic is not playing his best tennis at the moment. But he is quite dangerous on his day when he plays to his potential. Del Potro is playing amazing tennis over the past one year having defeated Nadal last week. One should not be surprised if he produces a few upsets. Tsonga is an unpredictable player capable of producing few upsets. Soderling is a fighter and all top players are aware of that. He was the one who sent Nadal packing at French open this year. Hewitt, who is a former World No 1, has found his rhythm over the past few months and he is a dark horse in the US open championship race.

There are other fighters like Fernando Verdasco, Fernando Gonzalez, Ivo Karlovic, and Nikolay Davydenko who can create few headaches for the top ranked players.

I am expecting a lot of fireworks in US open this year. I expect a Federer-Murray clash in the final show down. Other players considered above may have alternate plans though.

Shreya's Top 3 Tamil Songs

2009-07-17T09:42:00.003+05:30

I love to listen to Shreya Ghoshal's tamil film songs. She is an amazing singer with very good voice and modulations. Though she is not in very good form in the recent times, she has given us some delightful songs in the past. Here is my pick (top 3) of Shreya's renditions in Tamil. I recommend these songs to anyone who is a fan of Shreya.

1. Uruguthey Maruguthey (Film: Veyil)

This is an excellent melody by GV Prakash, made much better by the great singing of Shankar Mahadevan and Shreya Ghoshal. It is a typical folk melody reminding one of Ilayaraja's songs and is sure to appeal to everyone. Shreya's pronunciation is spot on and her great modulations make anyone love this song.

2. Unna Vida (Film: Virumandi)

This is a soul touching melody by the one and only Ilayaraja. I can not think of any other female singer singing this song as good as Shreya. I normally do not like Kamal's singing that much. But he too does a fine job with this song. He complements Shreya very well. This song is a real treat to the listeners.

3. Munbe Vaa (Film: Sillunu Oru Kadhal)

This is a typical AR Rahman melody. Shreya adapts to this song very well. Though her pronunciation is not that great in this song, she compensates by perfect rendition. However, the male singer Naresh Iyer is not upto the mark. Shreya just takes this song to another level which made this song a blockbuster.

Federer - The Greatest Ever !

2009-07-12T13:05:00.002+05:30

My last year wish has come true now. Federer has answered my open letter by winning both the French Open and the Wimbledon. Federer has 15 Grand Slam titles now. It was a pleasure to see him regain his No 1 ranking in doing so. One should not take any credit from Federer, who played wonderful tennis, saying that Nadal was not around to defend his No 1 rank. The great Sampras himself confirmed after the Wimbledon final that Federer is the greatest ever to play Tennis. I feel proud in watching Federer play with passion all through my life. As I am just 4 months younger to Federer, I could follow his career from the start and he has been a great inspiration for me in life. I had the opportunity to witness the history being made in the Wimbledon last week.

Federer fought very hard in the classic Wimbledon final, with Roddick in amazing form. Federer was not at his best by any stretch of imagination. However, he hung around without giving up anything to Roddick. I felt that he was a bit over confident in the final. The way Federer won 6 straight points from being 2-6 down in the second set tie-break, I could not do anything but admire the true champion. The back hand cross court flick which saved the first set point was Federer at his very best. Federer had the advantage of serving first in the last set which aided him. Similar situation arose in the last year's classic final with Nadal where Nadal had a similar advantage. In the final set, pressure would always be on the player serving second. Roddick did incredibly well, however, to take the final set to 30 games. Federer's big serves also helped him big time in the final set.

I want to shed some words for the other contenders in this Wimbledon. In fact, I personally felt that the way Roddick approached the Wimbledon final, he deserved to win as much as Federer. Roddick has improved his game over the past one year. Federer tried to rally the ball to his back hand and came to net many a times in the first set. Quite often Roddick passed him without much trouble. Such shots were very rare from Roddick's rocket 3 years earlier. In ground strokes, Roddick matched Federer in every point.

I liked the way Roddick played against Murray in the Semi-final. The whole stadium was against him. Still Roddick won against all odds. I sincerely feel that Roddick has it in him to win many more slams in the near future. As for Murray, I tend to think that he is Tim Henman Version 2.0. This much hype, even when Murray has not even won a slam yet, is not going to help Murray by any means. I thought that Tommy Haas played far better than Murray in this Wimbledon.

I think that no can ever break the Federer's record of 21 consecutive Grand Slam semi-finals. He has been very consistent with his performance and he has been a real icon for any one who wants to excel. As a die-hard Federer fan, I salute him and I wish he plays many more great matches in the coming years. It would be great to see Nadal return in US open. With Federer playing without any pressure, having achieved almost everything, it would be fascinating to watch a Federer-Nadal final again. I can not wait for the US open 2009.

Fedora 11 -Review

2009-07-11T19:00:00.002+05:30

I am an ardent fan of Ubuntu Linux distribution. It simplifies the desktop of the user so much that one can not go and try another linux distro after trying Ubuntu. Ubuntu crashed in my laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad T60)last month after I tried to do some crazy thing in that. I burnt the DVD of the latest Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) to reinstall in my laptop last week. Though the DVD was detected, I could not install it on the laptop.

Around that time, I could locate the latest Fedora 11 in the repository. Fedora 2 was the first linux distro I had tried 5 years back. It was very hard to use for a novice that I started hating linux after a point. Ubuntu again made me appreciate the open source and I became a fan of Ubuntu for the past 5 years. I simply admire the spirit behind the every successive release of Ubuntu. As I screwed up Ubuntu 8.10 in my laptop and failed to install Ubuntu 9.04, I decided to try out the all new Fedora 11. Here is the review of the OS.

Fedora 11 is a more advanced compared to the Fedora 2 I used 5 years back. It is as good as ubuntu in all respects. Fedora 11 has all the latest software releases like KDE 4, Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice 3, Thunderbird 3, etc. Apart from these I was surprised to see that it had OpenCV which is a computer vision library. All these come in the DVD itself.

I had some initial trouble installing other softwares like mplayer and codecs for Totem. However, when I figured out that I had to install rpmfusion to make these work, I became more comfortable with installing new open source softwares. I liked the Gnome desktop more than the KDE one as the KDE just tries to mimic Windows and falls flat. I somehow made the system tray occupy the entire panel in KDE. I still can not find out how to bring it to original shape. Such problems occur if the GUI becomes more and more mouse dependent.

Appearance wise Gnome desktop sports the traditional blue color as is the case with all Fedora releases. The default background images are stunning. Battery comes to around 2 hrs when fully charged. I am also able to use my Intel Core 2 CPU on demand using an applet in Gnome panel. I am able to install most of the open source softwares using YUM. It is as good as apt-get if not better.

Though I was required to fiddle with the OS for initial 2-3 days, now I am quite comfortable with Fedora 11. The performance of linux is amazing as always on my laptop. It takes less than a minute to boot or to shut down, while the vista takes more than 3 minutes either to boot or to shut down. The programs also run very fast compared to that of windows vista as the on demand CPU function makes optimal use of CPU.

On the whole, I like this release of Fedora and this one made me change the wrong myths I had after using Fedora 2. I still can not compare it with the Ubuntu 9.04. My lab system still has Ubuntu 8.04 running on an Intel Xeon. Performance-wise both Fedora and Ubuntu are equally good. However, I think Fedora is more robust than Ubuntu in sticking with the traditional linux more closely. Now that Fedora also has a stunning user interface, it is impossible for me to choose between Fedora and Ubuntu. I love both. Having said that, I strongly recommend Fedora 11 to any one who wants to enjoy the spirit of open source in his/her laptop/desktop.

Top 3 Vadivel Comedies

2009-06-22T11:55:00.009+05:30

Vadivel is an amazing comedian with great comic timing. He gets into any character and produces non-stop laughter. I watched a lot of his comedies in "Sirippoli" and "Aadithyaa" channels. As a continuation of the previous post, I write about Top 3 Vadivel comedies which I like most here.

1. Vetri Kodi Kattu

This film has a laugh riot with Parthiban and Vadivel in full form. Vadivel wears a shining kurta and a lungi claiming that he has come from Dubai. Parthiban finds out that Vadivel was a toilet cleaner in Dubai from his own words and teases him. Parthiban warns not to wear Dubai dress in India and keeps troubling him. Vadivel gets afraid whenever he is seen by parthiban in the Dubai attire. The scene where Parthiban tells that he came to India from Dubai without a ticket in flight and traps Vadivel is very hilarious. Watch all the comedy scenes from this classic comedy.

2. Friends

Vadivel comes as a painting contractor and hires Vijay and Surya as his apprentices. He is 'Chittappa' to Ramesh Kanna and others also call him the same. He goes to a wealthy house for a painting contract along with others and the fun which ensues after that is simply rocking. The scene when Vijay and Surya kidnap Vadivel and beat him up with his head between the tree trunks is ultimate fun. Charlie, Madan Bob add to the fun. This is a pure comedy which is a must watch for all.

3. Winner

In this movie, Vadivel comes as the head of "Varuthappadaatha Valibar Sangam" (Sorrow-less Youth Association). Some guys lift him and take him wherever he goes. He keeps abusing many guys and gets beaten up. The scene where Riyaz ties Vadivel on the tree and leaves some stray dogs below is funny. One has to watch this movie scenes to enjoy.

Apart from the above movies, I like Vadivel comedies from the movies Vaseegara, Giri, Rendu, Kadhalan, Sachin, Chandramukhi, Bagavathy, Asathal, Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikesi, Pokkiri, Arya, Em Magan, Villu, Engal Anna, Marudhamalai, and many others. I wish Vadivel good luck for the future movies and let us enjoy more funny moments in life through him.

Top 3 Vivek Comedies

2009-06-21T09:46:00.003+05:30

When I was in home this month, I watched the new tamil comedy channels "Aadithyaa" and "Sirippoli" a lot. The comedies shown helped me to chill out in the vacation. These are 24 hour comedy channels with Vivek and Vadivel comedies shown most of the times. I thought that I would share the top 3 comedies of Vivek which I liked the most. In the next post, I plan to list top 3 comedies of Vadivel.

1. Pennin Manathai Thottu

Vivek's comedy is simply amazing in this movie. He comes as a independent MLA's son who buys a medical college seat in this movie. The scene where he gets his back burnt in a toilet is extremely funny. As a medical student, he makes fun of the system which provides seat to anyone who pays money. Dr. Mathrubootham, his professor, asks the students to call him and ask any doubt any time. Vivek calls him at midnight and asks, "Neenga verum Daasaa, Illa laadu labakku daasa?" (I can not translate these lines) This scene is also very hilarious.

2. Lovely

I like the Vivek comedy scenes from this movie a lot. Karthik (Hero) gives Alagesh's (Vivek) photo as his own to escape from goons, thinking that Vivek has already left for the US. However, Vivek stays still in India and calls himself as Al Gates as he is fascinated by western people. The goons track him wherever Vivek is found and beat him up. The scene where he lies down like a frog hit by a national permit lorry is very hilarious. He lands in the same hospital bed every time he gets beaten up. One has to watch the scenes to appreciate the ultimate fun.

3. Run

In this movie, Vivek comes from Trichy to Chennai in search of his friend Madhavan. The troubles he encounters in chennai are interleaved in the movie. The scene where he comes out of Koovam with dirt and acts like "Moondram Pirai" ("Sadma") Kamal to catch the attention of Madhavan is funny. Also the scene where Vivek goes with a political party parade and misses Madhavan even after seeing him also is extremely funny. This movie has lot of comedy scenes and Vivek finally becomes a fake spiritual guru and does not locate his friend till the end.

There are other movies like Dhill, Parthiban Kanavu, Padikkathavan, Dhool, Kushi, Vaali, M Kumaran, Lesa Lesa, Paramasivan, Anniyan, Saamy, Minnale, Sivaji and many more where Vivek's comedies are the highlight. I like all these comedies very much and recommend these to any one who want to have some fun. I hope Vivek will treat us with a lot more amazing comedies in the years to come.

Federer - The King

2009-06-09T17:25:00.001+05:30

By winning the French Open 2009, Roger Federer has proved convincingly that he is the best player in Tennis ever. I take this opportunity to salute the champion of the champions. Bring on Nadal! I can not wait for Wimbledon any more.

The Kite Runner - Book Review

2009-05-17T15:50:00.004+05:30

I was not aware of the ethnic problems in Afghanistan till recently. I was surprised when I learnt that Afghan people never allowed any foreign nation to dominate them completely. When I found that Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner' was based on a story in Afghanistan and was a famous one, I just grabbed it. I also found out that there was also a movie based on this novel by the same name. However, I knew from experience how the movie makers screwed up a movie based on the novel 'Q&A'. This forced me to read this novel before watching the movie.

This novel is a pleasant and at times haunting story about two friends, Amir and Hassan. Their childhood days together in Afghanistan and relevant incidents which follow afterwards are nicely conveyed in this novel. The main issue is that Amir belongs to a majority race called, 'Pashtuns' and Hassan belongs to a minority race called, 'Hazaras'. Even though both are very good friends, this difference follows them for years and impacts both their lives quite severely.

The author has traced the history of Afghanistan over a rough period of thirty years. This novel starts at a time just after the Zahir Shah's rule and ends with the present era of the Talibans. Though all the historical facts are not fully reflected, one gets to see the change in glimpses spread throughout the novel. This urged me to read about history of Afghanistan from various sources and I also obtained background information by watching a national geographic documentary called 'Inside the Taliban'.

Here are some incidents from the novel which I liked. During their escape to Pakistan during Soviet invasion, Afghan people encounter a Soviet soldier who asks a married Afghan woman to spend some time with him as a favor for letting them ahead. I feel that this is the sort of danger any nation has to incur if they let foreign force into their homeland. Another interesting depiction of Taliban rule is shown by an incident during a soccer match half-time. Some Talibans bring a woman and a man who are charged with an offense and kill them with stones in the play ground and please the crowd. These acts show how the Talibans once defied humanitarian rules and regulations. Lot more such incidents are very well conveyed in this novel.

I liked the narration and the story of this novel very much. However, I felt that the last few pages were quite slow compared to the pages preceding them. This novel has its own merits and keeps the reader engaged and interested almost throughout. This novel made me dig deep into the history of Afghanistan and provided me a lot of incidents which even I could relate to my early days. I loved this novel so much that I just started reading Hosseini's next novel, 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. I recommend 'The Kite Runner' to anyone interested in historical fictions.

I will soon have a look at the movie which is based on this novel.

Transcend T.sonic 850

2009-05-13T23:40:00.003+05:30

My primary intention was to get a music player like IPod shuffle. IPod shuffle 1GB music player costs INR 2300/-. I decided to settle for a cheaper one with more functions and came across this device. I recently bought the music+video player Transcend T.sonic 850. Here are the features of this device along with a short review.

Functions: Music player, Video player, Sound recorder, FM player, E-book reader, Photo viewer, Clock

Operating Systems: Windows, Linux, MacOS

Memory: 8GB

Price: Indian Rupees 3100

Sound quality is quite good and it plays mp3, wma, and wav files. I think the quality should improve if I use a better headphone (for example Sony). Video player only plays MTP files. The software which comes with this device does not convert all avi, mpeg, dat files into MTP. I am still trying to fix this problem. Sound recorder is very good and I think I will record some important lectures and talks from now on. FM player located around 10 stations in Mumbai and the clarity is good. Picture viewer is also a valuable function.

This device comes with 8GB memory which is useful for storing even large data files apart from video and music files. This device sits as a drive/folder in both windows and linux and it is very easy to transfer files via USB port. No specialized software is required for access to this device. The transfer speed from PC to this device is quite slow (around 200KBps). I did not check the transfer speed from T.sonic to PC. Charging this device is through USB port and full charge comes for around 10 hours. I need to validate this over a period of time to be exact.

For a low-priced device, it has amazing number of functions and all are quite useful to me. It is a good alternative to IPod shuffle which is very expensive and has only the music player. As this device comes with a 2-year warranty as well, I recommend T.sonic 850 to those who want multiple functions in a branded device for an affordable price.

Sathi Leelavathi - Movie Review

2009-05-03T14:57:00.005+05:30

'Sathi Leelavathi' is a classic Kamal Hassan Tamil movie. This famous movie has been remade in many other languages, the famous one being, 'Biwi No. 1' in Hindi. I do not think these remakes can match the original version. I saw this movie today after a very long time. This movie is non-stop fun from the start to the end. Ramesh Aravind, Kalpana, Heera, Kovai Sarala star in this movie along with Kamal. This film was directed by Baalu Mahendra.

Ramesh Aravind is the hero of this movie with some negative shades. He is quite weak in dealing with girls although he is married to Kalpana and has 2 children. As a part of his job as Managing Director of a company, he bumps into Heera who works in another firm for some business deal. Heera is a girl who wants to marry a rich guy and falls for Ramesh as he hides his marriage with Kalpana. The real fun starts when they are about to board a flight to Bangalore as a honeymoon trip before their marriage.

Kamal is a orthopaedic doctor and a past school friend of Ramesh. He is married to Kovai Sarala and has a boy who always shoots with his handy-cam. Ramesh and Kamal meet in airport which leads to lot of confusions as both go to Bangalore and are supposed to stay in the same hotel. Rest of the fun can better be watched on the movie directly. This movie is strictly for adults and it did not interest me much when I was young.

Acting is superb from all lead actors. Kamal and Sarala with the typical Coimbatore tamil steal the show with great comic timing. Their son also keeps popping up every now and then and his acting is also great. Kalpana as a calm house-wife performs well. Ramesh and Heera also get into their respective characters and evoke laughter throughout. The most funny moment is when Ramesh lifts Heera and gets his back sprained for which Kamal gives treatment.

Music is very good with 'Maarugo Maarugo' song being the pick. Kamal sings this song extremely well. Ilayaraja's background score is great. Crazy Mohan's dialogues are extremely funny with timely jokes providing continued fun. Baalu Mahendra's direction is also very realistic and the incidents flow smoothly throughout.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching every scene of this movie. This movie is a must watch for those who like real spontaneous humor.

Tamil Nadu Elections - Passing Comments

2009-05-02T15:04:00.009+05:30

I have not been staying in Tamil Nadu for the past 5 years. I have been in touch with the happenings there by reading newspapers and browsing the web. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Tamil Nadu on May 13th. This time also the elections are as thrilling as ever in Tamil Nadu. I have been irritated by the caste-based politics in Tamil Nadu ever since my school days. I generally view it as a comedy and laugh at it often to pass time. I will give some passing comments on the coming elections along with some vague predictions.

Alliances in Tamil Nadu always tend to trigger a laugh on outsiders. Alliances decide the fate of many parties in the elections there. This time there are two strong alliances: Karunanidhi's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) based and Jayalalithaa's Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) based. DMK has alliance with Congress while ADMK has allies like Paattaali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (VC) and the communists (CPI and CPIM). Apart from these two alliances, there is Captain Vijayakanth's Desiya Marumalarchi Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) which is contesting alone in all constituencies and I suppose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is contesting alone as well.

PMK is in alliance with ADMK in spite of being present in Manmohan's cabinet at the centre. MDMK has alliance with ADMK though Jayalalithaa had earlier put Vaiko (MDMK president) in Jail for supporting LTTEs. All the parties which support Srilankan Tamils issue have formed alliance with ADMK for this election. DMK state government being a minority one, supported by Congress, had no option but to form an alliance with Congress. Captain, as always, has his own agenda and is fighting alone to get some seats and give headache to the two big alliances.

I feel that Sri Lankan Tamil issue is going to play a major role in this election. Issues like Re 1 per Kg rice, free color TVs, IT growth etc are not going to have that much impact. The global recession might also play a major role in the coming elections. However, its impact is limited to upper middle class and upper class people who form very less percentage of the population. With the war intensifying in Sri Lanka and hundreds of Tamils being killed everyday, people in Tamil Nadu may not think about any other issue at this moment. All political rallies also would be using this ethnic issue to their advantage.

Few days back, Jayalalithaa did a U-turn and told that she would work for creating a Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka if she wins in Tamil Nadu. She claimed that she realized this after seeing images from war-struck Lanka where lakhs of Tamils were left homeless. The next day morning, Karunanidhi went on an indefinite 'surprise' fast for ceasefire in Sri Lanka. He called off the fast in the afternoon once Sri Lankan goverment promised that it would not use heavy guns. Both DMK and ADMK are trying to use Sri Lankan war in their favor without taking any substantial action to relocate the affected Tamils there.

I think Tamil Nadu people will feel that DMK has more responsibility to help the Sri Lankan Tamils as it is ruling the state and has ministers in the present cabinet. DMK's hands are tied as it has ruling Congress as its ally. This means that there would be lot of gains for ADMK alliance. It is immaterial to people whether ADMK alliance will help the Sri Lankan Tamils if they win now. They might prefer this alliance in the current scenario. ADMK alliance also forms a part of the third front at the centre.

Tamil Nadu has 39 parliamentary seats, I suppose. All the parties in Tamil Nadu are equally bad and corrupt but people normally favor one alliance or the other in each poll. In the present elections, I expect that ADMK alliance will sweep the polls with more than 30 seats with few seats left for DMK alliance and DMDK. I think DMDK will gain a lot of votes in all seats even if it does not win many seats. I have to wait till 16th May to know if my analysis is indeed correct.

What has happened to Shreya?

2009-05-01T01:48:00.005+05:30

I have always loved to listen to film songs. I started admiring the masterpieces rendered by SPB during my school days. SPB along with Ilayaraja were the ones who inspired me to listen to a wide range of songs. I still have their golden collection of songs in my system. I also liked listening to female singers, especially Susheela. Janaki and Chitra, though quite good, did not please me that much with their renditions. I was quite disappointed as SPB and Susheela reduced singing over the past few years possibly due to their aging.

The place left by SPB is taken over by the wonderful Hariharan. He is quite amazing with a lot of hit songs to his credit. When Shreya Ghoshal arrived on the tamil film music, I thought that she would be the one to replace Susheela's place. I listened to the song, 'Chellamaai Chellam' from the film 'Album' which was the first time I heard her. I became a fan of Shreya's songs such as 'Munbe Vaa' from 'Sillunu Oru Kadhal', 'Aiyayo..' from 'Paruthi Veeran', 'Uruguthey' from 'Veyil', 'Ninaithu Ninaithu' from '7G Rainbow Colony', and 'Unna Vida' from 'Virumaandi'. Shreya's strength lies in her clear tamil diction along with a clear voice which is very melodious. I am against non-tamil singers singing in tamil unless their diction is perfect. Shreya sang so well in tamil that I had no complaints against her.

Over the past 2 years, I started feeling that she has not been as effective as before. Her voice is quite unclear when singing high pitched verses. I feel that the primary reason to be that the texture in her voice has faded in recent times. Some of the recent songs like 'Kannil Paarvai' from 'Naan Kadavul', 'Oru Vetkam' from 'Pasanga', 'Poovinai Thiranthu' from 'Aanandha Thaandavam', 'Chaaral' from 'Kuselan', and a couple of songs from 'Mariyadhai' failed to impress me. I am quite disappointed with her renditions in these songs. At many places, her voice makes it hard to identify the verses. Even some of her recent hindi songs pose similar problems to the listener.

I still feel that Shreya is a singer with amazing capabilities and the recent songs signify only a minor blip in her music career. I hope she has realized that there is some problem with her singing. The problem may be due to work load, commitments to reality shows, health reasons, or even improper recording. If she identifies and rectifies the problem soon, she can still become one among the legends like Lata, Susheela, Asha, Janaki, and Chitra. Otherwise, she might become one among the passable singers who showed promise but never made it big. Being a fan of many of her songs, I sincerely hope that she recovers fast from this slump and enthralls us with more great melodies.

Vietnam Veedu - Play Review

2009-04-24T19:27:00.005+05:30

Sivaji Ganesan's 'Vietnam Veedu' is a famous movie known for its great script and songs. This movie was inspired by a play of the same name. Y Gee Mahendra has revived the play through his United Amateur Artistes (UAA) troupe. I got the opportunity to watch this play with my friends at SNDT auditorium, Ghatkopar this week. This play was launched in Chennai last month. I went there expecting an one hour play. However, the play lasted for two and a half hours without any break.

Since the play had a very powerful script, it was an enjoyable watch. The hero of the play is Padmanabha Iyer (played by YGeeM) who is very much a disciplinarian and has lot of care for his prestige. His wife is Savithri (played by TV actress Nithya) and she is quite soft. Their two sons and only daughter are quite corrupt each in a different way. The play narrated the problems faced by Padmanabha Iyer dealing with them after his retirement in humorous as well as emotional way.

Acting was simply superb by every actor. YGeeM was the pick of all the actors. He was as good as Sivaji. Nithya suited the Padmini's role quite well. The supporting cast also performed admirably. The pace at which every one changed costumes between scenes was mind blowing. The sets were very realistic and the execution was near perfect considering the length of the play. Only average thing was the recorded background score.

I enjoyed the play the most during the first two hours and felt that it was a bit dragging in the last 20 minutes or so. I have not watched a live play over a long time. This was a very nice experience for me. I think the success of this play lies in making it appealing even for current generation. I am sure that many elderly people would simply love this play as it would take them back in time. YGeeM who talked after the play told that he would be performing more plays this October in Mumbai. I hope to watch a few of those.

Jaunty Jackalope

2009-04-23T22:48:00.004+05:30

Jaunty Jackalope is the new Ubuntu Linux version 9.04 releasing today. Being an ardent Ubuntu fan, I am very eager to try it out as soon as possible.

Indian Premier League (IPL) - Some Thoughts

2009-04-17T13:17:00.002+05:30

Indian Premier League (IPL) is an ICC approved T20 tournament organized by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) every year. IPL was primarily started as a rival to unauthorized T20 league called Indian Cricket League (ICL). This year's edition is about to start tomorrow. IPL which comprises around 56 T20 matches will be shown on Sony Max in India for about 36 days. There are two matches to be played on most of the days.

IPL, to me, is the arrogant showcase of money, politics, and power at the expense of the players' fitness and skills. I never viewed T20 as a means to promote cricket. Cricket already has a far reach than many other sports atleast in India. For a sport which is not as rigorous as a soccer or a tennis, I feel that the present exposure is enough for cricket. It does not require a T20 tournament like IPL to enhance audience for cricket. Real cricket action can be seen in test matches where one needs to have great skills to survive over long run.

The most irritating thing according to me is the growing number of celebrities who throng the IPL. They become owners by the sheer amount of money they have and the cricket players are made to look jokers in front of them. Cricketers are made responsible for the losses in IPL games and end up being dragged into controversy by such owners who have least concern for cricket as a game. Like it happened so far, even great players like Dravid, Laxman, and Ganguly are not spared from being humiliated by such owners. I even have an opinion that the cricketers also deserve a stick for joining IPL to just make more money in their kitty.

To make things worse, this year's games are going to be longer by 15 minutes to accommodate more commercial elements. There will be 7.5 minute break for cheerleaders and bands to perform after 10 overs of each innings. This seems to me as utmost stupidity of the organizers. I think these guys blatantly lift some of the ideas used by reality shows in television. I am not sure how will the lovers of classical cricket react to such a nonsense.

In future, I reckon that each IPL match will be directed by some mega-serial (Daily Soap) director. They will instruct players how to play: when to hit a four or a six, when to take a wicket, when to drop a catch, when to get run-out, and when to retire hurt. These amazing directors will make sure that each IPL match lasts till last ball of 20th over in each innings to increase TRP ratings. I will not be surprised even if players are asked to dance duet with cheerleaders in between every over and during innings breaks. Commentators will dance with Mandira Bedi and other ladies in the commentary box.

There seems to be no end for such IPL nonsense. Expect the above and a lot more ridiculous things to happen in the forthcoming IPL seasons.

Garching-Forschungszentrum and Kanjur Marg

2009-04-14T16:01:00.010+05:30

Garching-Forschungszentrum is the last underground railway station along U6 (U-Bahn) in Munich. This station is located north of Munich and I think it is some 20 KM from the city center. This station is where one needs to get down to reach Max Planck Intitute (MPI) for Plasma Physics and Technical University of Munich (TUM). Eurographics 2009 was held in TUM Mathematik Informatik located around 200m from Garching-Forschungszentrum. The region surrounding this station is very calm and suitable for academic research.

I travelled along this U6 from the central station (HaptBahnHof) to reach Garching-Forschungszentrum on 29th March to complete registration formalities in Eurgraphics 2009. There were no sessions of main conference that day. I needed to take a U4/U5 train to reach a station called Odeonsplatz which is two stations away from HaptBahnHof. I had to catch a U6 train from Odeonsplatz to reach Garching-Forschungszentrum which took around 30 minutes. The walls of the both HaptBahnHof and Odeonsplatz were filled with advertisements and TV programs. I was in for a surprise when I got down the train in Garching-Forschungszentrum.

Garching-Forschungszentrum station had its walls filled with leading researchers of science and mathematics from Germany. It included a schematic of their work along with some quote in German. It also had the names of the persons and the years they lived. It was very refreshing for me to see these in a train station. The persons who featured included Einstein, Max-Planck, Bohr, Ohm, and many more. I took one such picture which I have shared here. I felt that this was the right way to motivate children to take up academic research. The whole environment was vibrant with famous names and their inventions featured all around me. I simply loved it.

I wonder why not implement such a plan in one of the Mumbai train stations, say Kanjur Marg where the premier technical institute IIT Bombay is located. Kanjur Marg is a sub-urban station in Mumbai located between Dadar and Kalyan. We can also decorate the walls of this station with famous Indian scientists and mathematicians. We have a lot of them like Aryabhatta, Ramanujan, CV Raman, etc. It will be highly motivating for young students to take up research as a career whenver they come to this station. We can fill details for each person in our national language, Hindi. The plan seems to be very good. However, problems will arise once the government starts implementing such a plan.

We should not forget that India is plagued with lot of people who are least bothered about such great scientists and mathematicians, and their inventions and contributions. Unfortunately, these people are the ones occupying top positions in the government organizations to execute any such plan. They will be made to form a panel to identify the prominent researchers or famous people of India. The selection of famous people will definitely involve lot of lobbying, favoritism, and other politics associated with that. Let us assume that these so-called intellectual people somehow get over the differences and ego clashes to come up with a shortlist of famous persons in science and mathematics. This shortlist will be sent to the cabinet ministry guys who may not have heard about any person in the shortlist.

With the shortlist in hand, our great politicians become prominent. They will love to introduce reservation on the shortlisted famous people on the basis of caste, religion, language, region, etc. Placing boards in the memory of some famous people in a small station like KanjurMarg will be made a national issue. Opposition will shout, own party members and other group leaders will also agitate. A committee with non-academic persons will be formed to identify caste, religion, language, region etc of the shortlisted persons. They will also be instructed to adhere to some reservation percentages (for example 50%, 30%, 20% ) while selecting the final names. Crores of rupees will be spent on these committees alone. There will be further disputes regarding tender, bribery and corruption. Finally, they will renovate the station with these names after some 10 years when every dispute is resolved.

The final selected names in the station will hardly create any inspiration in a common man who would have seen in media all the naughty things happened thus far behind the screen. This is just an example of how even good plans are executed in India. I am just afraid that these stupid things will happen in India if a government wishes to mimic Garching-Forschungszentrum. Such comic actions by politicians and others will tarnish the great work done by really great persons. I will be happy if such things do not happen while implementation of similar plan. I will be even more happy if any insane politician reading this blog does not use my presumptions to do politics in future and takes up such a plan.

Ayan - Movie Review

2009-04-13T18:38:00.009+05:30

I went to watch Suriya's Ayan movie on Good Friday with my friend Prakash. It is a typical masala movie in Tamil. Here is a review of the movie.

Story - Nothing novel. Just it kept me interested till end. It is just another gang war movie like Gemini. Story is borrowed from many movies like Nanda, Gemini, Bheema and many others.

Screenplay - Very good. Kept me looking forward always.

Music - Harris rocks again after Vaaranam Aayiram. Nenje Nenje song tune is stunning with excellent picturisation. Vizhi Moodi song is also a treat to hear and watch.

Cinematography - Cinematography is amazing. Chase sequences in Congo and Malaysia are captured very well. Also, Nenje Nenje is one of the best shot songs in Tamil ever.

Direction - Direction is very good for an average story. Characterisation is very realistic for a masala movie.

Comedy - Comedy is sprayed throughout the movie. There is no separate track to test viewers' patience. Therefore, comedy works.

Acting:

Suriya - Great acting. Excellent varied skills shown through out which make viewers entertained.

Tamanna - Very good acting. She is here to stay in tamil for atleast few more years.

Jagan - Surprise package. Very nice acting.

Villain - Not that good. Passable.

Prabhu, Ponvannan, Renuka, Karunas and others - Good acting.

Overall - It is a good masala movie in recent times. Makes for a good viewing with a family. Do not expect any thing very novel. This movie is just for time-pass and to enjoy a weekend.

Madness at Munich

2009-04-12T14:39:00.011+05:30

I started to Munich last month for attending Eurographics 2009 in TUM. It was a nice trip on the whole. However, being the first trip abroad and that too alone, I experienced my share of mad incidents over the 9 days. In this blog, I would like to share some of the comic incidents - many of them occurred due to circumstances and some due to my own ignorance.

Wild Boar!

The main problem is that I am a pure vegetarian who would vomit even if someone eats non-veg item other than egg in front of him. I just wanted to attend the conference dinner which was organized on 2nd April evening at Hofbrauhaus. This restaurant, located in Marienplatz, is quite old where Hitler used to dine with his Nazi mates which propelled me to attend the dinner. I reached exactly on time, the dining area was over-flowing with Eurographics attendees. Band orchestra came first followed by some girls with different kinds of liquor. Then came the popular dish of that evening. Some guys carried two plates with cooked wild-boars whose skins were removed and other parts were left intact. Seeing that, I could not help but run away from that place. I wanted to take a picture of that dish, but I did not have the guts that time to see the wild-boar again. I rushed out of the hall to find that the student volunteers who were outside refused to let me out. I was shocked and asked them the reason. They told that I would not be able to come back if I went out. I told them that I had no intention to come back. They insisted that I had to take a seal in my hand for entry later. I got the seal and rushed to my room. I did not go there again. The very sight of wild-boar dish still haunts me. Anyway, one man's food is another man's poison. :)

Water or Vodka?

I stayed in Euro Youth Hotel which provided me a quite comfortable room. They used to provide me buffet breakfast everyday morning. There were lot of egg and non-veg stuff even in breakfast. I used to eat only breads, corn flakes, milk, and bananas. On the first breakfast there, I noticed two drinks which were kept in the buffet hall. One was orange juice and the other looked like water. I noticed some bubbles inside that container which looked like having plain water. I already knew that vodka also looks like water which made me suspicious. I asked the attender what it was. He replied correctly saying, "Water". However, I heard it as, "Vodka" due to my preconception. This made me think that the water they were serving at conference lunch everyday was also vodka. I thought that the Europeans were very rich to have vodka every breakfast and lunch and wondered about their habits. I did not drink water served during breakfast and lunch for next 4 days, I used to buy the packaged drinking water. During one lunch, my friend in Eurographics was having the water served there. I casually asked if he liked vodka. He told that he liked and asked me why I inquired about that. I told him that he was having vodka then. He told that it was just plain water with some gas (similar to soda water in India). Then, I had to change my opinion about the drinking habits of people there, "they do not drink vodka every breakfast and lunch".

Travails at Emirates

I travelled both ways in Emirates via Dubai. It was a hectic 9 hour travel along with 4 hour waiting in Dubai. In Emirates menu card, I noticed something like this written along with the menu items, "All food items served are Halal. We apologise if our menu items do not match your preferences". (When I later came to know what a halaal food is, through Shvaana, I felt really sick.) I was shocked seeing that. How come the airline decide what the passenger must eat? What the hell! While going to Munich from Mumbai, somehow I managed to get asian vegetarian food because of good cabin crew and I was happy. I am pretty sure even now that the food I ate was devoid of egg also. While coming back, I started from Munich at 10PM. The crew member told that the travel agent did not mention vegetarian food for me in the ticket and she would not give asian vegetarian food. However, she told that she would arrange for a different vegetarian food. I sensed some trouble there itself and waited for the food to arrive. It was looking okay but when I opened the salad, I found a piece of fish. I was damn sure that it was some variety of fish. I did not eat the food and returned it promptly. I needed to travel always in the last row in flights even though I checked in 4 hrs before travel. This was because my travel agent did not give seat preference while booking for me. Seating in Emirates was also quite bad in the economy class. I think they run flights like Mumbai BEST buses as Dubai has abundant oil resources. I will not travel in Emirates even if I have to go to Dubai in future.

Beware of Dubai Airport

Dubai airport may be one of the largest airports in the world. I think it is some 3 KM long with lot of duty-free shops. They sell goods at pretty high price compared to the price in India. I did not purchase any major item there. The strange thing is that Dubai airport has only three restrooms spread across 3KM length in Emirates terminal. Each restroom can accommodate only 3 persons at a time and cleaning guys keep cleaning it always. Even then, the place was quite dirty without proper sanitation. There was a big queue of about 20 persons whenever I went there. It was quite sad to see such a bad design of restrooms in a big airport like Dubai. I suppose people there do not require restrooms quite often as the heat is too much. :)

I will write about some of the good things as well as the strange things which I encountered in my trip soon.

One Night in the Panther Cage - V

2009-04-09T21:56:00.009+05:30

It was four forty-five early morning. Shvaana had already committed one offense. Chiru asked Shvaana breaking the silence, "What do you do in free time?" Shvaana replied, "I usually do not have any free time. I always think of my research problem. That keeps me going ahead. However, I find time to watch some video or movie stuff on my computer and browse arbitrary web sites." Chiru inquired, "How long you normally do such things a day?" Shvaana told, "Only six to seven hours a day." Chiru did not utter any words but just smiled at the kid called Shvaana.

Some conversation went on between the two regarding general things about research and other things in Shvaana's life. Chiru found Shvaana indeed interesting and loved conversing with him more. It was already five thirty in the morning. In summer, sun rises at six in the morning. Only thirty minutes were left for Chiru to talk with Shvaana. Chiru wanted to make best use of the available time by asking Shvaana varied things. Shvaana was also equally enthusiastic about the talk with Chiru though he was becoming slightly impatient. Chiru could not comprehend the reason though, atleast for few moments.

Chiru told Shvaana, "You people are really great. You like to change the current world to a better one through your active research. I like the idea quite well. However, I feel that it is in fact deteriorating." Shvaana barely listened to this completely and he instantly responded, "I think national park is no match for a real world. Real world poses a lot of problems which can not be perceived by you. It may be that your locality is hampered by our research and development plans. We do not care for that in general." Chiru got angry with this reply and wanted to count for the second offense but restrained from doing so.

Shvaana did not stop however. His tone changed, "I feel restless here. I want to go out and just have a walk around. I think we have talked enough." Chiru just told, "Two!" Shvaana was not bothered by Chiru's admission of his second offense. His mind was indeed occupied by a distant moving entity coming for a morning walk. Shvaana was curious to find out who that person was. Chiru's vision of that scene was blocked by Shvaana's body and was quite puzzled by Shvaana's change in attitude. That person was slowly approaching the panther cage from the direction adjacent to Shvaana. Shvaana was very attentive as it seemed to him like a girl. However, he was not that sure.

Once that person reached 400 m from the cage, Shvaana was delighted. It was indeed a girl coming for a morning walk on the hill. Meanwhile, Chiru had closed his eyes and went into silence as Shvaana neglected him. Shvaana waited till that girl, Rimi, reached 50 m from the cage and started moving his arms to attract her attention. After few seconds, he was successful and Rimi recognized that there was a guy inside the cage. She found that the cage was locked from outside. She was brave enough to lift a big stone from the vicinity and break the cage open from Shvaana's side. This sudden jerk disturbed Chiru.

Chiru roared and stood up with anger. He was surprised to see Shvaana and a girl standing outside the cage laughing at him. Shvaana became diplomatic and told, "Goodbye Mr Chiru. Nice meeting you today. I will now take leave and go with her to my hostel. Please do not take offense for this as I had had enough of talking to you. Now you can better wait inside the cage till the security guys come." Chiru eyes became red and he told, "I already told you that I can break open the cage any time I want. I am pretty upset with your behavior. Just get lost with that girl soon and do not provoke my anger any further." Shvaana and Rimi started laughing hearing this. Shvaana told when laughter subsided a bit, "How come a panther break this cage?"

Hearing this, Chiru started making violent movements in the cage. Rimi got afraid and insisted that they must leave. Shvaana agreed and both started ambling along the road to hostel introducing themselves. After two minutes, they found some noise from behind. They could see that it was indeed Chiru coming behind them at brisk pace. Though they were some 200 m ahead, their hearts started beating fast which made them run fast. Chiru was smiling when he shouted loudly, "Shvaana! Shvaana!!" But Shvaana and Rimi accelerated further. Chiru reduced his pace and just ambled behind them as he just wanted to scare them for a while.

Once they were near the hostel area, Shvaana realized that Chiru was not behind them. They started walking slowly after that. Rimi told, "Bye!" to Shvaana and left as her hostel was nearby. Shvaana realized his mistake that he had betrayed Chiru for a few minutes company of an unknown girl and wanted to apologise to him. He did not have the courage to go back in search of Chiru fearing his life. He just remembered the good qualities of Chiru and thanked him whole heartedly for his patience and support the previous night.

After scaring Shvaana and Rimi for few minutes, Chiru had changed direction and found his breakfast in the form of a couple of sleeping dogs on the roadside. Chiru ate them merrily and waited inside the cage for the security guys to arrive. While waiting in the cage, Chiru could not understand the logic behind Shvaana's act of depriving him after seeing a stranger. Chiru, however, thanked him for providing him information about outside world, however small amount it might be. Chiru felt that he was happier inside the park than outside and took a vow that he would never come out of the park as he had enough of the outside world.

The End

Back from a Brief Hiatus

2009-04-08T20:05:00.005+05:30

Last two weeks were quite demanding as I was getting ready for my first trip outside India. First week was used up by the preparation for travel and the next week was spent in Eurographics 2009 at Munich, Germany. I had a good trip and my presentation went well there. I could also meet a lot of interesting guys. While I am writing this, I have made my entry into active blogging again. Those who want to see the pictures from Eurographics 2009 and Munich please send me a personal email at ramshanmuga@gmail.com.

It was a pleasant trip and days just ran fast as the conference was an amazing one. I attended a lot of talks and tutorials. I was forced to miss out some important talks as there were 5 parallel sessions. There is a lot to write about the funny incidents which happened during my trip. Cultural differences I encountered in Europe and the relative merits of life in India and abroad from different viewpoints make good premise for successive blogs. I will keep writing about these things and many others in the coming days.

I am aware that I have started writing a 'Imaging Research Blog'. One can expect regular posting there too from now on.

Imaging Research Unveiled

2009-03-24T22:20:00.004+05:30

I have started writing a new blog on imaging research which can be accessed at this web address. Please have a look at my first blog there. I will keep writing on general things in this blog as usual.

One Night in the Panther Cage - IV

2009-03-23T19:32:00.000+05:30

Chiru thought for a while and started revealing his rules. Chiru told, "I do not want you to drag me into controversial argument while we talk. I can tolerate only 3 such instances which I will be counting. Once you repeat the mistake for the fourth time, I will make you my breakfast for the day." Shvaana asked, "What do you mean by controversial?" Chiru replied, "I already told you that I will be counting from 1 to 3. If you wish, you can very well stop the conversation after I count 3. You will be safe then."

Shvaana after some thought agreed to the rules so that he can talk with Chiru soon. Shvaana told, "I think you are quite smart in the way you speak. I did not expect this from a panther." Chiru laughed and told, "Thanks for your praise. I also did not know till now that research scholars in IIT are so immature. From what I observed, I think you are very short tempered and keep pestering others for your motives. It is a wrong thing to do as far as I am concerned." Shvaana acted as if he was surprised by the comments, "Is it so? I did not know these things about me till now."

Chiru resumed, "We. panthers, always do our own work and do not persuade our opinion on others. It helps us live happily. Not like you people who always pester others." Shvaana wanted to change the course of discussion. He asked, "Why don't you go back to the park where you can be free of danger?" Chiru replied, "There are problems everywhere. The key talent is that how you tackle those problems. I feel I have that talent to survive anywhere. Those who try to escape from such problems confine themselves to a single place and try to tackle the same problems again and again. It is very boring after a point, you know."

Shvaana sensed some deep meaning in Chiru's talk. Chiru asked, "What do you guys do in IIT? I mean, what are your primary duties?" Shvaana replied, "We are supposed to do research here. We work very hard to invent or discover new ideas which can change the world. We have an advisor who monitors and guides us on our path. We also have an annual review to assess our progress. It is very tiresome you know, unless one enjoys the problem in hand." Chiru thought for a while and then commented, "This is quite interesting. I did not know that these things happen at IIT. I thought that the people here are some privileged class enjoying their past deeds. Please continue. Tell me about your other activities."

Shvaana felt very happy that Chiru was quite interested in his activities. In fact, who in this world does not want to boast about his adventures, however ridiculous it may be. Shvaana with enthusiasm continued, "We work in a lab where we perform our experiments. We generate new results, publish papers, and go to conferences around the world to present our work. That is what expected from us. We are also supposed to complete the work in 4 years to obtain our doctorate degrees. Our work will then set the trend for many successors and change the way our country and even the world functions. We derive pleasure in seeing such things around us."

Chiru smiled and exclaimed, " Dr. Shvaana! Sounds really great!" Chiru giggled for a few seconds and then said, "I believe you mean to say that through your research you guys change the world. I am quite ignorant. I can not understand how some stuff you do in your lab will change the world." Shvaana's ego got over him this time and he replied, "Ha Ha Ha! How does a panther which roams in national park without any objective understand the research which we are doing at IIT. I think we have hardly 100 minutes left. I do not think this period is enough to teach you these complex things."

Chiru did not like the way Shvaana reacted to his queries. He was silent for a while and just said, "One!" Shvaana was puzzled at first and it took some seconds before he could realize that he had committed the first offense. Shvaana told, "I accept that what I told was unacceptable. I sincerely apologise to you." Chiru was quiet with his eyes closed. Shvaana was surprised at this act of Chiru. He could not crack the mystery behind Chiru's silence. The silence however did not prevail more than a couple of minutes.

(To be continued...)

Appropriate Technology

2009-03-15T22:35:00.006+05:30

Today, I attended a talk on Appropriate Technology by Prof Anil W Date of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Bombay. He is also the head of Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA) at IIT Bombay. This talk was a part of the lecture series associated with the annual Mechanical Engineering symposium called Radiance. I was introduced to the new area of technology research by Prof Date in this talk. The talk was simply amazing with lot of illustrations and case studies. Here I present some of the ideas I understood from his talk.

Prof Date gave a lot of definitions for appropriate technology. What I could understand was that appropriate technology is the development of techniques which suit a particular locality for solving some key problems there. In other words, the technology developed in India must solve problems in India first rather than addressing problems in US or any other country for that matter. People can be classified into producers (Prof Date might have used a different term for this), distributers, and consumers. Producers are the ones who suffer a lot in rural areas though they are the ones who directly deal with nature and deliver goods. Appropriate technology primarily addresses problems faced by these people so that the economy is nurtured well.

To illustrate, Prof Date discussed two case studies which has carried out some years back. One is a specially designed dryer aimed at drying Paddy grains. The dryer built was an innovation and it was fully automatic and capable of drying 85Kg of grains at a given time. The way he narrated how he got the idea for designing this dryer is truly the way one should aim to solve any real world problem. The other case study is a bullock cart made of steel to account for the lesser availability of wood to build such carts. This also help one to ride the steel bullock cart with minimal noise and maximal comfort. Both the technology innovations solved the problems faced by lakhs of people in rural India.

There is also a new inter-disciplinary MTech program majoring Technology and Development at IIT Bombay from 2007. This program involves 10 weeks study at a village to understand their technological needs. This program seems to be a great initiative to give exposure on appropriate technology to many students irrespective of their bachelors' discipline. I would recommend this MTech program as a very good career option for anyone after their bachelors' degree. I plan to do some courses offered by this program next semester.

On the whole, the talk was a very thought provoking one. There are lot of problems to be tackled in India itself and one needs to be in connection with rural India to get to know of these problems. The primary goal of any technology should be to understand the primary needs of people in the locality. The technology which is suitable in US/Europe will not be suitable here. I have always felt that people in US/Europe create unnecessary problems and spend more time to solve them later. Prof Date asked whether IIT stood for Indian Institue of Technology or Institute of Indian Technology. I feel that latter seems more appropriate and would certainly inspire many students at IIT to solve a lot of problems relevant to India especially rural India. It is always fun to solve problems of our society through the technology knowledge acquired in IIT.

Finally, Prof Date recommended to read a book called Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered by E F Schumacher. I plan to get a copy of this book and read it soon. I will post a more elaborate blog once I get more insight into appropriate technology.

One Night in the Panther Cage - III

2009-02-22T14:21:00.045+05:30

It was only fifteen minutes since Shvaana started sleeping again. He felt subconsciously something strange happening nearby. But the pleasant warmth of the woolen cover helped him to continue his sleep. His right leg was very close to the partition. Shvaana's left hand also was somewhat near the partition as he was lying on the right side of his body. There were no dreams as well as he had just started his sleep.

Within a moment, Shvaana felt that there was an earthquake in that place. Shvaana woke up with a jerk as he was in shock. The male panther had just entered the cage and the front door had closed promptly. He heard the roar of the panther who had just become his mate in the cage. Shvaana was in high anxiety and fear. He was sweating and even slightly pissed. The panther was just roaring a few more times. Even though Shvaana was very near to the partition, the panther did not even attempt to harm him by any means. Shvaana was shocked to such an extent that he did not realize that.

After a couple of minutes, Shvaana's brain started functioning again. He slowly realized that he was in no danger due to that panther. His intelligence suddenly gave him a spark that he had talked with Tommy just a while ago. The enlightened Shvaana asked the panther, "What is your name? " To his surprise, the panther did not reply but roared again. However, the panther started speaking after few anxious seconds, "I am Chiru. Who are you, buddy?" Shvaana told that he was a research scholar at IIT and furhter narrated the story behind his adventure in the cage from the previous night. Chiru listened patiently.

Shvaana slowly came to the present moment and asked, "You came into the cage to eat me. But you did not even try to harm me till now." Chiru replied, "Not really. I am least bothered about troubling you. I wanted to go back to the park which is my home. So, just entered this cage." Shvaana told, "I can not quite get your intention. If you had wanted to go to the park, you could have gone by yourself." Chiru was not amused by Shvaana's logic, "The security guys will drop me there tomorrow. By the way, this is none of your business. I have talked enough with you, now I want to have a nap. Do not disturb me."

Shvaana wanted to talk with Chiru for some more time. He was disappointed that Chiru did not want to interact with him. He wanted to pester Chiru some more and convince him to talk. Shvaana told, "I also want to have a nap. I feel that I will not meet you again any time soon. Even if I meet you later, I will not be as protected as I am now." Chiru intervened, "Do you mean that I can not reach you now? I have the capacity to break this partition and eat you. As I already said, I do not want to harm you." Shvaana just ignored that possibility for the moment and continued, "That is alright. What I wanted to tell was, I want to interact with you for 2 more hours till the security guys reach here." Chiru patiently listened without accepting or rejecting Shvaana's proposal.

After a long thought, Chiru replied, "Your proposal seems to interest me a bit and you also seem to be a nice guy. So, I can consider talking with you for a while." Shvaana got excited, "Oh! Great! Tell me about your experience in the IIT over the past few days." Chiru got angry, "I have not accepted your proposal yet. I think you humans have very less patience. I get very annoyed with such creatures. For your sake, just wait for few minutes. Do not try to intimidate me till then, you might be in danger then." Saying this, Chiru closed his eyes and went to some elevated state. It was five minutes past four in the morning. Shvaana used this spare time to eat some more biscuits with honey. He even had some grapes and was quite occupied with his early morning snacks.

Chiru gradually opened his eyes after 5 minutes. Shvaana was fully occupied with eating stuff and did not realize that Chiru was available. Chiru started talking with a smile, "I reckon you do not want to feed any thing to your latest buddy." Shvaana turned towards Chiru as he heard these words and tried to escape by saying, "Not at all. I was still thinking that you were in silent mode and did not want to disturb you." Saying that, he offered Chiru all the stuff he had with him. Chiru ate two biscuits with honey and told, "You will be glad to know that I have decided to talk with you as you had requested." Shvaana was delighted hearing this.

Chiru continued, "But... There are some rules you must follow if you do not want me to quit the conversation in between. You have to agree to the rules if the deal has to be finalized." Shvaana had some suspicion on the rules and told, "I assume that the rules will not harm me in any sense." Chiru smiled and said, "No. Unless you violate them." This reply was a bit puzzling for Shvaana. Yet he trusted Chiru and asked, "I agree to whatever rules you impose. Let me know the rules fast. Time is running out. It is already four fifteen."

Shvaana, however, did not foresee how complex the rules would be and what were the dangers if he violated them.

(To be continued...)

One Night in the Panther Cage - II

2009-02-17T17:40:00.018+05:30

It was around 1 AM. Shvaana was in deep sleep. He was awakened by a noise at a fair distance from him. He could hear fast footsteps of dozens of creatures approaching him from the direction of hostel 1. He remembered that there was only one panther in the campus and was relieved that there was least chance of them being panthers. However he could see those four-legged creatures which were around 200m away from him now. He got up, made some noise and shook the cage a bit. His noise sounded quite like barking of a stray dog.

To his relief, they were all institute-animals commonly dubbed as dogs elsewhere. He could see them clearly in the moon light. Dogs were quite common in the IIT campus and their primary shelters being the messes and canteens spread across the campus. It was not a surprise for Shvaana when he spotted those dozen dogs. He shouted at them and glared consistently as they approached his cage. One of the dogs from the gang stopped near the cage to have a word with him. That dog seemed to be the most sympathetic creature out of the gang.

The male dog asked Shvaana, "Who are you? Why have you been locked in this panther cage?" Shvaana was quite surprised that the dog talked with him in English. He replied without any direct answers to the dog's questions, "How come a dog speak such a wonderful English? I can not believe my eyes!" The dog replied to his query, "You are a dog. If you can speak good English, so can I." Shvaana was surprised that the dog recognised him as another dog and had no comments whatsoever. By then all the other dogs had slipped into the darkness and sped away from that place.

Shvaana asked the dog, "What is your name?" The dog replied, "My name is quite complex. You can not pronounce it properly is suppose. My nick name is Tommy. You can call me like that." Shvaana was happy that he got a good companion to talk with whom he would be able to kill some time. Tommy asked him, "What are you doing at IIT?" Shvaanah told, "I am a Research Scholar here". Tommy quipped, "Oh! PhD student, really great!" Shvaana offered Tommy some grapes and honey. Tommy saw the biscuits lying with Shvaana and wanted to eat that too. Shvaana gave some biscuits as well to Tommy without much enthusiasm. Tommy was delighted with Shvaana's kindness and smiled at him.

Shvaana told the whole story to Tommy involving why he was locked in the panther's cage. Tommy listened to the whole story patiently. Tommy then asked, "You have not yet asked me why we were running very rapidly?" Shvaana realized that he forgot to ask the main question to Tommy. He asked, "Yes. I am very eager to know. Tell me the reason why you were running." Tommy was very jovial till then. Slowly his face became serious while he started narrating his story. Tommy replied, " Actually we sensed that the panther which is now in IIT campus was just somewhere near Sameer. So, we wanted to run towards lake side or hostel 12 to save ourselves." Tommy paused after that.

Shvaana looked stunned hearing that the panther was somewhere nearby. Even though he was within a cage, he was not prepared to come face-to-face with the panther that night. Shvaana tried to laugh it away, " Are you serious? Or just giving some arbitrary reason for your mad run?" Tommy told, "I am damn serious. You are my pal now. Why should I lie to you?" Shvaana was pretty upset with that answer though it was quite correct. Tommy told, "I can not stay here for long. You are protected inside the cage. I am not protected and panthers love to eat dogs. Time has come for me to leave."

Shvaana did not want his friend Tommy to get into trouble by staying with him. Shvaana told, "Thanks a lot for your information about the panther. Is there any chance that panther will not come in this way today night?" Tommy replied, " I think chance of that panther coming here is almost 100%. If there is no possibility, why should the security officer leave you as bait in the cage?" Shvaana was amazed with Tommy's logic, though it was not favorable to him. Shvaana started sweating even though it was pretty cold. He slowly got nervous with the reality which beckoned him very shortly.

Shvaana slowly became dehydrated and cursed the security officer for not leaving a drinking water bottle with him. Fear started growing on him as Tommy slowly became impatient and afraid about his stay with Shvaana. Tommy said jokingly, "Okay Shvaana. Let us be friends from now on. Meet you sometime later. I have to leave now, otherwise I might need to be in the panther's stomach." Saying this, Tommy ambled away from Shvaana towards the QIP quarters area. It was about 2 AM. Shvaana could not get any sleep after that. He could not think anything other than the panther . He did not realize that even if panther entered cage, he was not in any danger unless he stretched his arms or legs through the partition.

One hour passed. It was 3 AM. There were no signs of Panther yet. Sleep engulfed Shvaana again and he folded into the woolen cover. The inevitable happened rather immediately.

(To be continued...)

One Night in the Panther Cage - I

2009-02-15T17:48:00.022+05:30

Panther cages are used in IIT as traps to catch the panthers which intrude into the campus via lake from Sanjay Gandhi National Park. These cages are often active when many inmates of the campus spot panther over a period of time. A typical panther cage has a unique design with doors on both the sides and a partition inside. A dog is often kept as a bait for the panther from one door and it is tied to the cage. The door is then closed. When a panther enters the cage via the other door, the partition prevents the panther from eating the dog. Further, the second door is automatically closed as soon as the panther enters the cage. The captured panther is then sent to the park next day.

One day, Rhino, Hippo, Vulture, and Shvaana ('dog' in sanskrit) decided to climb the Sameer hill in IIT campus. They were all PhD students (commonly called with more respect as 'Research Scholars') at IIT. They left the hostel 12 at 5PM and took the path near the fencing to reach the base of the hill. On their way, they could see a panther cage kept near hostel 1. They slowly climbed the hill on a cement road and reached a place where another panther cage was kept at 6:15 PM. Shvaana was feeling a little dizzy and waited near the cage while others climbed towards the hilltop along the steep slope. Shvaana was feeling quite bored and was playing some games on his friend God's cellphone which he had carried along.

Meanwhile, many campus people cited a panther at different places over the past two days. Two security personnel at IIT received the panther alert and wanted to capture the panther that night. One was an officer and the other was his assistant. They came in a institute van along with a trained dog (to be used as bait) through the QIP quarters road. The dog somehow sensed that these guys were going to use him as the bait and found an opportunity to jump out of the van, managed to escape. Security personnel followed the dog till Ananta bulding which was some 200m away, but he vanished in the darkness.

Around 7PM, security guys lost the hope of capturing the dog. They prayed to the God to enable them to spot some dog in the vicinity. They slowly reached the panther cage where Shvaana was standing playing with the mobile. The guys who had climbed the hill up were coming down as well. Security officer's eyes lit up when he saw Shvaana standing near the cage. He thought that his problem was solved as Shvaana could substitute for the dog which had fled and escaped sometime back.

He approached Shvaana and asked him to help out by staying as bait inside the cage the whole night. Shvaana was initially puzzled what to do. After much deliberations, the officer convinced him. Being a childish person, Shvaana was pumped up and was thrilled about this (mis)adventure. The security officer locked Shvaana in the cage from one door. He left Good Day biscuits, grape fruits, honey, badam nuts, and an woolen cover with Shvaana. The officer and his assistant promised to come at 6AM in the morning and thanked Shvaana and his friends before leaving in their van. His friends did not want to leave Shvaana alone and wanted to spend time with him. However, they had no other option as the cage could accommodate only one person as bait. If they had stayed outside the cage and encounter the panther, they would be the first ones inside his/her stomach.

Shvaana was completely safe as he was fully protected from panther by the partition and just that there was a small possibility that he had to share the cage for sometime with the panther. Rhino, Hippo, and Vulture wished Shvaana 'Good Luck'. They were a bit worried about the possibility that Shvaana would be in trouble. They were hungry and wanted to go to hostel for dinner. It was getting dark as well. Shvaana offered them the eating stuff he had. The friends did not want to eat that and leave Shvaana hungry in the night. They finally decided to meet him the next day morning to listen to his experience. Rhino, Hippo, and Vulture slowly started walking towards the hostel half-heartedly.

Shvaana was sitting alone inside the cage 7:30PM onwards. The atmosphere was quite silent and there were no human beings around. He could occasionally hear sound of birds in the nearby trees. He could also see the lights in the Ananta building and some people having a walk on the balconies of that building. Fortunately he had a wrist watch to keep track of time. The cage was big enough to allow him to have a comfortable small nap. He ate some of the stuff which were with him and started his nap inside the woolen cover around 9PM. There were no signs of the panther. It was a very pleasant sleep. Even his girlfriend, who always appeared, evaded his dreams that night.

It was around 1AM in the morning when Shvaana's sleep was slightly disturbed by something quite unusual.

(To be continued...)

'Fraud' Haddin ?

2009-02-13T14:48:00.003+05:30

Brad Haddin is a typical Australian cricketer who imbibes in him the win at all cost attitude. Last week, I saw his attempt at cheating against New Zealand. This video confirms his cheating. Already he is being dubbed as 'Bad Hands' for his poor keeping. In the last series against India, he tried to stop a ball by throwing his gloves on it. This latest cheating against NZ is another of innumerable acts to justify the ulterior motive behind a typical Australian cricketer to win doing whatever he can.

A Trip to Mani's Lunch Home

2009-02-08T22:54:00.002+05:30

Here is a blog post from Swanand, my friend, on our trip to Matunga today (to eat!).

An Open Letter to Roger Federer

2009-02-01T19:14:00.021+05:30

Dear Federer,

I was very excited about watching the Australian Open Final between you and Nadal. If you had won today's match, you would have equalled Sampras' record. I am writing this letter just after your today's match to let you know of the feelings of your fan (that is myself). This letter is just a reflection of my emotions after viewing the heart-breaking result.

I reached my hostel common TV room where the fans of Nadal outnumbered your fans, I started watching the match from the first game and was shocked when you got broken in the first game itself. You managed bring all your skills into action in the second game to break Nadal's serve. Though you produced your trademark shots every now and then, you were more worried than ever in a Grandslam final. Still you could keep yourself in contention by sheer determination.

The first set was filled with many twists and turns. I think you were a bit circumspect as you got broken thrice which is quite unlike you. In the process you lost the set 5-7. I was stunned. I sensed that the inevitable loss to Nadal was nearer than expected as he repeatedly targeted your backhand, both during serves and in the rallies. I left the TV hall to my room as I was emotionally pretty down as the Nadal fans became more and more vociferous.

The only option to me was to leave the hostel itself for sometime as my room is quite near the TV room and the shouting of the Nadal fans were quite audible even with the doors closed. I went to the salon for a hair-cut after informing my friends Swanand and Prakash who were watching the second set though they insisted that I should not leave. I simply did not want to see you losing to Nadal as he kept on targeting your backhand.

While I was in Salon, Swanand called me and told that you had captured the second set 6-3. I had mixed emotions in the Salon, though my instinct conveyed me that you would not go down without a fight. When I reached the TV room after 1.5 hours, you were 6-6 with Nadal in the third set. I did not have the courage to see the tie-break and went for bath. When I came back, I saw that you had lost the tie-break 3-7. Then, you were in top form again in the fourth set even though I did not have the patience to watch it fully.

I finally reached the TV hall when you had won the fourth set 6-3. I was pretty confident that the fifth set would be very fiercely fought though you had drained out by then. You gave a tough resistance to Nadal even when going down 2-6 in the fifth set. For me, today was another day when Nadal with his constant running around and hitting time and again to your backhand frustrated you and in the process won the match. Losing is a part of sportsman life, you need not get dejected with today's loss.

For fans like me, you are still the Best in this world. You might not have matched the speed of Nadal today but some of the points you produced through your stunning winners would live for a long time in my memory. I am very sure that you will come with new plans for Nadal's strategy today and you have the ability and skill to defeat Nadal in the French open this year. I just wish that you do not get bogged down by this defeat as you are no more a No. 1 player officially. That is a good cushion to have with you.

When Sampras was playing, I had decided that I would stop watching tennis once he retired. You came into the arena that time and were (are) a notch above Sampras. My interest in tennis increased many folds watching your game. Grand Slam wins 13 or 14 are nothing but mere numbers. The diverse skills you display on a tennis court have no match. To reiterate, you are still the best tennis player in this world. Please do not care about the journalists who thrive on writing articles for money citing statistical data and your vulnerabilities.

I sincerely hope that you will produce a lot more great games of tennis and entertain your fans the years to come. I have stopped watching Women's tennis for years since the retirement of Henin as I hate the games of Williams sisters and the innumerable Russian girls who play nowadays. I take pride in saying now that I will stop watching tennis altogether when you retire. I totally dislike players like Nadal who play the game using their brawns rather than brains. Only when another person of atleast 10% of your class and finesse arrives on the scene, I will again start watching the sport.

I strongly feel that you need to be in the scene for a long time from now to delight us with your amazing skills. You need not worry about Nadal or any other hostile thing for that matter. Even if they defeat you, you are the very best in this world at the moment. Such failures often occur in life to anyone. There can ever be only one Roger Federer. You have taken the game of tennis altogether to a higher plane.

Thanks for the lot of amazing moments of joy you have given us over a period of time. Expecting a lot more such moments in near future. You are very precious for fans like me.

Sincerely,

Your Die-hard Fan

Booms, Myths and Catastrophes of Software Jobs – A Bird’s Eye View From Berth No. 72

2009-01-15T13:32:00.009+05:30

Prologue

This is a guest article written by my friend Dada, who is quite popular through his series of aamjunta blog posts. I requested him to write a guest blog for me, which he readily agreed. In spite of his busy schedule, he has written this excellent article. I feel very privileged to receive an article from aamjunta in my blog. This article has all the trademarks of a typical aamjunta article with thorough and insightful analysis of the software practices in India. I hope the readers would enjoy this article as much as I enjoyed. I am indebted to you for this article, Dada!

Article

[...] Oh! you are not a software engineer? My son-in-law is a software engineer and is currently placed in America. Before going to America, he was in France. Recently, he has purchased a flat in Hiranandani, Mumbai :) [...]

That was a casual statement of an old man on the first night of the two day train journey, on my way to Chennai in Dadar-Chennai Express last December. Though it was not that cold in Mumbai in December, it was cold enough to use blankets in a Sleeper Class bogie in the night. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a blanket with me; was unable to sleep due to the cold. I woke up due to the cold and sat up on my berth for the night (side lower, last/first, Berth No. 72). Thought of reading a novel to kill some time, but could not do as the regular lights were off. The casual comments of the gentleman came back to my mind…and time passed on…. At about 1am or so, saw a young man sitting alone some 10/12 seats away from my seat; looking calm and composed (he boarded the train from Pune). So, decided chat with him and spend some more time :) . Since my seat was at the end of the bogie and the side one, it was good enough for two people to sit and talk in the night (with less disturbance of course). Called him “Hi friend, whats up?, come, will have a chat”; he too gladly agreed to come over. He was a Software Engineer, hails from Chennai, joined some 3 years back in Pune. Asked him, casually, “so, you are going home in holidays?” No, was his answer, and he tried to change the topic. I could guess he was uncomfortable with that question. I did not repeat the same question again.

After some 30 minutes of our casual conversations, we became friends, started sharing our experiences, life, etc. Suddenly his voice changed, and choked. “I was fired in October, and am struggling to get a job since that time. Going to Chennai, to try my luck there”. He could not speak any more. I could not understand what to say and how to console him. Gave my water bottle to him and tried to change the topic. I offered him my help through my contacts, gave some contact person’s email ids and asked him to send his CV once he reached Chennai. It was almost 5.30am; we decided to go to sleep. He offered a shawl to me to cover. Thankfully, I could manage to sleep with his shawl.

Woke up very late in the morning (around 11.30am) had tea, and biscuits. Bought 2/3 news papers and started looking those. “Satyam Debared from World bank” the headline of The Hindu was not only catchy, was worrisome to me. Decided to go through that news article. I could not believe what I read. How come these things happen? Do they follow some ethics? What kind of industry it is? I could not read much. Stopped reading all news papers, instead stared thinking what could have been done? Why is the problem? And where is the problem?

My last night’s conversation with the young man and the old man added fuel to the fire inside me. Started thinking, went to dream mode and memories started flooding me. I could visualize everything that had once happened to me, my friends and acquaintances: went back to late 90s to compare the situation. During my own campus interview, every one in my college was after software jobs. Hardly any one was opting for a core job. Companies even left empty handed; reason -- they can’t beat the software companies in salary! Time has changed, and so is the situation. But, hardly the mentality of young engineers, professionals, parents and societies at large have changed. Body shopping is very much the reality and so is the craze and fight for software jobs. People spend years and years in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune for a software job. They do all kinds of courses starting from Testing to .Net, Java to Oracle and C to C#, appear in infinite number of interviews, register in N number of placement agencies; spend enough time and money on these.

Not that they fight for a job, they fight for their survival, their future. Some time they get some thing good on their own, some time with the help of some one else and some time they fail. The process of getting a job is not ethical always. Some use false experience, false degrees, and prepare false certificates to get a job. Giving false information in the CV and fooling companies is not a one man’s job though. This is full fledged business. There are many people involved in it. There are agencies operating only for this job in cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, etc. They provide all logistic support starting from giving false experience certificates to false degrees for a certain price. Their charges are different for providing different kinds of services. They handle all calls with precision, such that their clients do not face any problem in showing or proving their last job or experience. But the catch is once you are through and get a job with the false information; you will not be able to leave this, even if you want to go clean. You might be getting a job by some wrong/false information, but that false information will be there through out your life; in your blood. You will have to repeat the same wrong thing again and again while changing a job, while sending your CV; you have to tell more and more lies and do more unethical practices, till you retire or get caught. Tackling such kind of illegal and unethical practices is really a big problem for genuine industries. Some get trapped in the process, and some clear.

One need not wonder if he/she comes to know about the fraud or unethical practices in companies. Some one takes telephonic interview for some one else, some false CV is being made with a purpose, mostly to click a client side offer. There are people hired by the companies specifically for this kind of job, to attain telephonic interviews, to prepare CVs, to clear on-line tests required by the client. To beat that, some time the clients make video conferencing, instead of telephonic interviews. But, people on the other side are very clever. Some one stands behind the camera and writes the answers in the white board in detail; enough for the person to answer to the client. Poor client, pays for an expert and gets a ...... :(

Even then… the software industries flourish, pay maximum salary in comparison to other industries; which is good for the people, for the employees, and for the country’s economy. But, if you see the other side, it creates a disparity in the job market, between the core job and the software job, between the manufacturing industries and software industries, which is bad for the country’s growth and for the future. Since the capital requirement to operate or to start a software company is very low, many companies take birth daily. Like opening, the closing or the failure is also very easy, leading to catastrophes. The rise and fall of a software company is really a mystery. The successes are sometimes myths. Unless balance is maintained and have checks, the booms and the catastrophes will continue giving birth to more e-frauds/frauds, unethical practices, greed and lay offs. Some kill them selves (like one of my friends did in last May), some kill their families, some become psychos, some fight back and the cycles continue. Even then, people still feel crazy about this, girls prefer software engineers the most (as boy friend or life partner) so also the would be father-in-laws. Poor hard core techies… :(

Suddenly my phone rang. It was 7.15pm on my watch. I woke up from the dream, from the subconscious musing of 5 hours. Started packing my belongings to get down, was refreshed, and recharged a bit, after thinking a lot. Thanked IRCTC for berth no 72.

Aamjunta... what do you think? Dreaming for a software job? Be careful; don't get into any of the unethical practices. I'm sure, you will get a job. All the best :)

The Bachelor of Arts by R K Narayan - Quick Review

2009-01-14T10:57:00.003+05:30

I just completed reading this second novel of R K Narayan, The Bachelor of Arts. This novel is radically different from his first novel Swami and Friends. It tells the story of a person called Chandran and his struggles in his life from the college days. The novel keeps the reader engaged throughout and is a pleasant read.

I could see lot of similarities between this novel and the movie Vaaranam Aayiram. It is sad to observe that even a director like Gautham Menon uses a novel for his basic plot and does not acknowledge it afterwards. It would then go down with critics as a lift. As I have already written a review for Vaaranam Aayiram, I need not say much about this novel.

Overall, this novel is a good one. It helps one to plan life properly in order to aviod many hiccups. However, one should not expect much fun as Swami and Friends.

Bond with the Best

2009-01-13T11:49:00.008+05:30

I have a cool friend from my undergraduate (UG) college days in PSG Tech. For the past 10 years, I have been in touch with him. His name is Vinoth, affectionately called Bond and more affectionately as Makkaa. "Makkaa", meaning friend, is a typical tamil slang used by him often. He hails from Tirunelveli. I have not been that close to him for the past 5 years, but he has always been in touch with me through mail. He even wished me for my birthday last month. This blog is just a small tribute to the great qualities of Bond.

Bond is a guy who is very passionate about life. The way he narrates each incident which interests him has no match. He starts with his favorite verse, "மக்கா, நேத்திக்கு அங்க போன்னேன்ல டா ... அங்க என்ன நடந்துச்சுன்னா ..." ("Makkaa, yesterday I went there right ... there what happened was ...") something like this. He keeps the listener interested throughout his narration. One can forget all the worries in the world when talking with Bond. One can enjoy his narration far better than actually watching the movie. He gives time to talk with a friend, if he has some other urgent work to do. Further, he is a very good listener and gives suggestions if required on any problems.

Bond also takes criticisms very lightly. Being undergraduates, we had lot of fun in college and soft guys like him are prone to constant leg-pulling from other classmates. He never lost his temper those days and used to just smile and walk away. He has made a huge number of friends. In fact, one can very readily concede that no one who meets Bond dares to dislike him. He never takes anything to heart and behaves very lovingly even after unavoidable arguments with his friends.

Bond has travelled to many countries over the past 5 years and has always updated each one of us in UG class without fail. We were a class of 82 in UG. For him, all the 81 of us are friends. He also sends us pictures from his recent trips and events. He likes to ride his bike, is a trained martial arts professional, and is quite passionate to learn and do new things in life. He has always been there to help his friends.

Personally, I have interacted with Bond quite a lot during the UG days. I have also gone to his home in Tirunelveli once with my classmate Aravinth. Being a guy who loves to have a dig and fun always, my interaction with Bond during UG days was quite eventful. Being a fun-loving guy himself, Bond used to like my antics and has always supported me during my funny arguments & fights with my classmate Deeran (Korangu) & others many a times. I can not remember a single incident now, but we had quite a many.

The bitter fact is that Bond is not with us in this world anymore. He has left this world having drowned in the Bay of Bengal while trying to fetch a ball from sea. I heard that his final rites are over. This news was a shock for me over the past 2 days. I still can not believe that he is not with us at this moment. But, he still lives with all his friends as the sweet and pleasant memories he has left over the years.

Plans for the Year Ahead

2009-01-11T22:40:00.005+05:30

The new year has started in a disappointing note for me as I am receiving bad vibes in both personal as well as professional life. I have decided to achieve/follow certain things (I will not call them resolutions as they are rarely followed) in 2009. These norms have been framed after a thorough research. They are listed below and I sincerely hope I follow them.

1. Considerably reduce the amount of technical books read.

2. Increase the amount of fiction/non-fiction general books read.

3. Keep the number of technical papers read to a bare minimum.

4. Focus more on fitness and keep engaged in some stuff always.

5. Look for developing new professional/personal relations.

6. Keep a fair distance from any sort of controversy/politics (situations as well as persons) in both professional and personal life.

7. Roam a bit more in Mumbai.

8. Take one long break to home from research in order to regroup.

9. Plan one visit across India to historical places of interest.

10. Be happy and actively post a lot of blogs consistently. :)

Swami and Friends by R K Narayan - Review

2009-01-08T13:43:00.002+05:30

Swami and Friends was the first novel written by RK Narayan. I completed reading this novel yesterday. It is part of a collection of 3 novels called A Malgudi Omnibus, others being Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. I just started reading Bachelor of Arts. In this review, I will not give summary of the story as it will spoil the thrill when one reads the novel.

As is the case with all Narayan works, this novel is also set in an imaginary town in South India called Malgudi. Swaminathan is a young boy less than 10 years old. This novel narrates his experiences with his parents, grandmother, friends, residents of Malgudi, and even his new-born brother when he is in second class. However, Swami and his friends are the prime focus of this novel.

Swami is a quite different child than the present day children. He lives in a village and he is extremely innocent which sometimes makes him look mischievous as well. His fate lands him in trouble in whatever he does. He has his own perception of the world and tries to be the conqueror in spite of his own shortcomings like fear, innocence, etc. Circumstances make him a mis-fit to any school in Malgudi.

On the other hand, his friend Rajam is a city-born child who acts beyond his age quite similar to the present day children. He is very ambitious and courageous with least respect for the elders. His father is a policeman which is also a reason for his courage. Apart from being very good in studies, he is very adamant to achieve things which are beyond his reach and is not bothered by the consequences of his present actions.

There is another friend of Swami called Mani who is a village version of courageous child. Even though he is courageous, his innocence mostly overtakes that. He is very close to Swami and offers him lot of advice even when not asked. He also carries a club which he feels will protect him in adverse situations.

The incidences which involve these three close friends form the crux of the novel. Swami has a strict father, a kind grandmother, and a mother who loses interest in him once she gives birth to a new baby. The novel is pretty slow to start with and provides every small detail which form the base for the fun later. I will just provide some of the instances which I thoroughly enjoyed from this novel.

Ultimate fun awaits the reader in chapter 12. Swami and Mani listen to a freedom fighter's talk. The freedom fighter blasts the English rulers very much. He tells that if all the people of India go and spit on England, that is more than enough to submerge the whole England. I personally think it is quite true, unless one disproves it by actually making millions spit on England. Swami also thinks it is true and asks Mani if they can attempt that. Mani replies saying Europeans are very bad guys and they will shoot them. This chapter progresses in such a manner and engages reader with non-stop fun.

Swami's encounters with the Board school headmaster is also equally enjoyable. The attitude of that headmaster took me back to my school days when some of my teachers used to carry canes to beat students and treat the students as their slaves. Swami becomes a super-hero when he grabs and throws the cane away when the headmaster attempts to beat him. After that, his conscience makes him feel sad and leads to other troubles.

Malgudi Cricket Club (M.C.C.) which is started by Swami and his friends took me back to my school days when we also tried to start a cricket team called Danger Boys. The letter they write to Binns sports shop in Madras and the other happenings are great to read.

On the whole, Swami and Friends is an amazing novel and I do not think I would be reading a better novel ever. The novel took me to my school days and I could relate many of the Swami's experiences to my own. This novel is an unadulterated and absolutely thorough portrayal of a child's life. It is rather unfortunate that most of the present day children have their so called intelligence suppressing innocence associated with their age.

Having said that, I am sure that one can find many children like Swami in Indian villages even today. This novel is a must read for any one who want to roll back their years and enjoy the innocent moments of their life.

End of an Era ?

2008-12-31T13:16:00.004+05:30

Yesterday was a remarkable day in the history of world cricket. South Africa exposed the weaknesses of Australia to the hilt and in the process defeated them in the home series for the first time in the past 16 years. I could not watch the chase as I woke up late and learned from Cricinfo that South Africa had already won.

South Africa were in very bad situation in both the tests and with unmatched fighting spirit, they overcame all odds. It was a sensational result considering how Australia used to beat other countries like this over the past decade. In my opinion, Australia had begun their steady decline from the top when India challenged them a year earlier. Now, is has more or less led them to be the third best in the world.

One salient feature of the Australian team in the past decade was that they had players like Steve Waugh, Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, and Ponting who could turn a match from any adverse situation. The lone survivor is their present captain, Ricky Ponting. He tried his very best as a batsman to avoid defeat at Melbourne, yet he failed as a captain with his weird strategies. Though he lacked the best personnel for the job, part of the blame has to be shared by him.

On the other hand, South Africa are truly the No 1 side in the world at present. Graeme Smith has lead them to a sensational win in the same manner as Dhoni had done 2 months earlier. All the 11 players as well as their bench strength is very strong for South Africa. It was evident in the way JP Duminy batted on the 3rd day of the Melbourne test. They have the best bowling line up comprising Steyn, Ntini, and Morkel backed up by Kallis and Harris.

South Africa will become No. 1 in the world officially if they defeat Australia at Sydney. I certainly feel that they can do it considering Australia has serious injury problems to Lee, Symonds, Watson, and Clark. For Hayden, it is going to be the last chance to make his claim for Ashes. He is a real fighter and it would be interesting to see how he approaches this match.

Irrespective of how the Sydney test goes, South Africa are the best in the world now and have deservedly stunned the world by defeating Australia in Australia. I just hope that other countries follow them and inflict more defeats on Australia which would do the test cricket a world of good. Next year 2009 is going to be great for test cricket as many countries are serious contenders for the top spot.

Ghajini (Hindi) - Review

2008-12-25T22:48:00.006+05:30

Aamir Khan's Ghajini released today worldwide. I could not help but watch the movie today itself though I have seen Ghajini in tamil many a times. The primary reason being Aamir Khan who puts a lot of effort in each movie he acts. I simply loved watching his movies like Sarfarosh, Dil Chahta Hai, Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par, Andaz Apna Apna, Lagaan, etc. I wanted to see the movie just for Aamir and of course, Asin, who gave a great performance in tamil version. Also, I liked three songs of Ghajini by AR Rahman.

I saw the movie in Huma Big Cinemas today afternoon as my friend Deven Patel got me the ticket yesterday. One problem with the tamil version was the last 30 minutes which was quite amateurish. That has been corrected in the hindi version making the movie even more slick. Technology is superior in hindi version with more concentration on details. Overall, it is a complete entertainer.

Aamir has given a stunning performance and he lives the role of Sanjay. One cannot compare his performance with that of Surya as both are equally good in different aspects. Asin has also done a great job with her role. Jiah Khan is far better than Nayantara, who did the same role in the tamil version. The villain Pradeep Rawat is also quite good. The camerawork and the locales are excellent. The songs also fit into the narration far better than the tamil version.

I really enjoyed the movie a lot and I am sure that it would become a huge hit. I recommend this movie even to those who have already seen the tamil version.

Cricket and Terror

2008-12-16T13:39:00.005+05:30

I was over the moon yesterday as I could sparingly watch the spectacular chase by India against England. I was doubly delighted as Sachin was extremely relaxed and his century was another gem. India played well as a team and achieved what only West Indies some decades back or Australia some years back would have achieved. We are certainly on the path towards greatness, no doubt about that.

I was not that interested in watching this match at the start as I was feeling that it was needless to stage this match after the terror attacks in Mumbai recently. But, this match proved to be a good diversion for at least the silly Indian news channels as they marginally reduced the amount of rumor they were spreading about the terror attacks.

Terrorism in any form is not to be tolerated to any extent. The recent happenings in Mumbai are a warning to all Indians to unite against terrorism across the border. As Sachin himself said, this test match gave mild relief to many Indians who were upset with Mumbai terror attack.

Having said that I strongly feel that India must immediately shut down all ties with Pakistan including cricket as there is now ample evidence for Pakistan's involvement in the recent attacks. There is no need to play cricket, or any other sport for that matter, with a neighboring nation having ulterior motives and the nation which keeps breeding terrorists in their territory especially PoK. I would be disappointed if the tour goes ahead due to the constant lobbying of BCCI.

I am very disappointed with Sri Lanka's offer to tour Pakistan if India pulls out. I did not expect that an experienced cricketer like Arjuna Ranatunga, who is now heading Sri Lankan cricket, would take such a decision compromising players' safety for money. As another country fighting against internal conflicts themselves like India, they should have been bit sensible and should have stood with India in their fight against terrorism.

The present test match between England and India provided great entertainment as both the countries are strongly opposing terrorism in any form. A Pakistan Vs Srilanka test match will be of least interest to anyone in the present scenario even if it produces great cricket.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - Quick Review

2008-12-07T21:50:00.003+05:30

I just completed reading the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. It is a very well written novel about the journey of a shepherd boy towards a treasure. The author has given lot of emphasis about the obstacles he faces and the help he gets along the journey. It ends with how the boy attains his treasure with the help of the omens and some persons he meets along the way.

Anyone can relate the incidents in the novel to that of their travel towards destination in personal life. The book is written in a very simple language and provides lot of insight into the life lessons to be learnt. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this amazing book. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in meaningful fictions.

Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory: 50 years of IIT-Bombay

2008-12-03T15:49:00.006+05:30

I had the opportunity to attend the book release function of "Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory: 50 years of IIT Bombay" by Prof Rohit Manchanda at Crossword, Kemps Corner on Oct 6th. It was a very interactive session presided over by Alyque Padamsee. Many professors of IIT Bombay including the present and past directors and deans attended the function. Many alumni of IIT Bombay who had contributed to the book narrated their experience in detail whenever Padamsee read the relevant pages from the book. It was a great evening to remember. An account of this function is provided at IIT Bombay homepage.

I am yet to read the book. I plan to write a review of the book once I do that.

Vaaranam Aayiram - Brief Review

2008-12-02T13:57:00.003+05:30

I went to see Varanam Aayiram at PVR Mulund two weeks back. Though the reviews for the movie were not that great, I went to see this movie as I liked the songs very much. Here, I could watch the movie without any cuts. Here is a very brief review of the movie.

There are many positives in this movie. The songs are shot extremely well which along with nice music are a treat to watch on screen. Acting is top class from all the lead actors especially Suriya. Dual role is very nicely performed by him. The first half is very fast and entertaining.

The main problem with this movie in spite of all these positives is that it lacks an original script in the second half. Many scenes are borrowed from popular movies like Autograph, Thavamai thavamirunthu and even Lakshya. The movie moves at snail pace after the interval testing the patience of the audience to maximum level.

This movie has all the best ingredients except a good script. Hard work put forth by Suriya and Harris Jayaraj sort of goes waste due to bad screenplay by Gautham Menon. However, this movie is lot sensible one than many other mass masala craps which are flooding tamil cinema nowadays. One can definitely go and watch this movie just for Suriya's performance and Harris Jayaraj's great music.

Ghajini (Hindi) - Music Review

2008-12-01T14:24:00.003+05:30

I just listened to all songs in the yet-to-be-released hindi movie, Ghajini. Here are my comments on the songs of this movie tuned by AR Rahman.

1. Guzaarish - This song sounds great. With great humming by Sonu Nigam and vocal by Javed Ali. But I could observe that this song is ripped off from one of the Rahman's earlier songs called "Ennai Kaanavillaiye" from the Tamil movie called "Kaadhal Desam". Both the tune and beats are recycled from this song. Yet, it is a pleasant number with great visuals.

2. Kaise Mujhe - Excellent Melody with nice vocals by Benny and Shreya. I simply love this song and it is my caller tune now. I could not get the lyrics fully though I liked the premise.

3. Behka - Decent song which remembers me of Yun Hi Chala Chal from Swades. Karthik's vocal is good. I did not like this one much. Visuals are good in the promo.

4. Lattoo - It is a fast song by Shreya. A feel good number.

5. Aye Bachoo - I did not like this song after listening once. No comments.

Overall, the album is a good one with a great melody song similar to Tamil movie Ghajini which had Suttum Vizhi. It is worth listening to this album.

Champion of the Champions

2008-11-30T13:33:00.001+05:30

Last month marked the sensational return of Roger Federer in his top gear to lift the US open title for the fifth consecutive year. Federer was not in any sort of rhythm going into the US open this year. But he fought with full dedication and lifted the crown which he definitely deserves for many more years to come.

I am a great fan of the greats of the open era like Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, Steffi Graff, Navaratilova, Justine Henin apart from Roger Federer. One common factor among all these champions is that all had a single-handed backhand which is a delight to watch. What makes Federer stand unique is his versatility on all surfaces. One might argue that he could not win a title in French open still. But, if not for Nadal, Federer would already have been champion there for 3 consecutive years. Sampras has never entered the final of French open ever as he did not have a proper game for clay court.

At present, both Federer and Nadal are injured but gearing up for the next show in the Australian open early next year. This absence has given opportunity for Djokovic and Murray to regroup. On a given day, these four are capable of defeating each other with their skills. It is surely a great situation for the Australian open with these 4 being the most probable semi finalists.

Being an admirer of Federer, I strongly feel that Federer would overcome these hurdles to win the Australian open and therefore equal Sampras' record of 14 grandslam wins. Federer would then be crowned "The Greatest of all time" by statistics as well. I just can not wait for the cracking contests in Australian open next year.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga- Review

2008-11-19T10:40:00.006+05:30

I managed to complete reading The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga last week. I normally do not read non-technical books especially fictions. So, I am not the right person to review it either. However, I am trying a hand at it. I got a copy of this book to just see why there is such a hype around that book. It was an easy read for me as the context of the story was quite familiar to me. Let me provide review of this famous Man Booker prize winner of this year.

This novel is nothing but a letter to Chinese Premier from a successful entrepreneur called Balram Halwai aka The White Tiger. I can observe that the motivation to write this novel was to show how this person becomes an entrepreneur in Bangalore. He comes from a remote Village near Dhanbad which the author frequently refers as 'Darkness'. He joins as a driver cum servant to a person called Mr Ashok in Dhanbad. The incidents which lead him to murder his boss and migrate to Bangalore in a new avatar of an entrepreneur forms the crux of this novel.

This story is quite straight-forward. But the brilliance of the author comes out in stitching lot of interesting incidents together, though there is something artificial in each of those. There is a sense of repetition as the author tries to make fun of each and every system in India. The novel sounds like a typical Manirathnam movie in which he usually would analyze lot of sensitive issues only to conclude the movie without suggesting any proper solution.

I have some particular queries once I completed reading the novel. I am not sure if the author tries to convey that settling in a city from a village is the only solution to problems in India. In my opinion this is just an escape from the core problem. Also, I am not sure if the author is supportive of the corporate life in cities which blatantly copy the culture from the west. I would have been satisfied if he had made more fun of urban guys as well.

On the whole, I do not see this novel to be a path-breaking one and I am not sure if this novel is worth the hype around it. I agree that there are abundant funny moments in the novel which a non-indian would enjoy. Indian citizens may not like them as they are being shown in bad light.

I am certain that, now onwards, high-class people would be very much wary of drivers and servants after knowing the fate of Mr Ashok in this novel. If this is the only change, if any, the author intended to achieve with this novel, he has achieved it with considerable success!

Olympics - Some thoughts

2008-08-25T11:54:00.008+05:30

Olympic games (summer) got over yesterday in Beijing. I am extremely happy that China won the overall medal tally surpassing US. Still, US media might believe that they are the first after adding gold, silver and bronze together. It does not matter as US always has the habit of changing the rules and regulations to make sure that they are the first.

I was able to witness all the gold medal runs of Usain Bolt who set 3 world records. I was amazed by his confidence as he started celebrating every time even before reaching the finishing line. I was not so much moved by the adventures of Phelps, partly because he was over-hyped and partly because there was no thrill in seeing him win again and again.

As far as Indian participation is concerned, this seems to be our best olympics so far. I hope they improve on this rather than just live with the pride. In fact, I would have been happier if the Government had established 6 sports academies instead of 6 new IITs. We already have enough so-called engineers and I have always felt that progress demands a nation to venture into areas where they are lacking. I just wish common sense prevails and sports academies/institutes are established in future.

Broadcast by Doordarshan (DD) was pathetic to say the least. The presenters kept on talking for hours instead of showing the feed they received from olympics. They had placed a small TV between the presenters which showed the live games. The problem was that one could not even see the score and other details from that TV. I almost lost my patience every time they took long time to switch to the feed in the small TV near them. Hindi and English commentaries provided by DD for all the matches were ultimate torture. They could have just left us with the original commentaries which came with the feed.

There was Men's singles tennis semifinals going on between Nadal and Djokovic which was being fiercely fought. It was shown in the small TV betweeen the presenters. I was glued to the presenters and was waiting for them to switch to the match feed. But they kept speaking arbitrary things and started showing a recorded programme on Indian participation in Olympics with Suresh Kalmadi which bored the viewers. They did not show the tennis match till the end.

This is just an example of not utilising the full resource even when it is completely available. There were some reporters from DD who were in Beijing who kept appearing every now and then. They were very bad in communication and presentation skills and were pretty old. I just wonder whether they were selected to go to Beijing on the basis of some quota.

The Man Behind Ubuntu

2008-07-10T22:04:00.003+05:30

I happened to read this interview of Mark Shuttleworth, who is "The Man Behind Ubuntu". The interview is truly inspiring, worth a read.

Nokia 5310 Vs Sony Ericsson w580i

2008-06-23T15:12:00.007+05:30

I bought Nokia 5310 and Sony Ericsson w580i two weeks back and examined their functionalities for about 5 days. I thought it worth comparing these 2 phones with similar features. Search in google for the look of these 2 phones.

Price:
Nokia 5310 - INR 9,200
Sony Ericsson w580i - INR 10,000

Model:
Nokia 5310 - Slim, Light weight
Sony Ericsson w580i - Sliding, Bit heavy

Software:
Nokia 5310 - PC suite installs in Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Sony Ericsson w580i - PC suite installs in Windows 2000/XP

Camera:
Both the phones have 2MP camera. Sony Ericsson w580i's pictures are much less noisy compared to that of Nokia 5310. This may be due to superior imaging technology of Sony. One strange thing I observed was that I could not use zoom while in single shot mode of Sony Ericsson w580i.

Music:
Both the phones come with 1 GB MicroSD card. Nokia 5310 has XpressMusic while Sony Ericsson w580i has Walkman. Quality of sound is quite good in both. Nokia 5310 comes preloaded with 50 Bollywood hits while Sony Ericsson w580i comes with 4 sets of ear plugs of different sizes. Both the phones have FM also. Both have separate volume, play/pause, prev and next buttons like IPods. I could not connect to any FM station as the signals were very weak at my hometown.

Bluetooth & Internet:
Both the phones have GPRS and bluetooth. I connected both the phones to internet via GPRS. I could browse using my laptop connected to Nokia 5310 as it had a PC suite which installed in Vista and I had Vista in my laptop. Another interesting application in Nokia 5310 is Yahoo! Go. It is a collection of tools which enable one to browse maps, check mails, read news etc. I liked it very much. The browser in Nokia 5310 called Opera Mini is excellent and it could fetch pages from internet sites which are not accessible by in-built browsers of Nokia 5310 and Sony Ericsson w580i. Applications for internet are abundant in Nokia 5310 compared to Sony Ericsson w580i.

Display:
Nokia 5310 has a 16M color display while Sony Ericsson w580i has a 256K color display. I could feel that the display and menus of Sony Ericsson w580i are far better than Nokia 5310 in terms of easy navigation and user convenience. Also, themes of Sony Ericsson w580i are very nice.

On the whole, both Nokia 5310 and Sony Ericsson w580i are worth the money spent.

Dasavatharam - Erroneous proofs for controversial theory

2008-06-18T10:47:00.006+05:30

Yesterday, I went to Adlabs for watching Dasavatharam just to see what is there in it to create this much hype. I did not hold any expectations as per the advice of my friend Balaji. Dasavatharam has only one show (that too at 7:20PM) per day in Huma Adlabs, still there were hardly 50 people on the 5th day from release.

I was thoroughly disappointed with the first scene itself where a graphics of stadium was shown. The crowd and architecture resembled like those shown in EA sports games such as Cricket, FIFA etc. But the 12th century set and camerawork were of very high standards.

Coming to the theme, Kamal's story and screenplay has tried to prove the theory that God does not exist throughout the film. But the sad part is that the proof is completely erroneous with neither proper justifications nor proper implications. It is no wonder that some spiritual organization asked for a ban on the film. My observation is that Kamal has made this movie to please the atheists. I do not want to elaborate how Kamal was wrong in proving his point as I feel it a waste of my time and energy to discuss about that.

As far as Kamal's 10 roles are concerned, Kamal has put lot of effort to make every role distinct. Out of 10 Kamals, I liked the Balram Naidu character which is quite hilarious. The Poovaragan character is quite sensible. Other characters are just passable. Asin's character as Andal is one of the most irritating roles I have ever seen. She keeps on running with Kamal and lands him in trouble most of the times.

The movie on the whole is very artificial and kids would appreciate it more as they may not understand the theory behind the movie. One would have liked Kamal to make a light-hearted comedy with his ten roles in this movie. But he follows a different path in this movie and fails miserably. This film, no doubt, has some good scenes but they are sparse and spread randomly. Dasavatharam is definitely not in the league of Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Avvai Shanmugi, Thenali etc.

My predicition: An atheist would enjoy this movie the most and people who have even small belief in any form of God would like to stay away from it after hearing from others.

Firefox Download Day

2008-05-29T16:45:00.006+05:30

Hardy Heron - Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

2008-05-15T09:53:00.003+05:30

Hardy Heron, an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support), was released last month. It includes several new features like Firefox 3 beta, Wubi installer for windows among several others. I would always try a new ubuntu release the very day it gets released. But this time, I am presently out of my territory for a couple of months. So, I could not try Hardy Heron till now. I would post a review once I get into my zone next month. Till then, I need to satisfy myself by reading reviews by others on Hardy Heron.

Here are some of the reviews:

http://fosswire.com/2008/04/24/ubuntu-804-hardy-heron-review/
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18227/1141/
http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=22514
http://www.crn.com/software/207401927

By the way, next Ubuntu release in October 2008 is named "Intrepid Ibex"!

Few days with gOS Rocket

2008-01-30T10:45:00.001+05:30

I installed gOS Rocket in my desktop a week back out of curiosity. My desktop has P4 2.26GHz, 1.26GB DDR1. Installation was very simple. But when I booted for the first time with gOS, some arbitrary error messages flooded my screen (even now, I get them everytime I boot :)). I thought gOS had screwed up something. Fortunately, those messages didnt affect a normal startup and I could login. The desktop is quite pleasing for the eyes. Other than that I really could not find any improvements over Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. In fact, I faced some problems in navigation through different windows and also difficulty in locating even the terminal ! Any user already using Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon would be happy continue using it. There is no reason to switch to gOS Rocket.

In short, I would term gOS Rocket as just a very good theme based on enlightenment for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. It may be suited for desktops with <512MB RAM because its desktop is very light. I would soon switch to Gutsy Gibbon as it offers more than what I desire for my desktop.

gOS Rocket - First Impressions

2008-01-21T14:58:00.002+05:30

I finally managed to download live CD of gOS-2.0 Rocket yesterday. I just ran the live CD to get first impressions of the new gOS Rocket. I list some of the features I could observe during my 30 minutes stay with the live CD.

gOS desktop appears stunning similar to a Mac, better than other linux distros.
As I already doubted in my previous blog, Google applications are not preinstalled. Just the icons are there in desktop. Clicking the icons, would take one to Google homepage through Firefox.
Almost all applications required for everyday use such as Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Gimp, CD/DVD burner, Music/ Video players (Rhythmbox, Xine) are pre-installed.
Synaptic package manager can be used to install other free applications like Tetex, mplayer, gedit, emacs etc through internet.
Performance-wise, gOS is very fast even while running from live CD which may be attributed to the light-weight window manager called Enlightenment.
Installation procedure is same as that of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

On the whole, in my opinion, gOS is quite suited to any desktop/laptop user working with internet most of the times. In other words, any managerial person would love to have gOS to be with him/her. Almost all everyday job can be performed very easily by even a beginner in Linux. Hard-core Linux fans (also Linux geeks) who are already working with some other popular Linux Distro such as Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora etc may not appreciate gOS that much.

Ubuntu Training Material for Novice

2008-01-20T17:48:00.001+05:30

I just came across documents which are basic guides for any novice to Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu training group has done a commendable job with the document and clearly explain the advantages of using Ubuntu without much advanced details. One can download both student and instructor material from Ubuntu Wiki as PDF documants. This is a very good step towards educating new users about the best OS available now. I hope many instructors use the available material in order to encourage and educate students to use Linux.

Good Tamil Movie Album in recent times !

2008-01-20T15:46:00.001+05:30

I rarely listen to new tamil movie songs for the past 3-4 years because most of them are repetitive in music and few of the new singers spoil the better ones. Just few weeks back, I happened to listen to songs from the tamil movie "Pirivom Sandhippom" which has music by Vidyasagar. All the songs in the album are worthy melodies. I particularly liked the duet song "Kanden Kanden" very much. Singer Karthik has sung this song excellently, as good as SPB in his peak days. Female singer Swetha's voice is pretty good, though rendition is not clear at times. The background music of the song is very innovative. Anyone who likes peppy melody would definitely like this song. After "Mozhi", Vidyasagar has given nice melodies once more!

gOS Rocket Launch !

2008-01-06T21:55:00.001+05:30

gOS - Discover a good OS is a Linux distribution with free updates for life. It is built upon Ubuntu Linux and Enlightenment window manager. It has almost all major applications such as openoffice, pidgin, firefox etc which every desktop user requires for his/her day-to-day work. I still do not understand about how Google applications are shipped with this OS. Generally, Firefox is enough for running almost all the applications of Google as they are web-based. Enlightenment is a light-weight window manager which could speed up Ubuntu quite a bit compared to Gnome, KDE and xfce. Rocket, the latest version of gOS built on Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10), is due for release tomorrow. I am eagerly awaiting to try Rocket and see its added advantages with Gutsy Gibbon.

Belated New Year Resolution

2008-01-06T14:06:00.001+05:30

First of all, Congratulations to Australian cricket team for securing the worst win in test cricket at Sydney flooded with hugely biased umpiring (thanks to Benson and Bucknor) and cheating by almost all Australian players. Australians, in particular - Ponting and Gilchrist should be ashamed of this win for they supported and carried forward all the cheats carried out over all the 5 days of Sydney Test. As World Champions, they are setting a worst example to others.

This win has obviously propelled me to make a belated new year resolution, i.e., to stop following the cricket matches which are becoming increasingly meaningless thanks to the growth of pathetic umpiring and poor gamesmanship. This resolution would definitely save a lot of time for me and would enable me to do better things in life. At least now, I have realized this. Always, it is better late than never!

Australia in Trouble? Call on the Umpires!

2008-01-02T16:10:00.001+05:30

Australia was in hopeless condition today at 134/6 in the Sydney Test. I thought India were in a better position to wind up Australian Innings below 200. But, as it has always happened for the past few years, apart from luck, umpires (including 3rd umpire!) came to the rescue of Australia. Symonds got to an ugly century one would ever see in a test after getting out logically innumerable times. I will not give any credit to Australia even if they win this test by an innings. Now that there is little hope for India in this test, I can better concentrate on my work. :) However, kudos to Indian bowlers for their fighting spirit against all odds.

Microsoft Techvista, New Delhi 2007

2007-12-25T14:47:00.002+05:30

In October 2007, I had the opportunity to attend Microsoft Techvista in Intercontinental Eros, New Delhi. It was a grand event from the top research lab in the world, Microsoft Research. Techvista was organized as an one day event comprising of expert talks and a poster session. Also, there were talks by Mr. Kapil Sibal and Mr. Arun Shourie.

Some of the talks were excellent. I particularly liked the talks by Dr. Michael Kass, Prof. Manuela M. Veloso, and Prof. Krithi Ramamritham. Talk by Mr. Arun Shourie was thought-provoking and I was amazed by his courage to make strong comments on sensitive issues like reservation. Mr. Kapil Sibal's talk mostly comprised of a lot of promises from his office.

Poster session was good and the posters depicted new trends in the computer science research. IIT Madras team won the first prize. Second prize was bagged by Vinay, my labmate at Vision and Image Processing Lab, IIT Bombay. Third prize was awarded to Anirudh from CSE Dept, IIT Bombay.

Techvista is an unique technical research event organized by Microsoft Research India in order to inspire talented students to take up research after their graduation. I really enjoyed the trip and I could get exposure on various recent research areas apart from meeting many prominent researchers. I am eagerly waiting for the next edition of Microsoft Techvista.

Mood Indigo 2007

2007-12-25T00:59:00.002+05:30

Mood Indigo, the largest cultural fest in Asia, is held every year at IIT Bombay. This year's Mood Indigo (December 26-29) is even bigger because IIT Bombay is celebrating its Golden Jubilee. There are performances from Jagjit Singh and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy apart from other attractions. I hope to attend some of the events and will post reviews in my future blogs. Mood Indigo schedule can be accessed at Moodi Site.

India Vs Australia Boxing Day Test 2007

2007-12-24T14:13:00.001+05:30

This year's boxing day test between India and Australia is very special as it is going to be the 100th test for Sourav Ganguly. With Sourav in very good form, one can expect some special innings in this test. This expectation must not hide the fierce battle between two highly competitive teams in test cricket. Teams like England, South Africa and New Zealand talk a lot before their respective test series against Australia, but have rarely managed to match Australia. Often they get folded within 3-4 days making the series highly one sided. The same can not be said about India and to some extent Srilanka.

India always have put full effort in order to trounce Australia in every test series over the last 5-6 years. I am quite excited as to what should be expected in the boxing day test at Melbourne. My gut feeling is that first innings of the test is going to be the key factor in the test. This is because Australians rarely allow opposition to score more than 500 runs in the first innings of a test. This makes Australians devoid of any pressure and makes job much easier.

With such a strong batting line-up, I expect India to score atleast 400 runs whether they bat first or second. 400 is the bare minimum required to put any sort of mild pressure on the Australians irrespective of the pitch/weather conditions. For this to happen, top order of Indian batting must fire and play with complete freedom without ever going into a shell. Indian bowling is quite weak compared to that of Australia and I expect Australia to easily plunder 500 runs in the first innings.

As far as batting is concerned, India have top-class players like Dravid, Sachin, Sourav, Laxman and Jaffer who can all contribute towards a big first innings score. But I would back Sehwag, if selected, to have a go at the Australian bowling. Even if he falls for a quick-fire 50, it will have a lasting impact on the Australian new ball bowlers. But in Sehwag's present form, there is least possibility that he will tear apart Australian attack. This makes way for Yuvraj. Yuvraj deserves a place in the side after his breath-taking hundred against Pakistan in difficult situation. As Sehwag can just be used as a trial and error choice, Yuvraj has a strong claim for the No. 6 spot. This would mean that Dravid has to open the batting.

Australian bowling is quite superb. They have guys who can normally bowl at 150KmpH (Lee, Johnson, Tait if selected). They also have a good line and length bowler in Stuart Clark. I would prefer that Australia select Hogg instead of Tait, which will help India to get a breather while batting. Hogg has rarely picked up wickets in one-day matches due to his brilliance. Batsmen often lose their wicket only when they try to hit Hogg out of the stadium. It would be interesting to see how he fares in test cricket.

I can not quite comment on Indian bowling. I can hardly see India able to get Australia all out below 400 runs in the first innings. I reckon that Hayden, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Symonds and Gilchrist can all fire against this Indian bowling attack. This would mean that there would be extra pressure on the bowlers to keep the run-rate under check even if they are not able to take wickets which would in turn enahance possibilities of a high scoring draw. Zaheer and Kumble should lead the attack and have to put up some special effort to rattle the Australian batting.

I foresee a cracker of a contest with both teams having very strong batting line-ups. The way the sides bat in the first innings of the test could effectively decide the result. I am eagerly waiting for the boxing day to arrive soon so that I would be pretty much occupied with a grand contest over the next 5 days. However, in the hindsinght, I am not able to ignore the thought about the possibility of this boxing day test getting over within 4 days in Australia's favour which would certainly be an anti-climax after this much hype.

Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings

2007-12-23T16:27:00.001+05:30

Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, delivers a speech in the default installation of Ubuntu Linux. He aptly stresses importance of the term "Ubuntu" whose meaning is "humanity towards others". This word represents an eternal in-depth purpose for every human life on earth. This word epitomizes the thought process every human should undergo to give back to humanity whatever he/she has learned/gained over years. This exactly seems to be the objective behind the Linux Distribution "Ubuntu", which has simply revolutionized the desktop Linux business in the world.

Mark Shuttleworth, a South African businessman, started Canonical Ltd which is responsible for the development of Ubuntu Linux and its other flavors. It is a masterstroke that Canonical decided to use the stable Debian as its base for Ubuntu. Debian provides better user convenience compared to Red Hat Linux and this is obviously visible from the superb apt-get package installer. One important reason for the popularity of Ubuntu Linux is that it is being developed keeping end-user convenience as the primary goal.

Ubuntu has no virus/security threats like any other Linux Distro. I would like to mention some of the features I specifically liked about Ubuntu. Ubuntu is completely free along with an ocean of free softwares available as debian packages. Further, Ubuntu has a normal 6-month release cycle. I use Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), the next release being Hardy Heron to be released by April 2008. Gutsy Gibbon has a great look and feel with Compiz Fusion. It is quite fast under 512 MB RAM, though 1GB may be ideal. All the propriety drivers are available through restricted repository. I could find ATI Graphics driver, wireless drivers quite easily for my laptop. I could easily install softwares like Matlab, Mathematica without any pain.

There are contemporary Linux Distros like Fedora 8, OpenSUSE 10.3, CentOS 5.1, Slackware 12, Mandriva 2008, etc. I have tried many of them. But none could match Ubuntu in terms of user convenience, performance, look and feel. I would strongly recommend Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) to anyone's desktop or laptop. Ubuntu certainly has the potential to rule the OS market in near future. Ubuntu CDs can be ordered for free from Ubuntu site.