Sanhiti's Endrendrum Kadhal - Portrayal of love that transcends time

Sanhiti hosted their annual production "Endrendrum Kadhal"(Forever love) on Sep 25 and 26, 2010 at the Woodside high school auditorium at Woodside, CA. This was a charity show for a well known non-profit organization called Udhavum Karangal. Its no surprise that they helped sponsor over 100 kids from these 2 shows and its a great achievement in itself.

The show itself started off with a grandeur enactment of a battlefield which depicted the loss of a king in the battle who was also a true romantic. The emotions in the battlefield and thereafter made one wonder if they were transported to that era. The artists portrayed their acts amazingly well and were flawless in their delivery. This set the expectations for the coming acts at a very high level and challenged them to live up to it. The production design for this act was equally majestic and literally stole the show.

The show was divided into 4 different acts and each one depicted a separate story of love. This concept was new and has been attempted for the first time by Sanhitians. A valiant effort and a job well done.

Acts 2, 3 and 4 were more contemporary in style and jolted the audience back to their seats reminding them that they were in 2010 and not in 1020. I felt that the transition between acts 1 and 2 could have been more smooth with Act 2 portraying the love of the 18th and 19th century. Act 3 could be the present day state of affairs(figuratively) and Act 4 could have been a really wild imagination of how it would be in the future. That was the critic in me peeking its head out.

Some really creative bits that impressed me were the following:

1. The railway station backdrop was so real and was so apt for the song.

2. I loved the way how Hosana song was choreographed with the song set in a railway station and the reverse gear half way through. Creative thinking. I am not sure how many in the audience got the (not so) subtle humor on AT&T. Nicely done.

3. The 2 guys dancing on a pole bit was just awesome. Again, creativity at its best.

4. The sets for Act 1 and Act 3 were captivating and shared the top spots among the 4 acts.

5. Portraying of Kamal Haasan in Devi-Sridevi song was done brilliantly. Nice homework. The trolley effect was also well thought of.

6. The voice-over was nicely done. I loved this format since it blended well with the songs and the theme. Did not miss the skit, surprisingly.

7. And finally all dancers did a fantastic job. Months of practice showed on the stage and it was a feast to watch so much so that my 2 year old was glued to my lap for the entire show, except for the speech bits(This has never happened before).

All in all, it was a great production for a wonderful cause. Wish they would do this as a road show in different cities like a broadway production. I am sure that day is not far away.

Amazon introduces PayPhrases

Amazon has introduced Pay Phrases by which one can complete a purchase by just entering a phrase which is pre-configured to a specific credit card and a mailing address. This looks like an extension of the 1-click purchase that Amazon had with more flexibility. This feature is very useful for folks who make a lot of purchases on Amazon. They have also teamed up with other websites to integrate this Pay Phrase technology for online purchases. I like this one!!!!

Goodbye 2009

Everyone is writing a "Looking back at 2009" post today. So I decided I will come up with one as well. I had written exactly 3 posts this year(Including this one) so I can claim that my blogging has been very light. I don't want to list the reasons for that but I just hope that I can be a little more engaging through blogs in 2010. On the brighter side, my twitter and facebook updates have been more active and I guess thats going to maintain the trend in the coming year as well.

So how was 2009 for me? Nothing earth shattering happened this year. But nothing to complain as well. It has been a good year overall both on a personal and professional level. Some highlights of 2009 are the following:

1. Ran my first 5K for a cause.

2. Got a netbook.

3. Became active on twitter and facebook.

4. Broke a 50mm prime lens.

5. Visited one of the seven wonders of the modern world(Chichen Itza).

6. Started to train for half marathon.

7. Bought our first mini-van.

8. Got an iPhone.

Looking forward to a fun-filled, joyous and exciting 2010. I am hoping I would have more than 8 things to list on Dec 31 2010.

So wishing everyone an exciting and adventurous 2010!!!

Netflix Instant watch

We used to be a member of Netflix and we cancelled our membership for a couple of months since we realized that we are not watching and turning around the movies effectively. We also had other pressing priorities lined up which led to that decision. I was also bummed by the fact that I could not watch the Instant movies from Netflix on my television. They used some rather bizzare DRM from Windows media player which prevented those movies from playing on my television which was connected using a component output from my desktop.

With the onset of new year, we decided to give Netflix another try. So I enabled our account with the very basic version which will let us have 1 DVD at a time and we could also watch unlimited Instant watch movies for $8.99/month. With very little hope I decided to give another try to play the Instant watch movies on my television. I came to know that they have now started using the Microsoft Silverlight techonologies to stream the Instant watch movies. That gave me a little more hope. But the initial trial of installing Silverlight from Microsoft website was a bummer. So I called Netflix support and they gave me another link to install Silverlight from and that did the wonders. I am now able to watch the online movies from Netflix on my television. Watched Outsourced and Transsiberian and I was very impressed with it DVD like quality. I did have some glitches in between where my IE browser would freeze and I had to wait for about 5-10 mins before I could kill the browser and start all over again. But again Netflix has this cool feature of saving the last viewed frame from where it will restart if there was a disruption. Also when there was some disruption in the Internet connection, the movie would not restart after the connection has been restored. These are some annoying glitches that Netflix can work on to improve the user experience

There are still room for improvements but overall I am quite satisfied with their online streaming technology and also their collection of movies that could be watched online. Looking forward to more online movies from Netflix.

2009 - A New year and a new post

Welcome new year 2009. With it comes a few resolutions, a few absolution and an oath to revive this blog yet again. No promises like last time and no listing of resolutions like last time. Just a note to myself to visit this page atleast once a day and try to pen some thoughts if possible as often as possible.

In preparation for 2009, I entered the world of Facebook. Invited a few friends and colleagues. My wife cautioned that I would get addicted to it and I must agree that I was the first couple of days. Its starting or wear off a bit but its been one of the most interesting social network I have come across so far. So I am hoping its going to keep me engaged for a few months. 

Looking back at 2008, I am glad that it was a great year and a memorable one for us on a personal level. The one we would cherish for a long time to come as a family.

I am getting into 2009 with a lot of hopes and promises to myself as always. I also wish each and everyone who comes across this post a very happy, prosperous, eventful, engaging, surreal and a dream come true for each and every one of you.

I supported earth hour today...

Well partially... I am composing this blog during earth hour. I remembered about earth hour when my mom reminded me of it at 8.20PM on March 29, 2008. I am proud to support earth hour and I wish this would bring more awareness to people around the world of the impending effects of global warming. I am hoping to set a reminder next year so I could support it fully..

Finally, One stop flight to Chennai, India from SFO...

Three cheers to Cathay pacific for introducing a direct flight from Hong Kong to Chennai starting June 2nd 2008. Today, there is no way to get to Chennai, India from San Francisco in less than 2 stopovers. With the introduction of this direct flight from Hong Kong to Chennai, Cathay Pacific has finally won the hearts of thousands of Chennai going folks like me. Even though I have to wait at Hong Kong for about 4 hours to catch my connecting flight to Chennai, this is a boon to travelers like me who had to go through multiple airports before reaching our final destination. Initially, the Hong Kong-Chennai flight runs only 4 days a week but I am sure this will be made a daily flight given the traffic to this buzzing Indian metropolis.

A Tamil stage play by "The Avatars"...

I recently came to know about this very talented group called "The Avatars" who are gearing up to an upcoming production of a comedy stage show in tamil called "Ninaithale Nadakkum"(Think and it will happen). This is the first time I will be watching their stage show but I am very much acquainted with the crew behind this show. "The Avatars" is a brainchild of Mani Ram who is a multi-talented personality with a passion for dance, acting, story writing, screenplay and direction. In this latest venture, Mani is writing the script and directing a cast of very talented individuals who are making sure that the audience should come watch the show for their talent and creativity and not because they were driven by guilt to buy the tickets with a promise of their contribution going to a non-profit organization.
The acting crew consists of multi-faceted individuals who have already been part of many such theatrical shows in the past. They have gained the respect and admiration of many such audiences with their amazing talent and timing which I believe is a key requirement in such comedy productions.
This upcoming show not only has a talented crew of actors, it also has a highly skilled veteran backstage production crew that has produced the backdrop and sets for a variety of dance and drama stage shows around the country. So the audience can be guaranteed to be awed by not only by the content of the show but also by its very professional theatrical production. This show seems to have a single motive to entertain the audience from start to finish. From the bits and pieces I have heard so far about this show, it is surely creating a lot of interest in me to go watch the show. I will have to be honest and say that I am not a big theater person. I am hoping that this show turns me around and lives up to its expectations.
For "Ninaithale Nadakkum", Mani seems to have come up with a brilliant script with some surprising climax. I was even advised that this will probably be the first time, I would see such an ending for a comedy show. From what I have seen and heard in the past few weeks, I am eagerly looking forward for the show on March 29th and 30th. Details on the timings and venue of the show can be found here.

Google Reader enhancements...

I love it when they make enhancements to Google Reader. This is my primary source for tech news and blogs and use the keyboard shortcuts quite a bit to browse through the feeds. One of my gripe was not being able to "tab" to the "Send" button when sending out an email from the Google Reader. I use this feature quite a bit and I was relieved to see that they fixed this in their latest enhancement release. They also have a "Show Details" link for each feed where we can get the details on the number of feeds published per week and the number of subscribers for the feed. Looking for some more cool feature enhancements in the near future.

When did an iPhone sell for $599?

This is a screen shot from the online Apple store taken today. I am wondering when did the original price of an 8GB iPhone was $599 ever? The website also claims that we get a 42% off original price for this refurbished item. A new 8GB iPhone today costs $399. So I am wondering how can one save 42% when the refurbished cost for the same 8GB iPhone is $349.
Here is a screen shot for a new 8GB iPhone on the Apple store website for today. Now I am not sure what kind of a marketing technique is this.

Youtube down.. Pakistan responsible for it..

Youtube was down for a couple of hours this morning. And I was taken by surprise when I came to know the reason. OpenDNS reports that Pakistan was responsible for it and it was able to hijack the IP address of Youtube making it unavailable for millions around the world. Although the problem is now fixed, it still amazes me on how a third world ISP can hijack the IP address of such a well known website. Are these websites so vulnerable that it cannot prevent such an outage. This opens up a lot more possibilities for such websites to become unavailable going forward. I only wish that the identities of some many online users do not get compromised because of such unruly activities. God help the Internet!!!

Back after a small break...

I wanted to blog a bit more regularly starting this year but have not been able to, given my work commitments. But I am going to try a little more harder now. Let us see how this one works. I am also planning to dust off my Canon 30D to start working on my photography. To motivate myself to do that, I have installed GIMP and the Ufraw plug-in to detect my Canon RAW files in my GIMP editor. I am planning to take more RAW images and use GIMP for my post processing. I have been putting this off for quite some time. 2 reasons. Laziness and lack of time.
Next in my wish list is a good flash for my 30D. I am leaning against the 430EX. But I wanted to buy this flash using my stock photography proceeds. Lets see how that works out. I am also planning to blog on how I use GIMP to create my stock photography portfolio. Hopefully, I am able to create a good How-to guide on it.
Wish me luck!!!

Happy New Year and what I would like to accomplish this year...

A very happy 2008 to one and all. I wanted to get this in before January gets into double digits. I was thinking on what I would like to do this year. Not really a resolution. Just a list of 10 things.

1. Hike the Kilimanjaro
2. Take part in an expedition to the south pole
3. Cross the Panama canal.
4. Experience the northern lights
5. Fly the A380
6. Drive from San Francisco to New York
7. Vote in the US Presidential elections
8. Bike on Route 1 from Monterrey to San Louis Obispo
9. Visit Machu Pichu in Peru
10. Blog more frequently.

Happy new year everyone and wish me luck!!!

Today is the shortest day of 2007..

But I did learn an important fact that this is not the day with the latest sunrise and the earliest sunset time of the year. The latest sunrise time in a year is sometime during the first week of January and the earliest sunset is sometime in the first/second week of December.

Left turns contributes to global warming...

At least that is what UPS has found out. According to this NY Times article UPS uses a software program that clearly maps out routes for every driver that reduces the number of left turns drastically. This results in huge savings in gas consumption which in turn reduces the CO2 emissions dramatically.
I have never been a fan of left turns and I always try my best to reduce left turns in my driving. I have always looked at it from a time saving perspective but never from a gas saving and global warming perspective. I am glad that my driving habit is contributing to reducing global warming in some small way.

Crap powering street lights in India...

Yes. You read it right. A community near Chennai, India powering their streetlights using human waste. Link via National Geographic. I only wish more and more communities adopt this technology and make this part of a mandate while building communities like this. Rain water harvesting was one such successful initiative and given the power situation and growing population in India, it is only a matter of time when power would become scarce like water.

Amazon.com customer service phone number...

I was faced with one of those unfortunate moments where I had to cancel an order from Amazon.com. I have had no complaints about them so far. I had ordered a DVD which was supposed to arrive before Nov 21 but then I realized that it will not even be shipped before Nov 23. So I decided to cancel the order. I log on to my account hoping that it will be a click of a button to cancel the order since it has not even shipped from the location yet.
To my surprise, I get a message saying that my order cannot be canceled at this time since it was in the process of being shipped. The estimated ship date still says Nov 23 to Nov 28. Today is Nov 16 but I still could not cancel my order. My next instinct, as would anyone else's be, was to look for the customer service phone number. I go to the search box in Amazon.com website and search for "customer service phone number". True to the spirit of Amazon.com here is what I got. I was literally dumbfounded. I then start my manual search process and no where in the entire site could I find a number to call them. I started feeling really stupid thinking that such a reputed company like Amazon.com would not publish their customer service phone number on their website.
After searching for about 15mins, I gave up on the Amazon.com website and turned to our dear friend google. The first link gave me the numbers I was looking for. Someone (bless your heart) was kind enough to create a web page to provide all the necessary phone numbers to get through to Amazon. Once I got hold of the number, I was able to reach a live agent, explain the situation and got the order canceled in less than 2 minutes. I just cannot comprehend as to why they would not have this information on their own website. This is not going to make me stop buying for Amazon.com but will definitely make me think twice before I place my next order.

Below is an excerpt from this web site of all the Amazon.com customer service phone numbers and contact information:

US Customer Service
Phone toll-free in the US and Canada: (800) 201-7575 or (866) 216-1072
Phone from outside the US and Canada: (206) 346-2992 or (206)-266-2992
Another direct line: (206) 266-2335
E-mail: orders@amazon.com (I think this will still work, but no guarantees)

Amazon's rebate center: 1-866-348-2492
Amazon Corporate Accounts:1-866-486-2360

Snail mail to customer service
Amazon.com, Inc.
Customer Service
PO Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Service for Amazon Sellers
877-251-0696
They also have special e-mail accounts for spoofing and abuse:
stop-spoofing@amazon.com
reports@amazon.com
(This information was provided by a reader! Thanks!)

Canadian Customer Service
Phone 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific: (877)-586-3230

Corporate Offices, Seattle
(206) 622-2335
The fax number has changed. 206-266-1832 is no longer a fax number.

New! Fax for Amazon's legal Department: 206-266-7010

UK Customer Service
Phone: +44.208.636.9200
More UK numbers, from a reader:
Freephone (only from within the UK): 0800 279 6620
Phone (outside the UK): +44 20 8636 9451
Fax (free from within the UK): 0800 279 6630
Fax (outside the UK): +44 20 8636 9401

Bout with vonage...

Vonage with all its woes in the VoIP space should be very much customer friendly. But that does not seem to the case. Below is their policy.
1. You sign up for Vonage service as a new customer.
2. Vonage ships you a defective router.
3. You plug it in and find that the voice service does not work.
4. You call Vonage and you are with a customer service agent for 1.5 hours and follow all their mundane reboot processes only to be declared at the end that the router is defective and needs to be replaced.

Here comes the best part...

5. The customer service agent goes through the process of ordering a replacement unit and gives you a RA# for the defective unit.
6. She then tells you that it is the customers responsibility to ship the defective unit back to them within 14 days. Vonage does not send a pre-paid shipping label to ship the defective unit back to them. This is their policy.

If I understand this correctly, Vonage ships you a defective unit, make you go through troubleshooting over the phone for 1.5 hours on a defective unit and then make the customer pay to ship that defective unit back to them. In the entire conversation, never once did the customer service agent accept that it is Vonage's mistake and would take the entire responsibility to replace the unit and make the customer happy. I do not see how Vonage can retain customers when they have such customer unfriendly policies.
When I demanded to speak to the supervisor, I was put on hold for 10 mins and the agent came back saying that they are making an exception in my case and as a goodwill gesture they will send me a prepaid shipping label which I can use to ship the defective router back. It was as if, Vonage would like to push the customer as much as they could to get them pay for the shipping charges and when they realize that they could loose a customer, they do everything to retain them back. Now what do you call this policy? I call this BS!!!!

Resurrected...

This space has been officially resurrected. Watch out for more frequent updates.

Music to my ears...

It had always been my childhood craving to listen to my favorite music collection in a powerful audio system with stereo speakers(5.1, 7.1 and THX were still in development) with loud volume. I still remember vividly how I convinced by dad to buy me a Philips Powerhouse Stereo music system with 1100 Watts of PMPO(Peak Music Power Output) when I was 17. I was on the phone with him, trying to convince him that I would get into a good college and he need not worry about paying a hefty college tuition and that I can use some of that money to buy this dream machine of mine so I could listen to my music collection, the way I always wanted to. I still cannot believe how all the stars aligned that day, he actually agreed to shell out about Rs.6000+(about $130, which was a huge sum those days) for that music system. Somehow I could remember this incident vividly because that was probably the first time in my life my dad had agreed to spend such a hefty sum for something I wanted so badly.
Why am I reminiscing that today? Here I am sitting in front of a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound system listening to some of my all time favorite songs(thanks to my wife for getting me those wonderful songs) with a volume that I had always wanted to listen those songs in and having the whole house to just myself. It got me thinking as to when was the last time, I got to listen something like this and only thing I could remember was that Philips Powerhouse music system and the umpteen number of songs that I had listened on that.
I don't get those cravings these days because I know I can feed it just by click of a button. But I am reliving those cherished memories now as I am typing this. I wanted to capture this moment and the only way I could think of doing that was to blog about it. Thanks dad!!!... For those moments and the one that I am cherishing now.

Father and son...

I was reading the blogs to catch up on "The day after iPhone launch" buzz, when I came across this blog from Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr. One piece that struck me in that blog was the following paragraph:

Hanging out with Robert and Patrick Scoble. Two of the best people you'll ever know. What an amazing experience for a father and son to have together. You should read Robert's quick recap of the event. What a great thing for a father to do with his son. Patrick was so proud to be #1 in line. They made a big deal about it when they let him into the store first. That's a memory that he'll have the rest of his life. What a great dad to make that happen.

I am not sure how Patrick Scoble feels about this but I feel that Robert Scoble has done something to his son which not many dads would even dream of doing. Think of spending 36 hours in a line with your son, who BTW is just 13 years old, to get an iPhone. That iPhone may become useless in another 2-3 years but the memory of that 36 hours will be there forever. Whatever maybe the motivation for Robert to spend 36 hours outside the store, but the thought of sharing those moments with his son was just wonderful.

As I was reading that piece, I was reminded of this beautiful song from Harry Chapin. In this time and age, every moment you spend with your kid is to be treasured. It may not be a big deal for the father but it makes a big difference in that child's life.

Robert, you made a big difference in Patrick's life in those 36 hours....

The iPhone experience

I cannot believe myself that I am posting another blog about iPhone. I happened to be watching the live feed of people waiting outside the Palo Alto Apple store on Zooomr TV and I could feel the excitement and a sense of "I am going to be one of the first to make history in owning an iPhone" among the crowd. I also felt that it is the experience that counts more than the actual purchase of the iPhone. Folks like Scoble have been waiting in line since 9.30AM on Thursday for buying an iPhone at 6PM Friday and I can guarantee that he would have gotten more PR in this 36 hours than in the last 36 weeks. It was an excellent platform to pitch portals like Zooomr, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Digg, Pownce and many other startups that are into social networking and those that support the social networking space. I could see them distribute T-shirts, hats and jackets for their PR campaign and made sure that their company was recognized for it.
Ustream.tv also took this opportunity to drive traffic to their site by doing two things. First, they hosted the live show of the Apple store line in Palo Alto and second, they lured new users to sign up by giving away an iPhone for a lucky one signing up before 6PM on Friday, July 29, 2007. They really used this event to bring their company to mainstream audience. Great job guys!!!.
I am still not convinced that this phone is for me. For one, it is tightly integrated with iTunes which I hate and everything in it is proprietary. I am sure I would be blogging more about this.

iPhone releasing today...

The much hyped about iPhone is releasing today at 6PM nationwide. People have camped out since yesterday morning outside the Apple store and are using live streaming video technologies like Ustream.tv and Kyte.tv to show the world their perseverance. Bloggers like Robert Scoble along with his son is camped outside the Palo Alto store and is broadcasting his ordeal live here. Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk and his team is broadcasting it here. There are people camped outside the stores at SFO, NYC and Chicago to be the leaders in the pack to hold an iPhone.
I for one, never really understood what all this hype is about iPhone. I purposefully did not put up a picture of iPhone, which I normally do when I write about a new product. I have nothing against Apple products. I always thought they had an excellent design team and that's about it. I can get the same meat in Apple's product, in most cases more meat in other similar products from other vendors for a price that is usually less than half of what Apple sells its products for. iPod and iShuffle are classic examples. I still do not own one of them and probably never will. The same goes for iPhone also. AT&T and Apple are trying to squeeze out every last bit of curiosity that they could get from those people waiting in line for the iPhones and the million others who are waiting for the next version. $600 with a 2years contract and a phone that does not have a physical keyboard and one that I cannot use with other SIM cards when I travel overseas? Why would anyone in their right mind would want to plunk down so much for such a tightly controlled product. Well, as long as there are those million plus people eagerly waiting for such a product, companies like Apple and AT&T will thrive.
Oh!! By the way, Apple did piss of Stephen Colbert. Here is his review of iPhone..

T-Mobile Hotspot@Home service

A lot has been reviewed about this service here, here and here and in many more blogs and forums. This is the first of its kind in the US and to be honest, I am pretty excited about this. If Cingular had this service, I would have subscribed for it without a second thought. I wanted to find out what the cost would be if I were to sign up for it today and it was not very expensive for such a "first of its kind" service. Total initial cost would be $50(for the phone) and Linksys wireless router is free after a mail-in rebate. This makes it very affordable for the features and the Nokia phone that comes with the plan is an international tri-band phone. The minimum monthly plan should be $39.99 plus a $9.99 for the hotspot@home service.
I look at this as a desperate attempt to get back the customers that T-mobile lost to Cingular. If they are ready to pay up my early contract termination fee with Cingular, I may even consider switching back to T-mobile. For now, I can only hope that Cingular comes out with such a service soon.

Drive Speed limit day on Friday 06/28/2007

Just like spare the air days, there is a new initiative by the San Jose Mercury News Roadshow host Gary Richards to designate this Friday 06/28/2007 as the Drive Speed Limit Day. I think this is a great initiative and those driving on Friday, please stick to 65mph. Lets see if it makes a difference in driving as well as the number of accidents on bay area freeways. Given the gas prices these days, it will not only save precious life but also our environment.

Google Desktop for Linux

Google announced the availability of Google Desktop for Linux yesterday(06/27/07). I have been waiting for this since my move to Ubuntu couple of months back. This is one of many Google's products that I have come to love and I am looking forward to see its capabilities on my Linux OS. I am especially curious to find out how it would search for man pages and how easy would it be for me to search for options in my Linux commands that I keep looking for all the time.
I am planning to install it by this weekend and give it a go. Will post for some interesting finds in it. I am still waiting for Google to come out with a Linux version of their Google talk gadget.

Limited beta for Windows Live folders

Another online file storage/sharing technology and this time it is from our Redmond friends. Windows live folders is the latest entrant into this space with some cool features. The first one, which I love is the integration with the Windows live account. I can sign in with my hotmail account and so one less password to remember. It also gives you ability to make the files personal, or share it with just your friends or to the whole world. I am yet to find out the ease of embedding links of my docs and pictures in emails and documents and based on reviews so far, it seems to working as expected.

Update 1: Just came to know that not everyone was able to get into this beta program. I logged in with my hotmail account and I was able to get in just fine. Looks like I am one of their pre-defined beta customer. Not sure what criteria is being used to select the beta users.

Guatemala 6.8 Earthquake

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake just struck off the shore of Guatemala as per this report. The casualties are yet to be determined. The epicenter was supposedly 40 miles deep and so the effect was not as bad as it should have been. The force of nature gets revealed from time to time with such disasters.

Google Reader blanks out on me...

This is the screen I get when I log into my google reader. I was reading reports about Google reader feeds getting erased and then restored for many users. Looks like its my turn now. Hopefully I will get my feeds back. But I did take a backup of my feeds just in case it decided to go south on me.

Update 1: I was briefly able to open my Reader on IE but I was not able to use any of the shortcut keys to browse through my feeds. I refreshed the page and now this is what I get on IE.


Update 2: I am able to read my feeds from my iGoogle page. But not a very intuitive interface for someone who is so used to using the k,j,p,n and Shift+s keys in Reader.

High school graduation - A view from the stand...

This is my first time attending a high school graduation. The class of 2007 graduated high school and the parents, relatives and friends of the "high school graduates" were beaming with pride. This reminded me of my high school days and how I graduated from my high school. No ceremonies and no celebrations. All the high schoolers were nervously standing near the notice boards waiting for the list to the posted so we could look at our scores in the final exams. Those scores were the deciding factor of our life and every eye was strained at the door through which this attendant would come through and stick the long sheet of paper on the notice board. The parents of the high schoolers would be nervously waiting near their vehicles for their kid to make them proud with a good score.
I was told that the kids here go through practice runs of their graduation ceremonies. The "graduation walk" was supposed to be the momentous moment(hmm.. nice phrase) of a high schooler. The walk that we took from the notice board to our parents was our graduation walk and the proudest walk ever a high schooler would have taken in his/her entire life. Here, I could see the parents waiting in the stands cheering for their kid when he/she takes their graduation walk. Cameras flashing, tapes rolling and horns blaring, the kids are given a farewell that they would remember forever.
The ceremony starts of with a welcome note, a graduation speech and a farewell address my students holding various positions in their class. Then comes the graduation walk. The grand finale is the students lining up and throwing up their hats in the air all at once which proclaims that they are now graduates and are ready to take on the world without their "hat". That "hat" was the protective shield that the schools and parents had provided them for the past 16 years and now they are ready to take on the world. I did see some kids pick up their hat after it fell to the ground. I wonder what that means.
All this left me wondering on how many of these kids really understand how lucky they are to be in such a nurtured community where every milestones in their life is celebrated with galore. I for one never had that celebration even when I graduated college since it was not a tradition to hold such graduation ceremonies then. I am not sure if it is still. I only wish that every kid who took that walk that evening turn out successful in their life.

For the past 4 months..

The following kept this devil's mind occupied...

1. Ubuntu
2. Google Reader Feeds
3. A wedding
4. 2 trips to Mumbai
5. Work
6. My Canon 30D
7. Wine
8. Allergies
9. Crazy ideas
10. My better half

Switched to Ubuntu..

Yes. It is official that I have switched to Ubuntu as a de-facto OS on my home computer. I have to thank my wife for it since she was the force behind it. She managed to infect the machine with some malware which refused to let go of my machine. I got so frustrated trying to clean it up, I decided to ditch Windows and move to Linux. This happened about couple of months ago before Dell decided to adopt Ubuntu for its Linux line of desktops. During that time, I had heard quite a bit about Ubuntu but being a big fan of Fedora, I was a little hesitant to try it out. But curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go for Ubuntu. My first impression was astounding. I popped in the CD and it loaded some binaries into memory and boom, I was presented with a desktop to play around and get accustomed to the OS. It even recognized my wireless D-link PCMCIA card and installed the driver for it and I was able to get on the Internter within 2 minutes of popping in the Ubuntu CD. The Windows OS is still there on my machine and I can revert to it if I wanted to. But I decided to go for a clean install of Ubuntu and completely wiped out Windows from it.
Without boring you with further details of my encounter with Ubuntu, I wanted to say that my wife was not very thrilled with the interface at the beginning. But then she brought this on to herself. Atleast, that is what I have been telling her so far. But she got used to it and she is able to do most of the stuff as before. One thing she could not do is to infect this with malware as before and I do not think she is too concerned about it now.
It has been 2 months now and it has been working great so far. A few kinks here and there and few websites not working properly since they are written in ASP(Morons!!!) but other than that, it has been a wonderful experience with Ubuntu. The ease with which it installs and the options available to play around is worth pointing out. A few neat applications I have come across for Ubuntu will be discussed in detail in a later blog.

After a long Hiatus, I am back with Google Reader and Stock photography...

I do not have a reason for my long hiatus. I can attribute it to a variety of things beginning with laziness, time management, guilt and so on. I am not going to delve into the reasons now and I just wanted to say that I am happy to be back in my blogging world. During this time, I was keeping up on my daily dose of feeds using my Google Reader account. Now with the introduction of its off-line capabilities, I am even more addicted to it.
I have been contemplating to convert this to a technology blog but then decided against it. This blog has got a tradition and I do not want to change it. But going forward this will contain many technology updates that I come across and which I feel are cool. It will still be my space and will get to decide what goes into this. Hmm.. Now that makes me feel good.
I am also in the process of setting up a Photo blog. I started off with some sites like Aminus3 but did not like the interface. Lately, a photo sharing site called Zooomr has been in the news quite a bit and I also came to know that they are into stock photography. I tried registering for an account just after the site came up from a week long downtime but was never able to register. The site was supposed to send me an email to authenticate my account and it has been 4 days since I created my account and I still have not received authentication email. It is not letting me create another account also with the same email ID and I do not want to use another email ID. So now I am debating if I should follow-up on this or not.
Coming back to Stock photography, I have been following up on some websites like iStockphoto which has been into Stock Photography for quite some time now. I also went through their registration process (which is quite lengthy) and in order to become a member, you need to take a test and qualify your photography skills by uploading 3 of your sample pictures and based on the quality of those pictures, you will be offered a membership. I am not sure how many people qualify, but I was able to. I can now start to build my stock photo portfolio. Now that is going to take me a while. Meanwhile, I am going to follow-up my Zooomr account to see if they can activate my account.

Happy Valentines day...

My dear Valentine.. Happy Valentines Day...

My technology feed...

You can find my daily dose of technology feeds here.

Your online store in minutes...

As I was catching up on my technology news from my Google reader feeds, I came across this very innovative concept of creating your own online stores in minutes on a feed from Lifehacker. You can find more information about this concept here.

The more I read about this concept, I get a feeling that it is very similar to selling shelf space by mega retailers like Walmart, Costco and Frys Electronics, except on the web. No infrastructure cost, no overheads and no investment required. All you require is a login and a paypal account to get paid. Of course it has its own limitation on the products that you can put up on your online store. I also came to know that Amazon.com already has a working concept like this called aStore.
It does require a good sense of the audience you want to cater to and some creativity of displaying prominent products on the first page when users get on to your online store. It also requires that you promote your online store link in as many places as possible, like your email signature, on your blog, on your web page and anywhere you can get your hands on the Internet. You need to make sure that search engines can list your online store when people search for products displayed on your online store.
An interesting concept. We have to wait and see how successful it is.

Free international calls to popular destinations....

I have never seen a more simpler way to make FREE international calls. No signup. No personal information and email address to share. Just dial 712-858-8094 and follow the prompts. Thats the deal from AllFreeCalls.net. Folks using VoIP phones can also make these free international calls no matter where they are in the world.

Call phones from your browser....

Gizmo project has come up with a flash plug-in, Gizmocall, on your browsers to make voice calls to any phone in the world. I also found out that you could actually called anyone on Google talk using this flash plugin just by typing their gmail address. Of course the other party should be on Google talk to receive your call.
This is integrated with your already existing Gizmo project account. When you sign in using your email address provided in your Gizmo Project account, it brings in all your details on to the browser. Now I can make calls from any computer even if it does not have the Gizmo Project client installed. A neat effort.

Photoblog...

Introducing Fotomania.

Malgudi days...

A treasure cove of Malgudi days episodes.... Thanks to my wife for the link..

Time management...

I was on a brief unannounced vacation from my blogs for a couple of months. Multitude reasons for this. Busy at work, holiday season, personal commitments and I was gifted a new Canon 30D for Christmas. It was hard to put that sucker down for almost a month. A separate post on that will be coming shortly. During this period, I did not have time to even catch up on fellow bloggers blogs. This really begs the question if my time management over the past couple of months was very unusual.
Thinking back I am unable to comprehend how the time went by and what was I doing with my time. I was given a lecture about my time management by my better half and how I should improve on it. I somehow felt that I had very limited time in my hands to work with. Was that because of the cold winter this time or was I really that busy. My days have shortened for sure and I am having at least 2 hours less in my hands to work with. My social life seems to have taken a 180 degrees turn, thanks to my wife. The more I think about it, the more I feel that I need better time management.
For a change, I have decided not to take any new year resolutions this year. The past ones have not been very successful and this year I can blame it on my time management. I am trying to keep up with the technology news by subscribing to various feeds on my Google Reader and also sharing them on my blog those that I find interesting. I have also been wanting to start a technology blog for a while now and now that I have my Canon 30D, I also wanted to start a photo blog. Thus goes my list of to-do things for this year. I am looking forward to an interesting year ahead and it feels good to be back in the blogsphere.

Mathappu.. A sparkling "light" music

A music filled evening was waiting for us last Saturday(Nov 11, 2006) at the CET theater for performing arts in San Jose. Thillana, comprising of some very talented artists from the San Francisco Bay area was performing a light music concert to raise funds for Cancer Institute foundation in India. We made it to the concert just in time after loosing the way to the hall not once but twice.
The concert started in earnest with a devotional number sung exceptionally well by one of the veteran artist Kavitha. Her voice echoed the decibels of KB.Sundarambaal who sang the original number and that did complete justice to the song. It was a sizzling start to the next 3 hours of foot taping numbers. It was then followed by some evergreen numbers from the rest of the Thillanites. The first half of the show displayed the exceptional talents in each artist to bring out some rare gems as close as possible to the original numbers. The second half was comprised of fun filled "gaana" numbers to force the audience to their feet and dance their heart out. I happened to be seated in the midst of a dance group in the balcony and got a treat of some rave dance numbers for the foot tapping music.
The song selection was very good. They moved the dance numbers to the second half and I thought that was an astute move. The audience were fed well during dinner and were all ready to blast. They also made sure to add some sweet as part of the dinner to feed in some sugar into our systems. The audio mixing was exceptional. In many live music concerts, I find that the singers voice gets drowned in the instrument sounds. But in this concert, I was able to hear the singers very clearly and the balance between the voice and instruments were just about perfect. A great job there. Introducing each artist in the middle of the song as they were performing and repeating it through the entire show was innovative. This gave the audience a chance to remember each artist's name and I can easily name every artist that performed on stage, during the show and even 2 days after the show as I am typing this out. The production team did a great job with the props. The thematic representation of "Mathappu" was just perfect.
There is always room for improvements. I did feel a shortage of lead singers in the group. Especially a male voice for "gaana" songs was missing. None of the existing male voices suited well for the "gaana" songs. Someone with a folk music background could have handled it better. This in no way undermines the effort put in by each of the singer. Everyone did a stellar job. I also felt that the lighting could have been handled a little better. The stage needed more lights.
I would rate the show an overall of 4.5 out of 5. It was a great show and I will surely be looking out for their next show. Keep up the good work guys!!!

A nifty search engine...

Try your search on this search engine and I promise you will not be disappointed. Try searching for some celebrities like George Bush, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Larry Page and finally ask her who she is?

My modems are now working...

I finally got modems at my home to work. I have been struggling with SBC(now ATT) customer support to convince them that the issue was on their side of the line but they never budged. I had a weird problem where any phone connected to the phone line would detect a dial tone but none of the modems would detect a dial tone. This included my satellite receiver and my laptops. I was able to identify the problem to be on the SBC side of the line but everytime I called the customer support, they would test my dialtone and conclude that everything was well and dandy..
Today, I managed to speak to a service rep, who was kind enough to hear my story and agreed to send a technician to my home. Surprisingly, the appointment was for the same day. Once the technician arrived, it was very easy for me to convince him that there was indeed a problem on the SBC side of the line. The technician then found out that the voltage on the line was very low(DC 42 Volts when it should be around 52-60Volts) due to which the modems could not detect the dial tone. He then traced the problem to a defective DSL card on the main box down the road and once he replaced it, my modems started to work just fine. This problem was nagging me for the past 6 months and it finally came to rest today.

For the past 3 weeks...

Work.. Work.. Work..
Fedora core 6
Google Reader
Technology sharing
Digg
Techmeme
Slashdot
TechCrunch
Lifehacker

Mumbai musings - 4... PM in town...

As soon as I got into my cab for my morning ride to work, the cab driver remarks, "sab aaj koi mashoor doctor saab IIT campus aa rahe hain. Poora road saaf sutara hai aur police laga rakha hai"(Translated to -> Sir, some famous doctor is visiting IIT campus today. So the roads have been cleaned and police enforcements have lined up the roads). This statement got me really curious, and since the IIT campus was on my way to work, I happened to notice a huge banner, with a colorful picture of the visting dignitary, outside the gate with the following wordings:
"A very warm welcome to Dr.Manmohan Singh, the honorable Prime Minister of India". That reminded me of the long road ahead for Indian literacy and awareness.

Mumbai musings - 3... Bureaucracy...

On my first day at work, I was given a rude awakening of the bureaucracy which is prevalent throughout India. I was surprised to find this even in well known hi-tech companies for small things like getting an entry badge. For my 2 weeks of work at this site, I had to get a temporary badge to have access to the buildings. For this, I was asked to get 2 photographs by a good-hearted colleague who was here before me without which, this experience would have been even worse.
So to begin the process I was given a form to be filled which I had to sign and date it first. That form then had to be signed by a department head and a HR person and I had to take this form to a security office at one corner of the campus(10 mins walk one way to this office). The guy at the security office takes one look at the form and said, you need to get one more signature and make sure the department head puts down in writing which building you need access too. So I take this form back to the department head and he puts down the building I need access to but did not know who the 3rd person was to sign that form. So he calls the security person to inquire about it. I was then told that there was no one to sign in that third column and so I have to turn in this form and get another form in order to validate that there was no third person to sign my form. So I go back to the security office and the guy hands me a second form.
I bring back the second form, fill it up and that had to be again signed by the department head and a HR person to confirm that the first form did not need a third signature. I then had to take both these forms back to the security office with 2 photographs. The officer then goes over my 2 forms and instructs me to sign in 2 places in the form and another one in a ledger. He finally took out a badge and started writing my name on it. It was surely a sight for my sore eyes and my tired soul. He pasted one photograph on the form and another on the badge. Just when I thought that the ordeal was over, the officer handed over the badge and the first form and asked me to proceed to an adjacent building(5 mins away) and have it activated by the security control room and bring that badge and form back to him. So there I go again in search of another office and another officer. I managed to find both, got my badge activated and walk back to the first security office. The officer takes the form and the badge, goes over it one more time and hands me the badge and I was finally given a 2 weeks temporary access to one building.
This brought back some vivid memories of my college days where I had to go from one department to another with a sheet of paper and get a signature from every department head and dorm wardens to make sure that I had no dues before I could be issued my final transcripts. Nothing had changed in these 10 years.

Mumbai musings - 2... Roads and roller coasters...

The commute from my hotel to my work place was about an hours drive covering a distance of approx 12 miles. After the incessant rains and floods in Mumbai, the commuters in Mumbai have been blessed with free roller coaster rides as soon as they get on their vehicles. Not knowing this during my first ride to work, I had a sumptuous breakfast in the morning and got into a cab without knowing what was in store for me.
The start was just perfect, just like a roller coaster climbing the first ramp for the nerve-racking ride ahead. As soon as the cab drove out of the hotel, the real ride started for the next 55 mins. Imagine a 55 mins long roller coaster ride with short breaks of relief in between. Whatever I ate for breakfast was in my throat in the first 10 mins of my journey. I still could not fathom how I managed the rest of the journey with my body and internal organs being thrown from one corner to the other and up and down.
I visited my hometown of Chennai in southern India couple of months back and was complaining about the conditions of roads there. After this ride in Mumbai, I imagined how lucky people from Chennai are. I am not sure if the people here take this as a sport but surprisingly, I did not find many people complaining about it. The traffic itself is another nightmare where you put your life in other peoples hands as soon as you get on your car. One thing I did realize here was that, the lesser you travelled the roads in Mumbai, the longer your chances of survival are. God bless the Mumbaikars...

Mumbai musings - 1... Airport pickup...

After 2.5 days of battling with Delta airlines, I managed to land in Mumbai(p.k.a Bombay) tired, worn out and ready to lie down on anything that remotely resembles a bed. The baggage arrived surprisingly early and was out of the airpot within 30 mins after my plane landed(a personal best for me in any Indian airport). As I stepped out of the airport, hoping to find someone holding my name, I was mobbed by about 100+ chauffers waiting for about 200+ passengers. Going through the names in each of the placard brought back memories of looking for my exam results during my college days. I finally gave up looking for my name and approached a gentlemen in the front of the line and gave him my hotel name. In about 5 seconds, the information was transmitted magically to a driver at the end of the crowd who was waiting to take me to the hotel. Bless his soul!!! he neither carried a placard nor was he anywhere where I could spot him.
The chauffer then began to grab my luggage and tried to get out of that place. I wanted to make sure that he was indeed the right guy who was waiting for me. I then saw another gentlemen from my hotel who verified my name to his list and confirmed that this was indeed my driver. A sigh of relief came about and was plesantly surprised to see a brand new Toyota camry waiting for me to drive me to the airport. This was the first time, I saw a Camry on Indian roads. I wonder how long that car can stand "Indian roads", which by the way, will be covered in a different post.

Getti Melam.. A fun-filled wedding celebration...

A very talented bunch of people from a bay area based Sanhiti group came up with this exhilarating program called "Getti Melam" during the weekend of Sep 23 and 24 of 2006. It comprised of a fun-filled skit interleaved with beautifully choreographed songs from Tamil films. The foot taping dance numbers was a combination of traditional Tamil folk, contemporary jazz,hip-hop and salsa. This 2.5 hours of non-stop excitement was well received by the audience with ear shattering applause and "once more" requests for some popular numbers. In order to cater to the bay area crowd, this show had a repeat performance on Sunday with house full audience.
The skit, entirely in Tamil, was scripted extremely well without loosing pace with the flow of the show. Every dialogue made the audience roar with laughter and was delivered with exactly the right modulation so as to bring out the humor in it. The artists were real professionals when it came to presentation and timing. The countless hours put into scripting this and practicing it really paid off at the end. Hats off to the entire crew of the skit for coming out with such a thoroughly enjoyable skit.
The dance numbers, entirely from Tamil films, was aptly chosen to go along with the script and creatively choreographed. Again, another hats off to the choreo team. Given the choice of songs, the dance artists came up with such a performance that words did not matter in those numbers. Every song was choreographed with a specific style of dance and the artists did complete justice in delivering those styles even though many of them were newcomers and are just learning those style of dances. Hours and hours of practicing made this all possible. The dedication of the entire team was just amazing and it showed well from their performance.
The skit and dances would not have come out this well if not for the very creative production team which worked behind the scenes to come up with magnificent backdrops and sets to bring a real wedding theme on the stage. The swing set, also known as Oonjal in Tamil, was the icing on the already delicious cake. The coordination of lights and sound was just perfect which took this show to a new level of creativity. My, third, hats off to the Production team.
It has to be mentioned that this entire show was done as a fund raiser for a non-profit organization called Asha which supports education for under privileged kids in India among many other things. The entire Sanhiti team had contributed their "hard to find" time for this noble cause and made it a grand success. I am eagerly looking forward for their next production. Great job Sanhitians...

Photo through Sanhiti