Am alive

Been months since i logged into wordpress.So what was keeping me busy? Well a lot of things. Work got tighter on and off, forcing to stretch for project deliveries.But a lot of other activities also took my time. Playing TT at office in the evenings was a great exercise and stress buster.

I typed the above sometime in July and i stopped it and didnt publish that time.So what else is keeping me going? Justifying that i was busy at work all along the year will be a lie, though it can attribute to 50%. So what are the other acitivities that i did? Apart from work, been doing quite few things that bring in some satisfaction. Be it hanging around with busroutes.in guys and making some tiny contribution in python/php/testing or literally roaming around the streets for mapping e-city / hosur or attending the Wikipedia Meetup 3 and getting hooked into it or making my first article appear on the DYK section of the main page or participating in Wikipedia takes Chennai, it was all pure fun and learning. Came across a bunch of awesome people in the process of doing these things. Been to college couple of times during the alumni meet and then for software freedom day, it was just refreshing to breathe the “old air”. So stressed office schedules + Parallel activities like above + travelling home twice a month leaves no time for blogging. I have been tweeting heavily though for quite sometime now. Follow me there. Hope i will update this blog soon and will not keep it idle for a year.

Cycling

I always missed the cab to office and waited for 20 minutes for next cab. If i walk it will take 25 minutes(5 minutes for crossing the road included). Autowalahs do a daylight roberry and come for nothing less than Rs.35 on the mention of word EGL / behind ‘DELL’ for a distance of 2.4 km. Worse is that most refuse to come at all.The walk for 25 minutes at the night after good amount of TT with tummy crying was also another reason.

Last week i decided to get a bike.I was looking at gear cycles alone prior to looking at the prices.I went to a wrong shop where the guy said “we have cycles from 7000 to 1 lakh Sir”. I said Ok thanks. Finally got into right store and was in diliema to get a whether to get a Photon or a geared cycle as i loved Photon in school days and it was saving my pockets too but finally settled for geared “Hercules AXN 6SP” on Sunday

Hercules AXN 6SP

Cycled 3 km from Ulsoor to Domlur and then last monday started to office and had a bad start.Morning was fine and at 10 pm hoping to pedal back, it couldnt have been worse. Flat tyre on first day.Thanks to my friend, i kept in hand and came home in bike.Then fixed the puncture and Saturday morning i decided to have some cycling excercise. I went to Shantinagar BMTC bus stand to book tickets for home. I took the main road for most part along this way . Sloppy terrain helps in some places and is a show stopper in others. I covered a total of 13 km in just under an hour.Cycling at the morning was too good in the climate.

Time up.. gotto cycle to office

Back from hibernation

Yes, i know its been looong time since i blogged or even logged into wordpress.Now am back and taking a resolution(? lets see how long it lasts) to update my blog ‘regularly’.So a quick update on what i was doing all these days.I must admit work was not that hectic though there were occasional long streches.On the travelling front i was frequenting more to home (3, even 4 times a month) from August till now.When i go home, i enjoy the few minutes i spend with my 1 month old yet-to-be-named niece. Suggestions for name welcome as i gotto be naming her officially given the status of ‘mama’

On otherside of life been involved with several things i relish. Premanand and me took a Ubuntu Installation ‘hands on’ workshop  @ SSNLUG in an effort to retrive the sleeping club.Presenting something for the first time to a complete set of new audience was a thrilling experience that too with 0 preparation.Pics are here. Post about that coming soon! . As part of extended work been looking into CCNET and just being amazed the way it does everything and the way its written. At home been looking into Google data Contacts API for doing something. Last week went to barcamp chennai (Yes will post one on that seperately) and to sum up in a word its ‘awesome!!!’. Again going to diwali for this weekend for a 3 day holiday.

Reminding myself on what am supposed to write after this post sometime soon.

1.  SFD @ SSNLUG — Experiences of last minute things
2. Barcamp Post
3. Travellogues and rant

Skandagiri Trek

Yes, you read it right, unusual things happening today.Like am posting more than a post on same day in an otherwise very much inactive blog, i also did a trek to Skandagiri.(Kalavaarahalli betta)

It was all decided on a conf call on thursday night.

Friday night 9 pm :- Dinesh picked me and we were heading to Praveen place at nagawara and went to Praveen’s place.Raj joined as around 1030. We were chatting till 1230 at his place and then started. The road going towards airport was awesome. Dinesh frequently touched 87 and occasionally 90+. Then we had a break just before Airport flyover and had tea. Started around 2:45 from there and started towards ChikBallapur. The road wasnt that great as it was from Hebbal flyover till Airport Flyover.Steadily went in 40-50 and reached the town of ChikBallapur around 330.[We were assisted by Google Maps to reach ChikBallapur, For those who dont have, just go straight on NH7 and after Devenahalli untill you cross 3rd level crossing,you reach ChikBallapur] We struggled which way to go to reach the downhill from there. Different people had different answers and we dont know whom to believe.Worse is more than half of them dont know that such a place exist. Finally we reached the downhill at 4. There we need to register for forest entry and optionally take a guide(200 Rs). From then on its walk walk walk. Initial enthusiasm lasted till 530 am and after that i was like tired. We sat and had snacks we had taken, glucose and continued. Finally reached the peak at 615 am looking for sunrise. But sun was late and didnt come till even 740. We had nice photo sessions and were chatting.Photos to be uploaded soon to my picasaweb. It was a well needed rest i must say and the climate was awesome.Wind was very strong.Completed all that we had bought and were reluctantly started moving down. Moving down was little bit of tough task as the fog had settled in and made the rocks slippery. Yours truly slipped at lot of places and at one place was saved by dinesh who had slipped just before me and was in a position to reach me easily. Then we moved down slowly and finally reached at 915.
Then started back and started straight to Hebbal. We thought of having some cool drinks but some how came till Yelahanka were me and dinesh had some rest and some cool drinks. Traffic started from this point.The BIAL volvo services most of which run empty in night were now filled with people. Again it was a long journey for us from Nagawara to Domlur. Finally reached around 1115. A memorable trip.

For people willing to go, please take

1. Toolbox for bikes and firstaid kit for emergency. We almost felt the need of them
2. Enough water. Make sure each one has atleast 1 Litre of water for self.
3. Emergency lamp helped us though torches will be suffice for individuals.
4. Try to have a drawing of route you are gonna travel. Though on highways we had google maps, but we almost wasted 45 minutes finding the road to downhill.

Nicely taking rest as i walked looong way. Was a good weekend stress buster after a tight week.

My 1 month old Nokia E51

• 

Nokia E51

When all the buzz is on iPhone, its really a cool mobile from Nokia having all the equivalent features and a more simplistic form factor and ‘more like a cell phone’ makes it feel the owner ‘being home’ instead of carrying a big jumbo without compramising on the feature set. You can read the specs by clicking above pic.

7 daysA month into it, what am i upto. Well firstly its been a hectic week since i got this phone, so really not much of time to get used to it. Just uploaded few mp3s, activated GPRS and downloaded few apps.Lot more can be done. One striking feature this mobile with which i was very much impressed was (No its not aGPS, not WiFi, not 3G). Its a very good feature supporting accessibility for visual impaired. Yes text to speech / Voice Aid.If this feature gets into basic mobiles technology will truely empower those people and transform thier lives.Also this features helps us too when it announces the caller name at the start of ring tone, so that we can know who the caller is even when the phone is inside our pockets. Just checked that this feature is also present in Nokia N73(which share a lot of things in common).

Coming to the features, 3G is absolutely useless as of now in india unless spectrum allocation is done for which atleast it may take a year or 2 hopefully. Sooner the better for me

WiFi is good, but havent tested as all the signals i recieved so far are encrypted corporate networks.Will try out soon in some CCDay.Also planning to get got a Wireless router and using WiFi at home.Seems good EDGE / GPRS is fine but airtels rate is costly for 140 per week.(Though cheaper option if am roaming for a week without a computer, i get a complete substitute for 20 per day which anyway i will spend for cafe).

Built in radio,music player,real player(though havent tried a single video yet) tries to satisfy entertainment needs.Integerated Email with push mail support, office docs,pdf viewer/editor,WiFi it has all thats needed for a miniature substitute for a laptop for a person who always needs to be upto date.

Applications currently installed :-

1. GMail – Obvious
2. GMaps – aGPS works great, maps even remote places like ‘Vengambakkam’ near Kalpakkam.I was surprised.
3. Google search
4. Fring — Skype + Gtalk voice calls free decent chat interface.
5. Watrpad — Supposed to be a book reader.
6. Teashark — browser based on the same engine used by safari.(Yes you got it. No Opera)
7. mChek, ngPay — mcommerce.
8. mundu Radio. Finally i get to listen some free tamil radio in bangalore for free.
9. Others arent worth mentioning after trying.

Photo clarity is fine.

Overall totally using it.(One more long time draft coming out )