You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you
When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time building things – whether soapbox racers, spaceship models or automatic window raisers. I used to do this because it was fun, was cool, and I felt that it was necessary to save the world from destruction by evil alien species. 
Over the years, I lost interest for these kiddy thingies, but one thing surfaced over and over again – my desire to build a functional robot arm.
Am sitting here in my hall at home, listening to Phenom‘s latest composition – “A Little Step” – a song that is very different from stuff they have done before, and I *really* like it. The recording is being published as well – making it the first Phenom recording making it to the market. Yay!
This group is really shaping up nicely. They are slowly shedding their “influences” and are beginning to to develop their own unique and recognisable style – something any group should strive for. “A little step” is their fourth “own composition”, and more are on the way. Hopefully, we will see a complete Phenomenal CD soon.
Will have to ask these guys to put up the MP3 ASAP. If they do, will post an update in this entry, and also keep an eye on their site.
[Update] MP3 can now be downloaded from here.
Now for some ugly stuff. Children, please tune to another channel.
I have heard/seen some serious BLUG bashing going on in some obscure mailing list, featuring the usual suspects from down south.
Apparently someone is of the firm opinion that we at the BLUG are all rip-offs, milking poor innocent people of their hard-earned savings by asking people to pay for their own food at BLUG meets, and help meet expenses. Apparently we shouldn’t be doing things like this, because it is “against the spirit of Linux and OpenSource”.
Well, I guess it takes all kinds…
Another late night, and found myself handholding Vaibhav for the second time in a week with a new PDA. This guy is replicating my entire PDA journey, but what I took almost 6 years to do, he is doing in a couple of weeks!
Anyway, I also found myself trying to fix a problem that had been bugging me for a while. I had remarkable success, and decided to document it this morning – appropriately enough the whole thing was written on my PDA Check it out here.
Just an additional note for the day – it deserves an entry all of its own.
This evening, on the 7th of June, 2003, at 10 pm, I complete two years of being nicotine free. Two years of no smoking – not a single cigarette.
I have a little program on my PDA called PuffFree that tracks my non-smoking statistics – it currently says:
Quit Smoking for 1 year, 11 months, 4 weeks 2 days, 21 hours and 33 minutes.
Cigarettes not smoked: 10,948
Money saved: Rs.32,297
Life saved by: 1 month, 1 week, 1 day and 22 minutes.
Coincidentally, this (rather major) change in my life (I had been smoking since 1977) came about in the presence of the same person who caused a major change in my life in December 1992 (when he asked me to write for PCQuest) – Prasanto Roy, now editor of DataQuest, who just happened to be over for dinner this day two years ago when this momentous decision was taken.
Spent all night working on a how-to document, that tells you how to configure TCP/IP over PPP between a PalmOS PDA and Linux. I haven’t done something this in a while, and I find that I quite enjoyed the experience – it was very similar to the kind of writing I used to do in my COMversations days.
My right eye seems to be improving slightly. I can now see a lot more, colours are right, and though I stiill cannot focus properly, I have a perception of stereo-vision again – not usable, but it feels like it. And that is encouraging, and gives me hope that things will be normal again some day.
This afternoon, I was quietly sitting at my desk, when all of a sudden an explosion somewhere on my desk blew out the power for the entire street. All circuitbreakers in the house tripped, and the pole fuses for the house, and apparently the rest of the street, were history.
I am not sure what it was. My notebook power supply has a little spike buster on it, and it appears to be ruined. Ditto the switchboard on my desk Was this an incoming 1000 volt zzzzap from the electricity board? Thankfully no damage otherwise.
By the end of next week, I hope to see one of my private projects go live. The change will be very visible, and I hope it goes well.
Pray for me. I need mojo.
Today is the 6th of June, my friend Jaikishan’s birthday.
He passed away many years ago in a tragic accident, and it still hurts me badly.
But rather than grieve, let me mark the occassion by remembering some happier times.
Kishan and I lived in a shed outside his parents’ house- our den. The sloping, tiled roof had wood-roses growing on it, and HUGE caterpillars. The shed itself had two rooms – one was our “bedroom”, the other was our “sitting room”.
Every so often, one of these huge caterpillars would drop down from the roof, and wrigle around on our beds. This was OK during the day – they were really big and hard to miss with their black and gold colouring, but at night was a different story – and we would invarialy wake up screaming in agony as we rolled onto one of these beasts, then laugh ourselves silly. I never figured out what we found so funny, but we would be sitting there, laughing, with tears running down our faces.
Opposite the compound where we lived used to be a huge open field. In summer, and as children, Kishan and I would go there to fly kites, drive our cycles and generally have adventures. Over the years, much of this space was lost as people built houses all over the place, so our “hunting grounds” were lost.
And so Kishan and I would head elsewhere – into the stars.
Often, we would lie in the middle of the compound at night, staring at the sky, and at the stars, and the moon. There was no pollution in those days (and my eyesight wasn’t as bad as it got in later years), and we would marvel at the spread of stellar goodies out there – watching for shooting stars, for aeroplanes, for satellites and for “UFOs” (Unidentified Flying Objects).
And Kishan used to say, over and over again, like a clockwork (to the point of driving me completely batty) – “some day, we will be out there, among the stars. I wonder what we will find there?”
Well Kishan, you are out there now. What did you find?
I still miss you.
Just returned from my talk at the Sri Siddhartha Institute of Technology in Tumkur, where the folks had their annual fest INTERFACE.
To get there, I had to get up at 6:00 am, and leave home just before 8:00 am. Took about 75 minutes to get there by car (my driver driving, not me!). Shubha decided to tag along – guess she hasn’t heard enough of my speeches yet to be completely bored
IAC, managed to find the place without any problems and, after a massive breakfast with Principal Reddy and his team, and a quick (and highly impressive) tour of the institute, I found myself giving away awards and then proceeded to give my talk.
I had prepared slides during the drive to the college, but decided not to use them in the end, as I had been requested to also address the students on matters related to the IT industry and give them some advice, while at the same time showing them my vision of the Future of Computing.
So I spoke from the heart – experiences I have had, stuff I felt they should know. I used them (and my trusty PDA) to highlight the need to think outside the box, to go beyond the cut-and-dry world of their syllabus, and the need to learn to learn.
I showed them how “thinking outside the box” worked when designing software for PDAs, and how different that world is from the PCs they may be used to. I also talked about network computing, wireless networking and similar stuff.
Surprisingly (for a college function) I managed to retain my audience all the way to the end, and even managed to get a rant in about copy-protected CDs and antique ecommerce authentication systems. I spoke for 75 minutes, and Shubha says it went well.
After the talk had a gargantuan lunch (which totally rocked – YUM!), got to meet and chat with Minister for Higher Education Dr.G. Parameshwara (who was doing surprise checks at various CET examination centres), and was back in Bangalore by 3:30pm.
Everything went as per schedule, which was good.
I do hope the students of SSIT found my talk interesting enough to take it to heart – because as it is the case of so many technology areas today, the Future of Computing is really people like them, who will (in years to come) change the world (or what we leave them).
[Update: Some photos here]
I am back from Delhi, and I am pleased to say that the trip was good.
Left on the afternoon of the 26th, and landed late evening in Delhi. Kishore picked me up from the airport, and took me home, where we proceeded to yack straight through from around 10pm to 5:30am
Next day, went over to the India Habitat Centre where the UNDP event was being held, met various people, then settled in to listen to some of the first days sessions (which were on media and communication).
Dataquest editor Prasanto Kumar Roy (PKR) took Kishore, his sister Mala (editor, Computers@Home/Living Digital) and me to The American Diner – a rather authentic replica of one of those American diner cars you find all over the states, where we proceeded to stuff ourselves with Peanut Butter Malts, burgers and a platter full of breakfast stuff. Yum!
That night, I stayed at the IHC, since I was supposed to speak early next day, and I needed to get some rest.
Nice try – PKR and I yacked late into the night. For those who don’t know that part – PKR was the editor of PCQuest in 1992 who roped me in to write a column for the magazine. The first of these appeared in the January 1993 issue of PCQuest, and was what became COMversations – source to all my name and fame in later years
Next day, I was up and about early enough to complete my slides for the talk, and was at the seminar dot on time, only to find that the schedule had been changed and that Kishore and I were speaking back-to-back after lunch. Ah, cool, that gave us a chance to get other people’s views and make mid-air changes to our talks.
When the time came around to speak, I found that someone had fiddled the projector into an almost unusable state (I had tested things just before lunch), resulting in loss of time before I could start.
Finally got going, and laid into the audience with my points. As usual, I could see that the FSF crowd present wasn’t happy with the fact that I always focus on practical issues instead of doing philosophy-based advocacy. Can’t be helped – I am more concerned with practical and technical issues.
I focussed on the practical aspects of using OpenSource products in eGovernance, urging people to conserve resources to spend on people, not expensive (and often unsuitable) proprietory solutions. I was happy to hear moderator Dr.S.Ramakrishnan later voice his approval, saying that the Government was looking exactly at these issues.
Kishore came on next, and in his usual non-nonsense style drove home some of the issues facing the Indian education system, and how OpenSource solutions could help fix many of these issues. He clearly had the audience in the palm of his hand, which always helps make an effective presentation.
After our talks was a panel discussion involving the audience. Kishore and I took a number of questions, and one question in particular (that came from PKR, who showed up for the afternoon session) about the real state of OpenSource support resulted in my going off on a rant about the fact that the community basically supported itself, but did not have any real formal external support mechanisms in place, and how this was largely the result of the community being development oriented (and there is nothing wrong with that).
More on all this in a forthcoming article.
All in all, the event went off very well, and I am really glad that I had accepted the invitation.
Went back to Kishore’s place for the night (since he stays close to the airport). Enroute, Kishore managed to drive over a rock that seemed to damage his clutch, resulting in my going to the airport in the morning by a cab that came half an hour too late, almost making me miss my flight home! Had to beg and plead with the Jet Airways staff to let me travel even though I was *really* late. Thankfully, they saw it made sense to take me rather than risk my breaking out in tears, so I got on the plane and returned to Bangalore.
While I was away, the Linux Bangalore/2003 site got formally launched, which means that the event is now officially on everyone’s agenda. Go check it out, more info should appear soon.
And of course there was the speech made by India’s president A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, which you should read without any further delay. You will understand the context when you read the section titled “Think Different”.
Our president rocks!
Need to put this down somewhere – and what better place than here?
Here are some of my favourite eating places in Bangalore:
Windsor Pub is located on Vasanthnagar Main Road, just before the circle, on the left side. It isn’t the regular kind of Bangalore pub – its more of a family joint where you get great food and of course beer (sadly something I gave up decades ago). They have a well-filled menu, and each food item includes a drink (beer, coke) in the price. So you can go, order yourself a meal, and the drink is included.
Food is largely Kerala and Mangalorean, but they also serve up some great continental dishes. Their snacks are worth trying – I love the Masala Prawns, the Malabar Chicken and of course their assorted beef and pork dishes. For the main meal I usually have one of the curries with either Kerala parathas or Uppams.
The atmosphere ranges from intellectual to freak-out. Getting a seat after 7pm demands great patience and sometimes great pull – the owner knows which side of his bread is buttered, and when I walk in, I always seem to find a table just being billed and vacated, with some rather startled patrons wondering what happened. I love that kind of attention – which is why I often take my friends and family there. They, in turn, take *their* friends there, and the chain reaction goes on.
Prices are now moderately high – when I started going there, it was outright student friendly, though I suspect that these days the 80-100 bucks a dish (including a drink) could put off the younger crowd.
Music is varied, and they clearly look at the who is in the house. When I or Gopi walk in, the music quickly changes to Beatles, CCR and sometimes Jazz. But be prepared for the occasional Britney Spears. No Hindi music at all. You can, if you wish, bring your own music, but they will quickly ditch it if they see bad crowd reaction.
A TV on the counter is permanently tuned to sports, but with sound turned off.
The layout is simple, lots of wood decor, easy-to-sit on chairs, and despite the crowds and the music, conversations are both possible and encouraged.
It is ironic that Windsor Pub has now completely replaced my previous favourite haunt – Windsor Manor. More so because it appears that the Windsor Pub people are ex-Windsor Manor!
In absolute contrast to Windsor Pub, the main canteen at St.John’s Hospital and Medical College (behind the main road canteens opposite to the Outpatient department on the left of the main entrance – ask for the “non-veg canteen”) is about as unlikely a place you’d find me recommending as an eating joint, but trust me on this – I know what I am talking about.
First of all, the food quality is incredibly good. You have a decent list of dishes to choose from – I prefer the Butter Chicken, Naans, fried Fish and a banana milkshake – but whatever you decide on, you are guaranteed a good time. Portions are HUGE, and quality and taste simply rock.
And it is cheap. Like “low cost”, “economical”. Like “wallet-friendly”.
Picture this – Shubha, Anjali and I go there each Friday for my checkup. We then head for lunch. Here is what we ordered today:
Total bill – Rs.216
Shubha and I have eaten there alone, stuffed ourselves to groaning point, and had a bill of less than 100 bucks.
But forget the price – the quality of food is amazing. And so are the portions and the taste.
This place (along with the really thorough treatment I get from the docors there), makes me actually look forward to my weekly hospital visit!
No ambience whatsoever – this is a hospital canteen.
Sadly, I am told that this canteen won’t be around for much longer – apparently their contract is up. That is such a shame, but I intend to track them and see if the next place they open up in is equally good!
If you are a “Poor Starving Student(tm)”, check this place out. Or just go there for great food. In either case, you won’t regret it.