This is in reply to R. who wrote in comment of yesterday’s entry, asking me why anyone would send me IM messages inside the office.

Oh boy. I thought only geeks read my diary

Well, the answer is – while we have phones in the office, they are typically used to make calls to people who don’t use Instant Messengers. Everyone else gets contacted on Yahoo, MSN or ICQ – even in the office, cubicle to cubicle, desk to desk.

It’s a force of habit. I mean – why switch working style? We communicate with everyone else on the net using IMs, so why do it differently with people in the office? I mean – haven’t you heard of consistancy and standards of operation?

IAC, when Biju wants me to cut down the volume of the boombox, he sends me a “vol–” via Yahoo, and when Avi wants to tell me something interesting, he does so via ICQ.

All this has some serious advantages – and some disadvantages. Like the other day, I spent a lot of time discussing something with Vaibhav (via IM, of course). At one point he said something like “wait a sec, let me show you something – I am coming to your cubicle” (or something to that effect). About a minute later, he comes back on the IM with (what I assume to be) a sheepish grin – “Ah, you aren’t in office today”. Yep, I was actually at home – 6 KM away, sitting in my shorts, unshaven and having my toes nibbled by my dog.

IAC, for those of you who were wondering what happened yesterday – not much did, despite Sony dropping in to help out. But this morning, things took a rather dramatic turn.

First of all, I realised that I was being stupid – if I wanted to do a video import under Linux, then what are the chances of no one wanting to do it, given the millions of Linux users and vidcam owners in this world?

Yep – you got that right. Zero.

So I googled around a bit, and sure enough I stumbled upon this page that sort of repositioned the planets for me. A little digging, and voila – the answer to my prayers. Everything I needed to capture, edit and sequence video under Linux (and yes, they have a Windows version as well – for those of you who haven’t seen the light yet – or rather for those of you who think they have seen the light and not yet realised that it is an oncoming train….) And affordable (yes, it is commercial).

IAC, after one false start (downloaded version 3.55 when version 3.65 was the latest – not something to sneeze at when the download is 12 MB!), I got things going just fine. End of this chapter for now.

In other news, we finally got around to gathering the loose ends remaining from Linux Bangalore/2001 and should put that project to sleep by weekend. In the process, have also hopefully managed to convince someone to join Exocore to fill a long-vacant position. More details when I see it happen.

Den in the garage is progressing. Electrician dropped in today, by end of this week, we should see the place wired for serious usage. Now I got to start thinking about work tables, shelves, vinyl flooring, etc. Ah, and sound-proofing

OKOKOKOK you diary junkies in Goa and here in Bangalore, I am posting, I am posting!

Ugh, what a day!

Got to office only to find that all forms of connectivity were down, apart from a miserably unstable VSNL dialup link. That was the brigh side of things.

The wife didn’t let me take Biju’s monitor back to office, so Gopi annexed my office desktop, handed his monitor to Biju, and I got stuck with my crip^H^H^Hnotebook. Luckily it behaved itself today – it only barfed when I actually had some work to do. Thanks to the efficient folks at Exocore, that happens rarely – but today was one of those days.

Anyway, no one reads my diary to find out how my daytime job goes, so on with the diary.

First of all, I decided to make life miserable for everyone by playing “Absolutely Everybody” on the office boombox till Biju almost came crawling in begging for mercy. I have this thing about getting stuck with tunes, which I then proceed to hum, sing or play all day long. No amount of “vol–” or “song++” messages on my IM will get me out of the groove (OK, who said “rut”????) Life is good.

IAC, because of bad connectivity, I decided to postpone putting up photos for a day, but decided to dig into the video conversion business under Linux.

Picked Shanu’s brain (what’s left of it – you should hear the volume he sets his earphones to!) to discover that there has been major advancement on this front – you can actually capture to AVI now and (with a powerful enough machine) pipe it through an mpeg encoder all at the same time.

Naturally, things don’t work as advertised when one first sets out to do stuff, but then, in the words of Jerry Pournelle – “what’s the point of being an expert if everyone can do all the things you can do?” Yeah, right. Under normal circumstances, I would have been chuckling with the “evil” dial set to “11″, but today I was at the mercy of Shanu. Of course I cannot resist a challenge, so I am going to stop here for a while, and do some experimenting of my own….

Stay tuned!

Spent much of the day today fixing embarrassing goofs in yesterday’s entry (“Greenhouse”??? What was I thinking? And I didn’t name the whole band lineup?) If you thought I was asleep at the wheel when I wrote the entry – you were right.

To make up for all the hard work, I added a rant as well – so if you read yesterday’s entry before I updated it, read it again.

This morning was spent processing the video and the pictures of the show. Since it was a holiday, I didn’t do it in office. Found out that Anjali’s machine didn’t have enough disk space free for a Linux capture (the Linux tools I have require an initial capture to AVI, then compression to MPEG, which takes tons of initial space). Gritted my teeth and used some 30 day evaluation Windows tools to capture them, using a TV capture card we had in the lab (and which I had liberated from there a while back).

The reason for the Windows tools was because they compress to MPEG on the fly, requiring storage space only for the final MPEG. The downside is, of course, much lower quality. I will have to recapture again tomorrow when I have more civilised disk space available – like 100GB (if Shanu wasn’t in office over the weekend, which he wasn’t) or about 10 GB (if he gets to office before me).

Mrinal dropped in this afternoon to return some gear, and to show me his damaged guitar. Found that his bridge has some sharp burrs in the string slots, causing even a new set of strings to snap within minutes at any tension. Unforgivable. If it was up to me, I’d take the manufacturer behind the barn and shoot him. I hope he gets a replacement.

Watched the gig video with him. Watched him blush But it was with pride – and I grant him that it was well-earned.

Naturally, the afternoon quickly turned into a jam session. The newly cleaned area in the garage quickly got messed up with bunches of cable, equipment, guitars and stuff floating around. To add to the fun, Sony landed up too. Our mixer got more workout

Nothing much to do afterwards. Watched some TV. Frasier was hilarious, Chicago hope was sniffly. That new Star World promo ad (the full length “Absolutely Everybody”) rocks with an attitude. Gillian Anderson’s mildly baffled, yet cheeky look turned me on. Heck – anything Gillian Anderson turns me on!

I wonder who the singers of that promo song (“Absolutely Everybody”) are. Nice catchy, peppy number. Got to get that CD.

Got to sign off – some diary-junkie is bugging me about releasing today’s update so that he can go home

Update 23:31PM: Woah, that was fast! “Absolutely Everybody” is a song by Vanessa Amorosi (Thanks, Rick!), and MIDI and MP3s are floating around on the web! Google it!

Update 23:49PM: OK, “Vanessa Amorosi – The Power” album ordered from FabMart. Us MP3 users are honest folks. If we like it, we buy it.

Literally!

Thanks to Kalyan (who BTW celebrated his birthday today as well – HB, K!), I managed to get into Mount Carmel College to watch the Amateur Band Contest, which also featured Mrinal‘s group – Phenom! I went as the band’s official photo/videographer. What a blast!

Lots of good bands playing, but of course I was there to see one in particular, and I was not disappointed. These guys are really good (given the little they practice together) – a very tight band, and despite the amateur status – very professional in their approach.

The lineup was Gaurav on rythm guitar and vocals, Sashi and Mrinal on lead guitar and drums (alternating), Deepu on bass, Jnaneshwar on keyboards and Noella on vocals.

They played four songs – starting with one from Greenday, followed by a Roxette number, then an own composition, and finally a Pink Floyd number. (This in itself was amazing – the bands were restricted to 20 minutes including setup, and few managed to fit in more than three numbers).

Mrinal played drums for three of the songs, and lead guitar for the last one, and was (as expected) very, very good in both roles (though I personally think he should focus on developing on one instrument).

Gaurav’s singing was amazing, especially the last number! Serious power lungs there!

Of course all that is precious little use if you don’t have serious thump behind you, and there was no thump lagging from Deepu’s side. Sashi was all over the place, justifying (but not overdoing it with) the use of distortion, and surprisingly good drumming as well. And Jnaneshwar really filled the place during “Coming back to life”.

And lead singer Noella’s voice …. ah, sheer heaven! Controlled, clear and perfectly in tune, with looks to match!

Even if I must admit to some bias – Phenom stood out as a far better band and sound than most of the others – simply because they didn’t do the one thing I really detest – turn all volumes to full, put distortion on every instrument, and mindlessly strum away at some “metal” cover. Sadly, many groups at this event did just that.

[rant]

Why do Bangalore bands assume that the only music a band should play is metal or trash rock? What happened to the real rock of the 60′s and 70′s – where people relied on their abilities as guitarists/keyboardists/singers instead of hiding their (lack of) talent behind distortion and other effects?

[/rant]

I maintain that at a contest like this (with competition in “mindless metal mode”), you could probably win and walk away with all prizes by simply plugging in a few clean guitars and keyboards, shelve the multi-effect pedals, add some reverb, and give the audience some good music. You’d stand out like a sore thumb, but then that’s the point – if you stand out, you get noticed.

In fact, Noella with her “Sleeping in my car” clearly got noticed for this very reason (apart from her great performance, of course) – this number was effectively the only non-rock number in the entire competition.

Ah well, I guess my age is showing.

I took lots of video and photos, and while I won’t put the video online (almost 400 MB!), I guess some photos and maybe some MP3s should be in order. Coming soon!

And of course a plea to Phenom – hey guys, let’s have a website!

Not an exceptionally exciting or productive day so far.

First of all, after (finally!) receiving the VCD kit from FabMart last night, my daughter’s monitor decided that it was a good day (night) to die. I think it has been watching too much StarTrek TNG, and Worf is a bad influence.

Woke up this morning, sent monitor for repair, and nabbed Biju’s monitor off his desk – he is off to Coorg anyway, so he won’t notice till Tuesday. Even then, he may not notice at all….

Got monitor home, plugged in new card, installed software (Windows only – boo!) and prepared to be amazed.

Bah. I have been had. I expected a simple hardware based MPEG1 encoder and capture card. Instead, what I got was an extremely cheap capture card (of the sort I already have) and a software MPEG1 encoder, plus copies of highly redundant capture, editing and CD-burning software (I have all that stuff under Linux). Miserable performance, as can be expected of a “real-time” software encoder. Looks like 90% of the pricetag was for this highly redundant software.

And of course no way I can go to Brigade Road now to buy a real encoder card to save the weekend. Complained to Fabmart (had they delivered when they promised they would, I would have been able to recover), arranging to ship things back.

Garage has been rearranged and cleaned (I carried the responsibility, others carried the boxes). One quarter has now been vacated for my den. Next week, I get the carpenters in to start partitioning the place (nope, not using fdisk) and laying some kind of flooring.

Courier delivered the Asterix VCDs from FabMart. Great quality, Anjali is thrilled (though Shubha keeps grumbling about household money going down the drain). At least we can spend the weekend watching 7 Asterix movies.

Bah. Make that 6 movies. FM’s supplier goofed, and the “Asterix and Cleopatra” cover had “Asterix in Britain” – giving us a grand total of two “Asterix in Britain” VCDs. Hollered.

The day is not yet over. Maybe I will have more to report later.

Update 06:54PM: I knew it! The day isn’t over yet! Just got a call from my cellular phone service provider (Airtel), telling me that they are unable to deliver this month’s bill to me. They have finally woken up to the fact that our address has changed more than a year ago. And they also admit that they lost both the letters we sent informing them of this. Don’t ask me how the bills have been coming to us so far. And I am sure this is not the end of it….

Woke up this morning to the sound of slobbering. Turns out to be my dog Judo – with all near-30 kilos of him firmly planted on my chest. It was then that I realised that it wasn’t just the *sound* of slobbering – it was the feel of it too! The mutt was licking my face with abandon! Yetch!

BTW – I just remembered – on January 7th, it was 7 months since I stopped smoking. Not touched a single coffin nail since June 7th 2001. Never thought I’d be able to do it. Now, when I smell smoke from someone else’s cigarette, I wonder how I ever smoked to begin with!

If you are planning to quit yourself and use a PalmOS based handheld, then try PuffFree to keep track – it helped me a lot!

Tried to get a pass for the gig at MCC on Sunday – no go. You have to have a student pass, and with my waistline, I don’t think I’d be able to fake it

Despite the assurances from FabMart, no sign of my VCD conversion card If they don’t deliver today, this weekend is a total washout.

Tomorrow morning, we begin clearing up the garage in preparation for next week’s creation of my den/studio. Once things start taking shape, I will post up plans and pictures.

Update 08:50PM: FabMart finally delivered the card. The weekend is saved!

Vaibhav and Sony walked in – when I see those two together in the evening, I automatically think “Chicken Kababs”, so guess what we had for dinner?

Decided to change my Hobbies section to the Music Section to flatten the webtree a bit. Music is basically my only real hobby these days. Though I still read a lot, I am not likely to publish any book reviews, and if I do, I can always add a books section.

Now to widen the scope of the music section a bit. Should happen Real Soon Now. Need to pin Mrinal down to get some jam-session recording done – then one could add some MP3s. And pictures!

Speaking of Mrinal – his group Phenom is playing at Mount Carmel College this Sunday. And they don’t let outsiders in to watch! Boo! Hiss! (Must have something to do with the fact that MCC is Bangalore’s best known women’s college

Started the day by sitting at the breakfast table, playing Beatles MP3s from my camera. Shubha was highly amused.

Building a room over the weekend looks improbable now – too little time, and the garage where I was planning to annex a corner needs cleaning.

Instead, I had ordered a PC card that convert my home (and other) video tapes to VCDs. Sorely needed. Was getting worried that we would never be able to see our tapes again once the VCR finally junks itself. Problem is, I had ordered the card almost a week back – still no sign of it. Hmmm…..

Latest issue of DataQuest is out, and has a report on the CIO meet from last month in it. I appear to be featured in it, wearing my other hat – Consulting Editor to PCQuest. Looks like I had a serious bad hair day!

Ah, just got a call from FabMart – my VCD conversion card is on its way. Cool. Checked their site – noticed offer for a set of 7 Asterix movies on sale. (Click) More household money down the drain.

Woah! CDNOW is taking advance orders for the Harry Potter DVD!. Didn’t that movie get released only recently? Time warp!

I have added an “About” section to the site, to take care of some of the questions and comments I have been getting.

Ah well, weekend trip didn’t work out. No accomodation anywhere. Moved destination to Yercaud – no joy there, either. Called off the trip.

So what will I do this weekend? Back then, my mom would have probably said “Clean up your room, of course!”. Thankfully, those days are behind me – I am neither that young anymore (sniffle!), nor do I have a room of my own!

Hmmm, I think I know what I will do this weekend – make myself a room…..

On another front – found three great articles on switching to Linux – on the same day! Check out Byte, CIO and CRN. Good stuff!

My whacky thing for the day is turning my camera into an MP3 player. I own a Kodak DC290 digital camera. It runs the Digita OS, which allows me to write scripts for it, plus lots of applications available as well. Among them games and an MP3 player! It isn’t the greatest sound quality on earth, but it sure is zany and an attention getter!

Got this thing off Wil Wheaton’s site. He thinks it is amazing, and I agree.