Punch the keys

A couple of weeks back, during my visit to Hyderabad, I marvelled at the superb roads that were being laid out. Wide and spacious with proper service roads and exits, I mentioned to the taxi driver that with a little touch-up here and there, it would soon look like the foreign locations. He nodded in agreement and said yes, just a matter of time. Hyderabad, by nature, is a rocky territory. Construction is not easy. But the modern equipments help in getting the job done quickly. The pace with which the buildings spring up and become functional is sheer amazing. The drive from airport to my office is about an hour long and this gave me enough time to reflect on the development. It is not only the roads which were being developed. Huge buildings and campuses were coming up on both sides as well, and indicating the prosperous times. As most people would be, and I was not able to decide on which side I was. OK, so I am assuming here that there are indeed two sides. One w...

Nostalgia can strike anytime. It is funny how some place or object can open up a memory that you would not have thought of for many months or years even. Some small things give you a blast from the past and it is not necessary that the memory is accompanied by the sadness associated with Nostalgia. Yesterday, while rummaging through a cabinet in a meeting room, I found this item which brought back a lot of memories from more than a decade ago. 1.44 MB used to be huge at a time. Hard to explain it to kids now, but that's the way it was. Wow, I am suddenly feeling old too. Anyways, I have real fond memories of booting up the 286 machine that belonged to my friend. One disk was used to bootup and then the next was used to load prince. Yep, prince of persia in DOS. We used to spend quite a bit time, just going through the limited commands on the boot disk and reading the help for these. It was tough to maintain these disks too. Kerala is pretty humid and if these disks were not...

I find myself looking at the blank pages of a diary and wondering what words I should be writing on them. Each year its the same. And as usual no great words or deeds appear in my thoughts and I am reluctant to spoil the fresh clean pages of the diary. Why is it so difficult to start writing on a new diary? I keep asking myself this question every year. Yeah, I do fill out the page that asks for detail. You know, the fill on the dotted lines stuff, asking personal information. And then begins the dilemma of how to write in those fresh pages. Then some time in the middle of the year, I pick up the diary that's lying around, all empty pages and all, and start to scribble notes or whatever it is that I needed at that time. By this time, the pages would not be in the same condition as it was printed. Many of the diaries that are given out are made of not so great quality paper. Some of them would even be turning yellowish. Whatever the state of the diary, i could never fill out t...

Recently I have found myself doing at least one online transaction every day. No, I am not exaggerating at all! I travel between Coimbatore and Ernakulam on weekends and that requires two ticket purchases. Thanks to even bus booking being online, I just log on to purchase the tickets. But in the past couple of weeks or more, I have not only been buying tickets online. I have been paying my taxes (yes multiple), paying bills(yes lots of them), buying stuff from books to a mobile. Everything is online! Isn't that cool. I love it because I get it delivered at the address I want. The only thorn is when the bank decides to play cranky. It gets really frustrating like yesterday when I had to try four times before I could finally book my seat on the bus. The problem is that since site blocks the seat for 30 mins or more so that there are no double bookings. But since my bank failed to complete the transaction, I would need to wait for about 30 mins to book the same seat. Finally afte...

Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic; capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it. - Albus Dumbledore So true isn't it? When I read this sentence it make complete sense and I can even think about the depth of meaning in these words. Truly some people are gifted with the use of words. 

And finally, I see the new blogger interface for my account. I was wondering about why it was taking so much time to get onto the new interface. If I remember correct, blogger had started to move members to the new platform a couple of months ago. It was even more surprising since I was seeing almost daily changes on the Gmail and the Google+ interfaces. Almost started to think that blogger had forgotten all about me. Well, not a very regular blogger, but then who doesn't like a new toy to play with ;) Anyways, the new interface takes along the minimalistic approach of Google. I liked what I see. Of course I have not seen most of the features. But then I get the feeling that I am going to be liking it. I hope we get similar features on the mobile blogger app on android too.

Here are a few snaps that I took last weekend. It was my first visit to London.

Two things impressive on this journey. Trains on time. and the wi-fi. I am impressed each time I see the trains arrive and depart at such exact times as 15:52 etc. So cool. It may be a normal thing for Europeans but to me, it is really impressive. Last time I was waiting for the train at Coimbatore with a arrival time of 11:00 pm at night, the train was on time. It pulled in at the platform at 11:15. That IS "ontime" in India believe me. The other thing wi-fi. Technology never ceases to amaze me and today I was having a video call with my family in India and showing them the countryside as the train was passing by!

So the talks stall again.... I first came to know of the Lokpal and the Anna Hazare movement from all the tweets and link sharing going on in twitter and Facebook. The online community was backing it up to the hilt and it was great. So I did the least I could and signed up a petition and shared links etc. But then after a couple of days, I realized I knew close to nothing about what all this hue and cry was all about. From the social networking sites to the media all were talking of Anna Hazare and the Janpal bill. It was a cause for the nation and I actually didn't know a thing about what exactly the bill proposed or what it would do except that "remove corruption by punishing the corrupt", which sounded great to me. Come on, who wouldn't support or want that? I have made fun of people in other countries who don't have a clue why their government does some things but supported them anyways, and here I was sitting and supporting a movement, when I had no clu...

Some of these ads give me the creeps! Advertising online is really getting to be a pain, there is especially this ad from North Social, which has faces staring at you and the animation is such that the view zooms to the eyes in the photo. There are a number of sites that I found this ad on. Its not just one ad on the page. To make things worse, there are sometimes up to three pairs of eyes staring. brrr.... And why does ad seem to be following me? I see it on so many sites that I visit. I think I first noticed it on facebook about a month or more back. Ever since the frequency of this ad appearing has increased. Never could understand why there is the same ad on different places on the same page! Highly irritating, this!

Or should it be re-settling? After an year and a month at Coimbatore, my wife felt that the schooling options were not good enough at Coimbatore. My eldest daughter was getting into school this year and we were looking out for a school for her. This and also the fact that I may need to travel on and off at work meant that we needed to look for other options. So after some thought we decided to move to Kochi, where my daughter got an admission in a school that we liked. The last few weeks had been hectic with the shifting to Kochi. I now have an even busier time with my weekdays at Coimbatore and weekends at Kochi. Wondering if I should take a season ticket to travel via train! It has been even more challenging finding a place to stay at Coimbatore. I didn't need the three bedroom apartment we had earlier and with the house completely empty it was not possible for me to stay in there. So I had been hunting for a place. Hope now I can settle in. Its funny because it was much ea...

Today morning I heard this news first on twitter and as I write this, #mfhussain is trending worldwide. Lots of emotions, of varied nature, flying around. I guess thats why it is trending. Anyways soon after I first got this I saw the below tweets too. And he seems to be aging after his death. The screenshots are in order of how I saw then on twitter. Click on images to see on twitter.

Yep, time flies and my mind doesn't always realize this very well! I was in a conversation with a colleague recently and we ended up in comparing some things of the present and how things were in the past. The usual small talk around coffee or lunch table. The thing was that I was saying "Well 10 years back... such and such was how things were". But then it took me a little while to actually realize that it was actually twice that duration. I mean I had missed out a decade in between. Well, it was one of those "freeze moments" for me, where my mind said "Whoa... " and went blank for some time due to lack of any rational thought and my body kind of just froze for a sec. Like someone had pressed my pause button. Hmm.. time flies.... things change... and stuff happen.

A couple of weeks back while I was travelling in Netherlands, I noticed that the telephone numbers in my mail were showing up as links on the gmail browser. On clicking them it opened up the Google Chat window with the phone number ready to dial. The phone number is converted to <a href="tel:%2B91%20422%206612345" value="+914226612345" target="_blank">+91 422 6612345</a> The mailto is already a standard feature. Wonder if "tel:" would also get introduced into mainstream. Sample signature shown here This was a nice integration and would be great in the chrome OS. The charges, at first glance at least, are cheaper than Skype. Have to test it out and see if the service is at par with that of Skype. Interestingly this is applicable only in countries where the Google call feature is active. The numbers were showing up as normal text here in India.

I have always loved pictures in panorama. Here are few of mine... A building structure inside the Kastle De Vanenburg in Putten, Netherland s. Keukenhof. The Tulip fields at Keukenhof, Netherland s Amsterdam, Netherland s.  The rest of the photos are uploaded onto picasa web album .

I wish the India Vs Pakistan cricket semifinals were today. I mean I want it over with as soon as possible. Getting irritated with all the junk that people are coming up with. The rest time in between is really getting to be the Devil's workshop for many. There are morphed photos doing the rounds. Comments without abusing one others team's are hard to find. This one takes the cake! Today I got this video on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150172366125325 The video is that of a Hindi News channel reporting that India is going to lose the match on 30th since its all pre-arranged because of the betting. But hold on. Since there is still time till 30th, I am sure someone else could come up with something that could beat this one for the top crap slot.

Blackberry, iPhone and Android. A few months back I got to handle the  Blackberry Bold ,  Motorola Milestone  and the iPhone 3GS on the same day, thanks to my bro-in-law visiting us. I had been wanting to put in this blog since, but never worked out. Anyways, the experience was superb. I am used to Android on my Samsung Galaxy 3 mobile and had used a Blackberry 8700 couple of years earlier. But I was always interested in the iPhone's usability and wanted to have a go at it. The Bold was way ahead of the 8700 that I had used. So were the specs of the Milestone from my own Galaxy. Getting to play around with three of the leading mobile platforms was cool. The best thing was that I got to try out all the three different mobile versions simultaneously. I really liked all the three models. Loved Blackberry's keypad and the typing experience best of the three. iPhone's fluid feel and superb touch experience. I liked it better than Android's for the sheer experience. ...

Sometime in the end of Dec last year, I used a Facebook app called profile-maker . Was really impressed with the simple interface and usability of the app. I changed my own profile using the app. The look did not come out as cool as the one that was put up on the profile-maker site, but still liked it enough to go ahead with the publish. Here is a screenshot that I took at that time. The profile has changed with other entries since. Edited out the ads and blurred some portions. Also have a look at the creative ways people have been using the new Facebook profile interface here . Anyways, came across this now cause I happened to look at my profile on Facebook after a long time. Haven't been all that active on FB this year for that matter.

Here is a video of Mr. George Galloway and his view of the 19 March 2011 attack on Libya.  A nice name, Operation odyssey dawn, has been given to the military action so that the media can write nice stories and have good material presented to its readers.

I read this great news about the Medical Council of India deciding to include topics of medical professionalism such as Ethics etc in the course curriculum. This is a welcome move, given the number of cases that come up in the news paper about malpractices in the medical profession. I would say all professional courses should have such kind of topics taught. Although it is definitely up to each individual to practice what they have learned, either in school or in their own homes, it does not help that these topics are totally avoided in the mainstream of education. Topics on ethics, time management, stress management are topics which would be helpful in any professional's life. As it is today, these topics are all swept under the carpet. Is it a cultural thing? Or is India just late into creating genuine professionals via its education system? Whatever it be, we must get started somewhere. I am afraid very few rotten scoundrels are enough to spoil a majority of the nice folks ...

I have always been a sucker for statistics. I really don't know why. I hated statistics as a subject when I had it in school. I felt the standard deviation and all the mean were knowingly named such. Anyways I like to read about statistics and comparisons. Love infographics the most. However, I have never liked the way statistics were used to report news. Although I like to read about these, I firmly believe that statistics can be used to prove anything. It just depends on what you want to prove and in which direction you want your argument to go. By definition, statisticians need to be extremely unbiased and detached from the topic they research else the reading are definitely going to end up skewed whether they like it or not. It is even more difficult for readers since we definitely have a preconceived notion of the topic and our bias get in the way of interpreting the data. Unconciously, we choose to derive from it what we want else we trash the whole idea...

Internet Explorer version 9 is out. The last release of IE was version 8 on March 19, 2009. I had been waiting for this release to see what innovations Microsoft would have brought in. I use all the three browsers, Firefox, Chrome and IE, for different purposes. Its always good to see a new software release and get to see new innovation. I guess there are a lot of features that IE9 has and definitely feels fast in the first impression. Also like the way the browser interacts with Windows 7 features or pin etc. 

The day before I noticed an application named " ON smarter address book " showing up in my notifications as finished installing. I have no clue how this application got installed on my mobile. This was the first time I was seeing this app in the market place. Not sure if my tinkering with the android caused this, but I was very puzzled. Surely, the tinkering my 5 yr old daughter does on my phone would not have done the install?!! I had read about google using the "kill switch"  on some applications but is it possible to install any remotely? Yes, but that was only possible if someone used my online google account and installed some application on my mobile. This was getting weirder by the minute. On top of this, I realized that a couple of applications, mainly free trial kids games, were missing from my phone. Ok. that would surely have been the kill switch. But there was no way of finding out. I can probably understand Google's decision to quickly remove any ...

I recently came across this interview on the flipkart blog. An interview with Mr. Subroto Bagchi, where he puts across what he thinks is the difference between a true professional and being professionally qualified. A highlight of the interview that I found quite interesting is given below.  http://blog.flipkart.com/interview-subroto-bagchi-the-professional-mindtree-go-kiss-the-world In The Professional - you highlight the difference between the true professional versus one who is professionally qualified, what exactly is the difference? The fundamental difference is that professional qualification and professional experience can make you very competent. Let’s say you are a first rate nephrologist and you do a surgical procedure brilliantly, but you know what? You’re in the kidney racket. So, are you professionally qualified? Of course, you are. Are you being a professional? No, you’re not. The book deals with a situation where Supreme Court lawyers in the...

Today I got the mailer on the new MacBook Pro that is being launched. The specifications were good and as usual I was soon drooling over another classy device. But the thing that caught my attention were two logos, one was of Intel and another of AMD on the features page. Surprised that two rival processor companies were in the MacBook Pro. Intel was for the i7 processor and AMD for the graphics.  I am not sure if this was the case earlier too. But just noticed it.  http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features.html  

And here I am, back again. I could say that work has been keeping me away. Yes, I have been busy. Actually busier than usual. But still it would not discount the fact that it was laziness that, yet again, kept me from posting something here. I had been away from the blogging sites, both writting content and reading. So the last few days I had been catching up on my friend's blog. Nice to be reading their blogs. They have been far far more regular than me.  Here is to hoping that I am regular this time around.