Holy Cow's "Moo"sings

Sakleshpur Green Line Trek - Childhood dream come true

2010-07-13T13:13:00.023+05:30

Ever since I visited Araku Valley by train when I was small child, I loved the railway ghat sections. The huge number of tunnels and bridges (since trains cannot climb anything more than a 1 in 100 grade, compared to automobiles which can easily do a 1 in 10) make for a very entralling experience.

So when my trek mates from the Kottebetta trek informed me about the planned Sakleshpur Green Line trek, I literally jumped with excitement. So I reached bangalore on friday morning and crashed at Sameer's place. In the evening we went to Neeraj's place. There were 16 ppl in the group, so we rented a 22 seater bus and started to Sakleshpur at late night, reaching by saturday morning 6 o'clock. After refreshments and introductions at the KSRTC bus station, we headed to the railway line. On the way we also made a brief stopover at a fort and took some nice pics.

From there we started trekking on the tracks. Since it was a ghat section, there was little to no place to trek beside the tracks, so we had to walk on the concrete sleepers. This was kind of a jarring experience since it took utmost concentration to step correctly, lest we trip over or sprain an ankle. The heat was also unbearable with little cloud cover. Added to this I was carrying a 9 kilo backpack. Anyway we met some workers on the tracks, who told us that since there was some accident a few days ago, all train services on that line were suspended. This gave us a huge relief and we started disregarding basic rules - like crossing bridges in small groups, not resting on the tracks themselves, etc.

After a couple of "photoshoots" in tunnels and on bridges, we stopped at a small waterfall to refill, and I heard the faint but distinct sound of a train horn. I almost brushed it aside since we were not expecting any trains, when I heard a louder second horn. Realizing what was happening, I started shouting "Train! Train!" and everyone scrambled to the side of the tracks and pulled the bags which were lying on the tracks. After a couple of seconds, a very long freight train rumbled past us. It gave us the shock of our lives, since, had it happened on a bridge, it would have been a total disaster!

Anyway we continued more carefully, while periodically listening for train horns or vibrations on the tracks to make sure we wont get caught on the wrong foot again. We passed through a lot of tunnels, the longest of which was more than half a km. There were no lights, making the inside of long tunnels pitch black. They were also occasionally damp, making the sleepers very slippery. My torchlight was woefully inadequate since it was very focused, forcing me to use my more wider cellphone light. Also since the tunnels were designed for meter gauge, and later converted to broad gauge, the space on the sides where we were supposed to take cover, in case of an approaching train, was much smaller than expected.

We had our lunch with bhel and bread close to a railway station. After walking for some more time, we reached a small stream. There most of us took a bath, and continued on our way.

After a couple of trysts with some more trains and maintenance vehicles, we finally reached the Yedakumari railway station. After some dinner, we settled down to sleep in a room in the station. The next day morning we woke up early and after enjoying the morning climate for some time, we started back to the highway along the jungle with the help of a local guide. Before starting we took a couple of precautions against leeches, which would be abundant in the jungle we were about to cross.

We moved downhill rapidly, and then came across a small but fast moving stream, with leeches on the banks. My shoes got completely wet, but I would not dare remove them given the abundance of leeches. After trekking for about 3 hours we reached a much bigger river, with the highway on the otherside which we crossed slowly. While we were waiting for the bus to arrive to pick us up, some of us went for a swim in the river. It was a very beautiful experience for me since it was waist deep water, with soft sand underneath. The water was also not too fast or stagnant.

We got on the bus and reached Bangalore amongst a *huge* lot of dancing and shenanigans. I crashed at Shalesh's place for the next day, and then started back to Hyderabad on monday evening.

Overall it was a great feeling about my childhood dream coming true. I still remember the time I spent wanting to walk the railway tracks of Araku valley (on the Visakhapatnam-Kirandul line) near my hometown. It feels so great to finally do something which you have given up on a long time ago, especially if it was a childhood dream!

Leech Attack! - How to avoid those little bloodsuckers

2010-06-22T11:06:00.005+05:30

Leeches are pretty common to the Nilgiris. Since I suffer from an advanced case of Bdellophobia (a smug bastard's way of saying Fear of leeches), I have compiled a list of things which will help fellow sufferers in keeping the bloodsuckers away.

Note that Leech bites are pretty harmless. Since the leeches use a powerful anesthetic in their saliva, you will feel no pain when you are bitten. Also it contains a strong anti-coagulant, which means you will continue to bleed for a while after the leech drops off (on its own, or if you pull it away). Leech bites can also leave a mark on the skin. You might get some allergy to leech bites too.

Before we start off, I heard that some species of leeches in kerala can actually jump from trees. I dont know how to avoid them, and I dont care since I trek in karnataka mostly. Anyway for normal leeches, the below techniques can help a lot.

Leeches hate the smell of tobacco, so I use tobacco flakes (ghutka) to keep them away from my feet. I also wear 2 layers of socks with tobacco flakes in between each layer, and also spread it over the shoe. You can also rub some on the lower extremities of your pants. I also stuff my pant in between the two layers of socks to prevent any from creeping up the leg.

Finally if you see those blood suckers on your shoe/clothes/bag, how do you remove them? Since I am scared to death of even touching them, I use a pain spray like Moov, and apply it on the leech. This makes the leech drop off after 2-3 seconds. I heard that other sprays like deodorants also work, but never tested them myself. Also I dont think it is a very good idea to use a deodorant on a break in the skin.

After any trek in a leech infested area, I suggest taking a bath and examining the body for any signs of leeches. Also avoid keeping the bags or shoes near the beds, since leeches might climb onto the bed resulting in untold sleepless nights interspersed with nightmares!

Fixing high pitched audio in youtube video

2010-04-20T11:19:00.001+05:30

An hour ago, I was trying to watch a couple of google IO videos on youtube.com, but they are all about an hour long, which means it takes about 1.5 hrs to download on my "broadband" connection. So I decided that the best way would be to download them and save to disk. (Google seems to have enabled a download option on youtube, but it is available only for US... wtf?)

Anyway, I used the Download Helper plugin of firefox to download the video. But when I tried to play it with mplayer, the guy giving the lecture sounded like a chipmunk. I was unable to understand what he was saying since the voice was very high pitched and was like a tape being forwarded, but when I played it on youtube, it sounded fine.

So after checking out a number of other players at my disposal (which was none :), I decided to google to figure out what the problem was. A guy on the mplayer forums had the perfect solution - use the opensource project scaletempo's audiofilter like below

mplayer -af scaletempo

This worked like a charm, and the videos are playing great now.

Google DNS server

2010-04-10T13:04:00.002+05:30

Now-a-days my airtel DSL connection's DNS servers fail to resolve some DNS addresses. I dont have an idea about what the problem is, but frequently I see many domains unable to be resolved and sometimes pretty slow too. So I decided to move to using the Google Open DNS Server. The IP is also a beautifully easy to remember - 8.8.8.8 . 8.8.4.4 is another DNS server of google which can be used as an alternate.

To keep this IP from being overwritten on my Fedora 12 Box, I figured out that the best way to do it would be to write a new file in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/ which I names as 25-setdns with the following contents

#!/bin/sh
if [ "$2" = "up" ]; then
cp -f /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.BAK
echo nameserver 8.8.8.8 > /etc/resolv.conf
echo nameserver 8.8.4.4 >> /etc/resolv.conf
fi

This will ensure that the Google DNS will always be used to resolve my domain names.

Do note that I took a very crude, but simple approach here since I dont use any VPNs. If you do use VPN software, then you should make sure that the google DNS is the next entry. since your VPN's local DNS will resolve your VPN internal domains, which are unknown to outside world!

For the paranoid, this is yet more information you are pushing to google! :D

32 bit build environment on 64 bit Linux machines

2010-03-16T15:29:00.000+05:30

Generally we come across many application which were designed only for 32 bit operation. Although any 32 bit program can be compiled in a 64 bit environment, sometimes the makefile design makes this a huge pain to do. So sooner than later, we end up with a program which just would not compile in a 64 bit environment.

For those extreme cases, you can create a 32 bit chroot environment on your 64 bit box. To do this, first decide on which environment you would like based on the .cfg files in /etc/mock/. Then create a softlink to the particular config to default.cfg . Then just run mock init.

ln -s /etc/mock/fedora-12-i386.cfg /etc/mock/default.cfg
mock init

mock init will use yum to download the required environment. After it completes, then you can run

mock shell

to enter the 32 bit environement. To install any additional packages use the command

mock --install package-name

Note, this can be used simulate build environments other than x86 too, and is used for testing packages on various environments without the cost of physical machines or the pain of virtual machines.

Google Calender

2010-01-05T23:27:00.002+05:30

I have become a fan of Google Calender, and have been using it non-stop to help me remember the list of things to do etc. I previously tried to use offline stuff like M$ outlook etc, but they are well - offline. So unless I am in office I cant use them.

Since I check my mail all too often, I realized that the Google calender is a very valuable resource for me. I added all stuff like people's birthdays, renewing my passport (about an year away) to weekly team meetings in office to getting my bike serviced or meeting an acquaintance.

Google calender is the next best thing after a blackberry kind of device for these alerts. Since I do not have anything close to a blackberry, I am relying on Google calender.

Hail Google! :)

An iPod Saga - or how I nearly went mad trying to use it

2009-12-31T01:37:00.006+05:30

My sister recently gifted me an iPod Nano. I tried to use iTunes to load some mp3s onto it... seemed like a simple enough task given the "user-friendliness"/"coolness" (depending on if you are a fan/fanatic) of Apple. First of all, it says it needs to delete everything existing on the iPod. Hmmm, ok... WAIT! WHAT THE FUCK! why do you need to delete the existing stuff, Cant you just "add" to it? Apple's Steve Jobs makes an appearance on the iPod nano's screen and lists Apple's Official Policy - "Itz my product damn it, I can make it shit on you - if I wish to".

So, I deleted the existing songs, and wrote new mp3s onto it - using iTunes on my office laptop which had windoze I-REALLY-promise-not-to-crash-XP with Service Pack I-NOW-REALLY-REALLY-promise-not-to-crash. (Never mind it BSODs once a day on "heavy usage", But I digress) Now, I wanted to shutdown the damn iPod and there is no "off" button... hmmm, so I had to google the controls on how to shutoff the damn thing. Score one for "user-friendliness"!

All is well for one single goddamed day, when I decided to add a couple more songs. I start up iTunes and connect iPod, and iTunes crashes. ok maybe I connect ipod before starting iTunes? still crashes. maybe I reboot iPod? crashes. maybe I reboot Windoze? crashes. maybe I reboot both? crashes. maybe I update software? crashes. crashes. crashes.

OK, screw it. I would rather listen to my 12 songs already loaded for the rest of my entire life, than put up with another second of this i-Piece-of-CRAP-Tunes. So disconnect & Play. What is it? oh, when i-fucking-stupid-Tunes crashed - it corrupted the song DB and said I have to reset the device with iTunes. and guess what happens when I try to connect the iPod with iTunes?

At this point, I would have taken a comically giant mallet and bashed the evil incarnate out of existence, if it were not a gift. So, I thought therez got to be a way out from the dark side, and sure enough I found out about GTKPOD for Linux (and win-fucking-doze), which kicks iTunes's ass anyday and we lived happily ever after. The battle against the evil machinations of iTunes was over.

But i-will-be-back-Tunes wont give up so soon. I might see it striking back with the i-am-so-DAMN-cool-that-you-bow-to-me-right-fucking-now-Phone. I am counting on Google Phone to kick its ass then :)

Trekking in The Himalayas - Where the earth meets the Sky...

2009-07-20T00:00:00.016+05:30

Himalayas had always been a trekking destination which eluded me. Sometimes it was my fitness level, sometimes the cost, sometimes the professional commitments - but whatever the reason, it was not happening. So when I saw the BMC posting for a Himalayan trek, I immediately knew I could not miss it. Thus started my tryst with the Himalayas...

After taking a flight to Delhi from Hyderabad, followed by a disastrous bus journey to Manali, we landed at the Hotel on Sunday Evening. Monday morning we started to Solang Valley by Sumos, where I did Zorbing. We then moved on to Rohtang Pass, where we played by sliding on the small patches of snow etc. Then towards evening we moved to the the Base Camp at 14 mod (at 3250m) in heavy rain, and retired for the night.

The next day we began our trek to the next camp at Ravalikoli at 3750 m. Initially the trek passed through the forest, but soon we were above the tree line in beautiful grasslands. we reached the Ravalikoli camp, which was surrounded by mountains on 3 sides, with small rivers originating from them - and combining to form a big stream which snaked past the camp, and distant snow-covered peaks on the 4th side. After having some hot soup, we played Dumb charades and then proceeded to rest for the night.

The next day we started our trek to the sacred Brighu Lake located at 4250m above sea level. After a couple of hours of climbing through grassland, rocky areas as well as some snow, we reached the majestic lake Brighu. We rested for half an hour near the lake and then ate packed lunch before starting our descent. On the way back, a couple of us, played in the snow by throwing snow balls as well as sliding in it. By the time we reached the camp at Ravalikoli, there was a heavy fog and visibility was reduced to less than 10ft. I then climbed the nearby mountain for a view of the camp, but had to return soon due to a lot of rain. We played song & dance for some time before retiring for the night. However, unlike the previous nights, it never rained, which was a big surprise, given the downpour that used to hit the tents on earlier nights.

The next day the sky cleared up completely resulting in a bright and sunny day. This made the return trek one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. We enjoyed a lot by singing, dancing and plain freaking out on the way down. We walked through big meadows filled with exotic flowers, while sheep and horses were grazing peacefully. We reached the road, where we were picked up by Sumos and headed back to Manali.

I did some basic shopping that night, as well as visited the Manu temple. The next day we did white water rafting on the Beas River which was very exciting, especially when a couple of us, jumped into the river. In the evening we boarded the bus back to Delhi. After staying at my cousin's place in Delhi for a while, I reached Hyderabad sunday evening by flight.

This trek is easily the best among all the treks I had ever done due to the sheer beauty of the Himalayas coupled with the very diverse backgrounds and intellects of my team mates. I look forward to doing more such treks in the Himalayas.

Some people NEVER learn - CitiBank

2009-06-26T19:29:00.005+05:30

Today I got a call from a Citibank guy hawking Citibank investment products. Being the seventh call about this in as many weeks, I was pretty pissed off, but was trying to be polite. He asked me "CitiBank would like to help you plan your investments", and I told him "No thanks, I have already planned my investments". Most citibank guys usually leave me alone at this point (which was why I was generally polite to them.) But this guy was persistent.

"But Sir we will give you free counseling on how to make investments...". Trying to end this pointless conversation I replied - "OK, I dont have any money left with me after my previous investment". That I figured would effectively end the conversation, since you cannot sell to a guy who is broke.

"Sir, Do you have a CitiBank credit card sir?" he asked. what the ...? Now he is selling me credit cards? "No" - I snapped. He then explained to me that if I got a CitiBank Credit card, I can take out a loan on it (@24% interest rate) and then use the money to make Investments. I ended the conversation with a "no thanks".

This is the EXACT thing that burned CitiBank (and Wall Street) - Taking Loans to make investments - Leverage. If these big shots could not handle leverage and went to the Fed for handouts, how come common people are supposed to handle it? How can they even make these kind of stupid suggestions? No wonder so many subprime mortgages got sold! Something ought to done about these bloodsuckers, before they precipitate another meltdown.

Falling off the grid - An Experiment with my Life...

2009-06-19T19:19:00.001+05:30

Off late I have become kinda addicted to email, browsing, social networking - basically to computers. So I am planning on doing a small experiment with my life, where I try to fall off the grid. I will try to see how much more productive I can be if I keep away from these computer related activities... I was planning on it for sometime, and now appears to be a good time.

In a way, I am partly off-the-grid already, since I do not have a television at home. It leaves so much spare time and I really loved it! I will try to blog about how long I can carry on this "experiment", and what all additional things I have done, and how there was an increase (or decrease) in the quality of my life :) Maybe I will do stuff like clean my room, visit places, go for a jog, read a book, wake up early and enjoy the finer things in life. I believe, for a start, a week should be enough.

So why am I doing this? Sometimes in life, we think some things are so indispensable that we cannot live without them. Once we start thinking that way, we inadvertently hand over control of our lives. This exercise will hopefully put things back in perspective. And when Judgement Day strikes, I would be better suited to fight SkyNet :P

Ofcourse, I will still be using a computer for office work and will be available at my office email id. Well, what did you think? I am trying to fall off the grid, not get my ass fired :D

Nights on Necklace Road

2009-06-19T08:32:00.003+05:30

If you are bored at night in Hyderabad, and dont know what to do - here is a new destination, visit the Necklace road, which true to its name, is like an ornament on the Hussian Sagar Lake, in the center of the City. We live a couple of blocks from the necklace road, so whenever my friend and I feel bored at nights, we take our high-end bikes and jolly ride to the necklace road at late nights. But you need to be on the lookout for idiot bike/car racers. Racing is common, and so are accidents and deaths on this stretch.

There is a Heritage Parlour which sells milk products etc until 11PM, which is our regular hangout point. (Big names like Eat Street close by 10 or so, and are too crowded). Besides this there are a couple of the Ice Cream Bandis too.

There are cops prowling the place at late nights, and they are decent enough to leave you alone until about 12:30-1AM. But after that you better not park your bikes there. But cars are safer all throughout. Also, due to these regular patrols, the area turns out to be very safe.

Coming from the Destiny City - Vizag - I always loved the beach there, and missed it a lot after moving to Hyderabad. The Necklace road is the closest, one can get to such an experience in Hyderabad.

Trek to Kudremukh - Touching the face of God!

2009-06-15T07:07:00.006+05:30

It had been a very long time since I had been on a trek. This summer was a complete bummer, with temperatures soaring in Hyderabad and surrounding areas. So after the first monsoon showers, I decided to go on a trek. With none of my friends having the time to join me, I decided to go with a professional club, and the Bangalore Mountaineering Club (BMC) was the BEST among them.

So I started a day earlier and landed in Bangalore on Friday morning, and worked that day and then joined with the BMC team leaving for Kudremukh on Friday night. We reached Kalasa and were put up in a local hotel, as the local nature camp did not allow large groups (we were 35 people). The next day morning, we reached the base of the trek at around 9:30 am, and started the trek.

Initially the trek was on a muddy road for a couple of km, and then it branched out into the forest. While waiting for others to catch up a couple of us also took a detour to a nearby waterfall with a check-dam which was beautiful. Back on the way, after crossing the first stream, I realized that there were leeches all over the place due to the incessant raining in the past few days. I have a serious fear of leeches (I looked it up and the actual term is "Bdellophobia" :), and these were really big ones at almost 4-5 cms long (without any blood i.e.), wiggling around vigorously to attach themselves to the nearest blood source. After reaching a patch of dry rock, we checked our shoes and sure enough there were 2 leeches, which were quickly removed by my teammates (thanks guys! I was really really grossed out :).

After climbing for some more time, we could see the actual peak we were about to climb. It was awesome, like a serene giant, being engulfed slowly in milky white clouds. The mountains around were majestic. After some comparatively steeper climbing, we reached the peak by 2:00 PM and relaxed there for an hour while enjoying the lunch of chapattis & chutney which our BMC contact Ram had provided.

On a nearby mountain, we could see a herd of bison, walking slowly, and it felt very exciting seeing them. On the peak, I realized that I ran out of my 2.5 litre supply of water, having misjudged the strenuousness of the climb. So, I had to drink some water from a nearby stream directly - since I did not have any iodine to purify it, but it was very pure. We started our way back down, after climbing down from the main peak, I was deep in leech territory, so I started running all the way until we were close to the mud road, which was safe from leeches.

Four of us were lost on the way back on the mud road, and reached a local village. Two local women were kind enough to lead us back to the Bus. It was almost 6:00 PM by the time we reached the bus. We went back to the lodge and the next day we went to a nearby waterfalls which were very beautiful, before starting back to Bangalore. It was almost 1AM by the time I reached my friend's place in Bangalore.

I did not carry a camera with me on this trip, so the pics from my cell are subpar, I will put up the remaining pics once the remaining team members upload their.

I was very happy with myself for completing this trek, since my strength and stamina training over the previous 5 months had paid off handsomely, with me being able to carry a lot of weight uphill without getting real tired! Hoping to do a trek sometime real soon.

Racism & Color - NOT the same everywhere

2009-06-09T17:43:00.003+05:30

Recently my friend pointed me to this article on a Times of India Blog. The author of the article raises the point that Indians are as racist as any other people, and gives the example of the preference for fairness prevalent in many matrimonial ads as well as fairness cream ads.

However, this author, along with the countless others, always go wrong here. Dont get me wrong - most Indians ARE racist, hell they might be even more racist than most other peoples. But I entirely disagree about this author's example that preference for fairness is racism. It is taken out of context from the Western civilization's tryst with racism and color.

Some time back, there was this huge uproar about two cheerleaders to an IPL match being given marching orders because they were dark skinned, and the media raised an uproar about Indian "racism". While this is the correct thing to do in a western context where racism and color are intertwined so closely, In the Indian context it is just a preference (albeit very stupid and insensitive) of Indians. If you think this is racism - tell me why are all the cheerleaders (or for that matter actors, tv anchors etc) good looking? Is it not racism against the not-so-good looking people? The author mentioned in the Times blog asks rhetorically - 'when did u last see a matrimonial ad seeking attractive, dark-complexioned life partner'? Well I suppose he saw may ads which were seeking - 'fair skinned, fat, short, unattractive life partners'!!

Many Indians have a preference for fairness. While it is despicable in itself, it is NOT racism. You never see a group of fair-skinned guys way-laying and assaulting a darker skinned guy in India. (It might happen with people from a different caste, religion, place etc). Preference for fair skin is as much a preference for a trait like being taller, skinnier or good looking. But noooo.... these are all just "silly preferences", but use color and it is actual racism. The Indian authors import even the opinions from western authors without bothering to mold it to an Indian context.

Which is what makes me so angry about these articles. While I completely understand a western author mis-reading an Indian's preference for fair complexion as racism, it is completely idiotic for an Indian author make the same mistake.

Not wasting food on your plate - Indian custom gone wrong

2009-05-22T23:02:00.001+05:30

Here is another low-hanging fruit for bolstering your diet - if food is left on your plate after you are done - THROW IT AWAY! NEVER, EVER, EVER eat food because it will go waste.

This problem of not wasting food on the plate is especially prevalent among Indians, who consider it a cultural taboo to waste food, which is considered equivalent to insulting God. But the problem is by overeating you ARE insulting life itself, not to mention doing harm to yourself and your surroundings. The custom itself came from a time, when food was not as available as it is right now, atleast for many of us. So it is a more stronger version of "saving for the rainy day". But if you are on a diet, you KNOW you are trying to lose the rainy day reserves, so it makes no sense to eat the excess food.

If there is food wasted on your plate, remember you are the one you have taken more than you require. So deal with the problem by judging the quantities correctly in future, and not by stuffing yourself.

A special mention is required for social occasions in the Indian context, where the host is serving food. The host is EXPECTED to over-serve, lest the guest is feeling shy. Such scenarios need the guest to be culturally sensitive and handle the situation tactfully. If it is a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, just accept it. If it is more frequent, do inform the host politely but firmly that although you appreciate their hospitality, you do not want extra food on your plate.

Missing tasty foods for diet? - here is why your diet WILL fail

2009-05-20T22:11:00.006+05:30

"Fallen off the wagon, have you?" is what people (who know I am on a diet) say when they see me eating chocolates, kebabs, lassi and hyderabadi biriyani. However what most people do not realize it that by staying off your favorite foods, your diet is essentially doomed!

The trick is to NEVER give up your favorite foods. If you do, you feel like sacrificing, which adds a lot more emotional stress to your diet. And believe me, your diet will fail, especially once the results start pleatueing.

All you have to do while eating your favorite foods is to make sure you are not exceeding calories by too much. Generally I put 2 complete days as no-diet days every week (mostly saturday and sunday), that way, I diet the entire week and eat the items I love on these two days. The important point of eating during these 2 off-diet days is RELISHING the food! not splurging it. Order a chicken biriyani or icecream, but eat until your hunger is satiated, not until your stomach feels like bursting!

I also realized something during this time - I used to eat one and a half biriyanis generally, but after I started eating only till my hunger was satiated, I am eating only half a biriyani! This is a very useful thing to do especially once your diet concludes and you are following a normal diet.

And most important of all - NEVER eat fatty food you HATE! For example, I hate sweets in general, but used to just pop them whenever I pass by a sweet box, just for the heck of it. NEVER do this. there is nothing more counter-productive and stupid than eating fatty foods you hate!

Spot Reduction Myth - Nightmares while losing tummy

2009-05-20T00:26:00.006+05:30

"Do crunches/situps to reduce your tummy" - If I had a cent for everytime that was said to me, I would be a billionaire. But people fail to realize that this seemingly logical "truth", is a total myth! You do not lose any tummy fat by doing crunches/situps, anymore than you do by doing biceps.

This myth makes people believe that by working out a muscle underneath the layer of undesired fat, the fat will melt away! Fat is lost through out the body in a uniform fashion depending on genetics. However this myth which was started by the afternoon infomercials seems to be propagated on and on and on. They are able to sell more and more stupid devices like abdomen belts etc due to the prevalence of this myth.

You would be much better off doing cardio or weight training, than trying to strain those abdomen muscles exclusively to get rid of your tummy. Although, by doing crunches you improve your muscles in your abdomen it does not help if you have any amount of fat in your tummy, which will cover that six pack.

Also another major disadvantage of doing situps is that, you may end up getting lower back pain, which sucks because you could have avoided this altogether if you knew about the spot-reduction myth before hand!

So control your food, and do whatever exercise you feel like and count calories to make sure you are not over-eating. and your tummy will vanish in no time!

Here are some more links from Wikipedia and exrx.net about this myth.

Virgin Cuba Libre - My Summer Special

2009-05-16T16:55:00.005+05:30

Well to beat the Hyd heat over the weekends, I have devised my own mocktail which I call the - Virgin Cuba Libre. Well if you know the normal Mocktail naming conventions, you know what I am talking about - It is cola with Ice and Lime :) (Cuba Libre is Cola on Ice with white rum. A Virgin prefix for any cocktail indicates the alcohol part of it will be missing - just like a Virgin Mary is the mocktail equivalent of the Bloody Mary)

The recipe is simple, take a glass of Diet Pepsi, and add lots of icecubes. Then add a wedge of lime to it - and presto your new mocktail is ready for drinking.

WARNING: Using recipes created by the holy cow has been known to cause long lasting bouts of nausea, revulsion, headaches and suicidal tendencies in almost all people, other than the holy cow himself. So be forewarned! :D

JP wins from Kukkatpally

2009-05-16T15:03:00.004+05:30

It is heartening to see that a leader who stands for development and progress has won the Kukkatpally seat. Call me pessimistic, but I thought that JP's chances of winning were pretty bleak given how easily voters get misled by false promises and alcohol/money supply. But the fact that the urban voters have come out against the traditional parties and voted for JP means that a definite change is happening although it is currently at a scale which will not affect the established polity. Also the lead of 15000+ votes is more or less substantial.

I believe JP now needs to develop a incorruptible second rung of leaders - who will also become equally famous as him. This will ensure the sustainability of the party in the state.

Lets see how JP develops his constituency over the next 5 years. And more than the constituency itself, people will be watching how he would approach various issues in the Legislative Assembly sitting in the Opposition. I strongly believe if he makes enough of a positive impact, Lok Satta can become a force to recon with in the future.

Processor Name Confusions

2009-05-11T21:24:00.004+05:30

It used to be confusing a lot when people talk about i386, x86, AMD64, opterons etc. However there are some minor (and some major) differences in these terms. I try to explain some of the differences in this post. Consider this a very brief history lesson too :)

BTW, I oversimplified some product lines, so that clarity is maintained.

8088:An 8 bit processor from Intel, one of the first ones. You wont find this anywhere on PCs [EDIT: This is actually a 16 bit processor with an 8-Bit external bus]

8086:A 16 bit processor from Intel. Code written for this processor will STILL execute on even the latest Xeon multi-core processors! Such is the level of backwards compatibility provided

80x86:This is used to indicate the processors after 8086 like 80186, 80286, 80386 etc. This has been shortened to "x86".

x86:See 80x86

286:This processor had some basic support for segmentation etc

386:This was the first 32 bit processor in the Intel line and had a fully supported protected mode (along with an MMU), paging etc, which enabled development of complicated operating systems like Windows, Linux etc which provide features like Virtual Memory, protection between user processes & kernel etc.

486, 586, 686:Subsequently improved versions of 386

Pentium:For All processors mentioned before, other companies like AMD etc could make similar clones, AND use the same name, essentially denying branding of Intel's products. Intel's efforts to trademark 386 were denied by the US Govt on the grounds that a number cannot be trademarked. So Intel released the Pentium Line of processors to overcome these trademark issues. It was now able to prevent other companies from using the same names as itself.

Athlon:After Intel trademarked Pentium name, AMD was forced to use a new name for its processor line. It chose Athlon.

Itanium:Itanium was a 64 bit processor from Intel which was NOT backwards compatible with the x86 line. It was also fundamentally different at the ISA level using a VLIW architecture instead of the standard CISC of the x86 line. This was a major disaster for Intel, since AMD undercut it by releasing a x86-backwards compatible 64 bit processor. Barring a few HP machines, this did not sell much.

Athlon64:After Itanium, which required special OS and application development was faltering in the market, AMD released the AMD64 ISA which was backwards compatible. The corresponding 64 bit processor was Athlon64.

Opteron:Opteron is the AMD's Server class processor

Xeon:Xeon was a newer x86 64 bit Server-Class processor which was compatible with the AMD64 ISA. (Intel actually chose to call it EM64t instead of AMD64) (The 64 bit desktop processor was simply Pentium IV with EM64t)

IA32:This is the processor Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of the i386 and above, 32 bit processors. Although this used to be called the x86 ISA, it was retroactively named as IA32 by Intel after the release of the IA64 line

IA64:See Itanium

AMD64/EM64T:See Xeon. Linux takes a neutral approach and calls it x86_64 architecture.

Xeon with HyperThreading: Hyperthreading (from Intel) is the poor silbling of Multi-Cores. Basically using just one processor core (and cache etc) they try to execute multiple threads. Some applications actually faced decrease in performance with this enabled. AMD never bothered to implement this.

DualCore: Intel failed horribly while trying to push processor speeds to more than 10GHz. It conceptualized a new Processor Architecture called NetBurst, which was supposed to do this, but it was overheating at sub-5Ghz levels itself. So Intel cleverly shifted focus away from processor speeds to Processor Cores per Package. Now even 8 cores in a single package are also being developed.

I chose not cover the Mobile class of processors like Pentium M, Atom etc and the latest GPGPU offerings from NVidia etc as this post was getting too big!

Adrian v1.0 RELEASED!

2009-05-11T09:53:00.000+05:30

At last I ironed out the bugs in the 1.0 branch and was able to release Adrian both for Windows and Linux. You can download the Linux version or the Pre-Compiled Windows Version.

Hope you guys enjoy the game. Do report any bugs you find here.

Source code is licensed under GPLv3 and the SVN repository is located here.

Here are some screenshots from the game (scaling them reduced the quality here)

Same post is copied at adriangame.blogspot.com

Interesting Bug in C++ code

2009-05-08T14:30:00.004+05:30

I was trying hard to release a 1.0 version of Adrian game, but we had to face a showstopper bug which was crashing the Windows Release version, on start of the game itself. After hunting for it for a long time, I was able to figure out the bug, which turned out to be a very interesting issue.

Basically we have a structure which has an embedded vector STL class in it. What the code was doing was to create the structure, and before assigning contents to it, was simply memsetting the entire structure to 0. While this is normal operation in any C code, in C++ this can cause very weird bugs.

When the vector is embedded in the structure as a C++ class (Composition), it's constructor gets calls when the structure is created. This constructor actually setting some fields (pointers namely) to some initial values. However, when we memset the structure, the vector fields are again initialized to zero (and the pointer to NULL). So whenever I try to access the vector it causes a panic.

The fix was to simply remove the memset code, and then write a new constructor for the structure, which will initialize the other variables to zero, leaving the vectors alone. What a bug! it took a lot of hunting to get to this one :)

Now, We would be able to release Adrian 1.0 version soon.

The MOST important dieting secret

2009-05-07T18:47:00.003+05:30

NOTE: I am no doctor or dietitian... so this may or may not work for you and worse can cause serious problems... so just consult you doctor or whatever... end of disclaimer...

Most of you who know me, already know that lately I have become a complete health nut. Well that is true. The reason I became a total health nut is that I figured out a very important secret for fat loss. (Note that I am saying FAT loss - NOT weight loss). OK, this is turning out to be freakishly close to the infomercials you see on afternoon TV :D, But bear with me, since I have no financial motive :P

The mantra is "Reduce NET calorie intake". Couple of points...

- Your body requires about 1900 calories per day
- You make sure you eat 1400 calories - no more no less
- That deficit of 500 calories over 7 days is EXACTLY equal to 1 POUND of Fat

Now forget all the "tips" you hear from people, and just follow the mantra... Some of the tips I heard over the years from various sources
- Dont eat before sleeping
- Eat groundnuts
- Avoid Eggs
- Cashew is good for weight loss
- You cant lose fat without exercise
- Follow Atkins Diet
- Avoid non-vegetarian and alcohol
- drink lots of water (another was avoid water, since you will get "water body" - whatever that is!)
etc

Just assume all that is lies, lies, lies, and stick to the mantra. (Ofcourse many of them have as much truth in them as there is gold in sea water... yes there is, but does it really matter?) So choose any diet you want and stick to 1400 calories per day routine. You will lose 1 pound per week! It is the first law of thermodynamics!

This is the basic diet plan that I used for 3 months to get down from 68+ kgs to 61Kgs. I have tweaked it a lot lately, to help my strength training, but the basic principle stands.

Codefest :)

2009-05-07T10:12:00.003+05:30

Two weeks ago, I resurrected an old game that I have written six years ago with my friends. I was not sure how long it would hold my interest. But I guess I was unnecessarily worried. I have completed over two weeks of work on it and spread over 60 changesets, the total Lines of Code changed is easily over 8,000 lines. So that is good work for 2 weeks, working part-time. The entire game has been revamped, with more focus on extensibility.

Although it will look mostly like the old game, extensive code reorganization work was done on it. Loadable TTF Fonts, Loadable Maps, efficient rendering etc are some of the things that I have been working on. Booty has been working on the windows port. Once the code re-org is completed, we plan to add more experience and gameplay changing features like terrains etc.

We also plan on providing a FPS kind of perspective, in future - but that is a long way to go. By using a source code repository, tracking these major release branches is turning out to be very easy!

Resurrecting Adrian

2009-04-24T18:15:00.004+05:30

Adrian was the name of the game which me and my friends swamy and vamsi, have written in 2003. We were studying 3rd year in IIIT-Hyd, and there was a game design contest announced. We immediately jumped on board and wrote this game - Adrian - in flat 7 days (actually more nights :P). It was awesome for a week's effort, and we won the first prize for it.

We had to borrow my friend's CPU for a week, since the graphics card on which we could actually program was very expensive and beyond our means. Unfortunately, after the contest, the development stalled as we cannot afford the graphics cards. Later I was able to afford one, but then, I was working full-time, so that left little time for game development.

A week ago, I got a mail from a guy who played the game and liked it. That prodded me into going back and look through the code and realized I was as excited about it, as I was when we first got the idea. So I decided to resurrect the game, and immediately moved the code to Google code for version control, and started working on it. The latest code and developments can be seen here.

I am also working on giving this game a newer home somewhere on the net. This might take a while as I plan to first improve the game etc. The old website of the game can be found here.

Out of Space on Picasa? Dont fret yet!

2009-04-22T16:01:00.003+05:30

If you go on enough vacations, this is bound to happen sooner than later. You will be uploading pics and then realize that suddenly you ran out of the allotted 1GB on Picasaweb. And you dont want to shell out $20 for additional space! So, although you can go and delete old albums or some pics, it is very time consuming. For example I have over 20 albums and am not prepared to delete any in total. I tried going through them to remove less interesting pics, but lets face it - it is a very tedious task!

So here is a simple way, just use the Picasa software and use the "Import from Web Album" feature to download an album to your local machine. Then edit the settings and reduce the resolution to 1024x768, and then upload them back. You would have retrieved over 50% of the space from previous resolution!

Thats it... oh and while we are on the topic, check out my Gallery at http://picasaweb.google.co.in/chbhanukalyan :P

Debugging Memory Allocations

2009-03-29T15:26:00.004+05:30

Debugging memory allocations etc is always a pain, especially if you have memory leaks which dont cause errors directly. There are a wide variety of tools which facilitate detection, the most useful being Valgrind. The tool is awesome, and it definitely helps in this task. Also GNU libc has a wide ranging support for just this task.

But unfortunately you are not always lucky, and might find yourself working on systems other than Linux. Like FreeBSD. (Well you might have guessed that I am no fan of FreeBSD). Although Valgrind has a port to FreeBSD, it coredumps on startup. So in such dire circumstances you are left with no choice but to start from scratch.

Well everyone knows the standard mymalloc method, which is just a wrapper for the standard malloc call. However here is a more efficient method of doing it. Use the linker option "--wrap,malloc" which will make any references to malloc point to __wrap_malloc() (which you will be writing) and to call the actual malloc from inside your wrapper just call __actual_malloc().

The other option is to use the LD_PRELOAD, which loads your custom library, so any malloc calls are resolved to your wrapper calls. To call the actual malloc(), use the statement - "dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "malloc");", which will give a function pointer to the actual malloc().

I know the blog is not too comprehensive on how to use these 2 facilities, but now that you know what can be done, just google them :)

OPEC - Why it no longer calls the shots

2009-03-29T11:41:00.001+05:30

"Are you nuts?" might be the first response of anyone who sees the title. Afterall everyone knows that the single factor which definitely affects the spot price of an Oil barrel on the floor of the NYMEX, the most, is an OPEC meeting. So let me elaborate. OPEC is powerful, but not as much as it once used to be. If anyone remembers the 1973 Oil shock - which brought America and most of the world to its knees in a decade long bout of stagflation, you will now know how much less power it wields today.

So what can be the reasons for such a powerful body's influence to wane? To understand the reasons, you need to understand the composition of OPEC. OPEC stands for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It is a cartel of 12 countries, the main member being Saudi Arabia accounting for over 25% of world reserves. Other countries like Venezuela have much smaller reserves. So now lets take a look at some of the reasons for the waning of its effects.

Production: Although OPEC used to control a lot of Petroleum production, New reserves discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, and Russia opening up its vast Oil reserves have reduced OPEC's global output to under 40%.

Price Issues: OPEC members have divided interests over Oil prices. While the naive reader might think that a higher price is in the best interests of all suppliers, things are more complicated. Saudi Arabia has much more Oil in the ground compared to other members of OPEC. So while a higher price helps in the short term, it will also accelerate development of alternative technologies, which will eventually reduce the world dependence on Oil. So OPEC members with less Oil in the ground, could not care less about the future, and want to make more money with less oil, and hence want higher prices. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, wants the world to continue its addiction with oil, and hence would not want to invariably prop up alternative fuel technologies. This attitude is summed up by a quote by a Saudi Oil Minister as "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones". Even towards the end of 2008, Saudi broke ranks, and declared it will pump over its OPEC imposed production quota, to reduce the Oil prices which were in the stratosphere.

Infighting: Also after a great show of unity in the 1970s, the major OPEC nations turned against one another. Firstly the 8 year Iran-Iraq war distanced the Shia Iran from the rest. Later, Iraq which was trying to service its war debts more easily by rising Oil prices was rebuffed by Saudi and Kuwait which pumped out more Oil and depressed global Oil prices, finally provoking Iraq to invade Kuwait and eventually Saudi, if it were not for America's intervention.

The Iraq Factor: Although Iraq is a member of OPEC, it is not taking part in production quotas since 1998. And with the highly increased American influence, it is much more likely to do US's bidding at least in the near future, which most probably will not coincide with the official OPEC stand. Also after a long time, Iraq is comparatively stabler and will start pumping more and more Oil, increasing supply and indirectly reducing OPEC's influence.

America: And finally lets not forget US's Gunboat diplomacy by having a couple of warships and aircraft carriers patrolling the Gulf. Although Saudi is an ally, the war ships let it know its position, and the emergence of a Shia Iran, right next to its borders as well as a discontented population, rising Islamic terrorism against the ruling sheiks would make Saudi more reluctant to anger it ally America. And America is much more interested in the Gulf after the 1973 Oil Shocks.

These are some of the reasons why OPEC is less powerful, but lets not get carried away, It is still the single most powerful factor in determining global Oil prices. So let us hope that the dependence on Oil will decrease soon enough.

Oil prices scrapping the bottom - Lost Lessons

2009-03-24T14:36:00.000+05:30

Now-a-days, Oil price is the last thing on people's mind, with an Election just over in the US, the economy in the dump, and theories about a very prolonged recession - which has even been compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sure enough, it seems like almost no one remembers that oil prices were topping $147 just a few months ago... The commodity bubble has burst at last, and has dragged the price of Oil back into $50 range now.

So what now? Will the prices continue at $50? Obviously not. Once the downturn is over, the OPEC countries will actively seek their pound of flesh. So here is a golden chance for Obama to right many wrongs that were done earlier. Instead of seeking short term quick fixes for bumping up Oil production by offshore drilling or invading other countries, a comprehensive plan to rid America of its Oil addiction needs to be worked on.

Although the end of the cold war made the world a much safer place, it inevitably resulted in America losing its focus on Science & Technology. Ofcourse the top technology companies are still US-based ones, but they are private. And private companies tend to be short sighted for obvious reasons. And real technologies take time to mature and generate profits. It is the federal govt's responsibility to fund such long-term technologies, which will help tap into renewable resources.

The recession is showing at least some signs of waning, so once again a message from the Oil crisis is being lost. Renewable sources are the way to go, and still more research and funding into better batteries, solar power, etc is needed. Lets hope Obama does not lose sight of the future while trying to save the present.

Kernel Crash? Get the dying moans...

2009-02-12T21:03:00.002+05:30

So you had a kernel crash, when you were not around, and could not see on the console what the issue was. Or it happened on a server, which has a hardware watchdog which reboots the machine if it has crashed. So here is a way to get the messages which the kernel spit out before dying...

First of all you need to have enabled kernel crashdumps... there is no reason not to. So you are all set and the next time a crash happens the core is saved in a file called vmcore. Now fire up GDB and run the following commands


(gdb) set logging file ~/gdb.out                                                      
(gdb) set logging on
Copying output to ~/gdb.out.
(gdb) set print elements 41216
(gdb) set height 0            
(gdb) p (char*)__log_buf

The file gdb.out will now contain the messages, open it in and replace all instances of '\n' with a real newline (using something like ":%s/\\n/\r/gc" in vim), and you will see something like this


<4>ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
<6>usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
<6>usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
<6>drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
<6>PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBC0,PNP0f13:MSE0] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12

Happy Debugging! (I KNOW it wont be HAPPY :P)

Getting safe water on Long Treks

2008-12-27T09:45:00.003+05:30

Water is very essential during trekking, and neglecting that can cause serious dehydration. For short treks, you can carry most of the water you need for the entire journey in bottles. But for extended treks, this becomes more difficult, especially if camping or cooking is involved. Water is heavy, since a litre of it weighs a kilogram, it quickly overwhelms the carrier.

Water from natural sources like streams or by melting snow can be used for drinking and cooking purposes, however a few precautions are mandatory, to prevent unwanted diseases from drinking contaminated water.

The most effective of all these is to boil the water. The water need not actually boil for an extended period, just getting it to boil should suffice. This will render the water safe to drink. But this is also a complicated and time consuming procedure.

The other method is to buy Iodine beforehand at your local medical store. For a recent 3 day trek I bought BetaDine(R) iodine bottle for about Rs 113 at the local medical store. You can buy Tincture of Iodine also, but it has less concentration. It was a normal 100ml bottle, and can potentially clean hundreds of liters of water. Just add 8 drops of it to a liter of clear water, and wait for 30 mins for the iodine to kill most of the microorganisms. Iodine is not poisonous in higher doses, so you can safely increase the dosage without any side-effects. double the dosage, if you see visible contamination or if you want quicker response time. After 30 mins, there will be a slight after-taste to water due to iodine. I personally did not mind the taste, but for those of you who do, you can carry Vitamin C tablets. You must add them AFTER the 30 mins, otherwise iodine will not be effective (since the Vitamin C tablets convert iodine to iodide, removing the taste). I would suggest using iodine in normal water once before the trek to know clearly how you feel about the taste of it, and see if you need Vitamin C or not.

WARNING: Do NOT EXPOSE IODINE TO SUNLIGHT! It renders it ineffective!

Iodine tablets are also available I suppose, although I havent tried them.

I also suggest having a backup scheme to purify water, to prevent any unexpected incidents like the bottle accidentally getting exposed to sunlight or breaking.

Check out this link for more details on other water purification methods. Remember, by not carrying a lot of bottles, you are also not polluting the environment with plastic!

Trekking Essentials

2008-12-12T13:07:00.006+05:30

Trying to go for a trek in the wilderness? Here is a list of the essentials you need to carry. Most of them will seem like overkill, but if an emergency happens you will be happy you have them! The list is incomplete, and I will be adding stuff regularly as I figure it out.

Navigational Aids:

1. Detailed and marked Map
2. Compass (optionally supplemented with a GPS receiver)
3. Cell Phone

Survival Aids:

1. Water proof Matches/Lighter with candles for easier starting
2. Flashlight
3. Knife
4. Rope
5. Cap/Hat
6. Water Purification tablets
7. Old News papers for Fire
8. Energy Bars
9. Jerkin/rain wear (against rain and cold)
10. Whistle (for communication if lost)
11. Local Enforcement official contact and details
12. Extra batteries (for flash light or camera)

Health Aids:
1. First aid kit
2. Sprain Band & Gauze
3. Sunglasses and sunscreen
4. Mosquito/Insect repellent
5. Disinfectant (For handwash)
6. Protection against Leeches

Comfort
1. Extra food and water containers
2. Extra clothes
3. Rain wear
4. Extra socks
5. Tissue paper
6. Wet Tissues

Miscelleneous/Entertainment:
1. Camera
2. Extra clothes

Treks with camping:
1. Tents
2. Sleeping bags/blankets
3. Campfire starting materials

Treks with substantial climbing:
1. Gloves
2. Shoes with proper grip
3. Bags with tight straps
4. tight clothing
5. Ropes
6. Pick axe

Trip to Nandi Hills

2008-12-10T18:47:00.008+05:30

After a long vacation-less November, it was time for action again, and this time we decided to go visit Coorg near Bangalore during the weekend of Dec 6-7. However since the number of people got reduced to my friend - MJ, his wife - Sudha and myself, We had no option but to cancel the planned 2 day coorg trip and then instead planned on visiting Nandi Hills about 70 km from bangalore.

Since we felt a cab for 3 people was an overkill, we took my friend AJ's Pulsar 180, and Phani's Bajaj Discover to visit Nandi hills. We started at 1PM in the afternoon after having lunch at Swagruha near our friend's house. After travelling for 4 km on the Outer Ring Road, I was stopped by two cops. The Pulsar 180 is a Tamil Nadu registration vehicle, and my friend never actually paid the Karnataka state tax for it. So not having any kind of insurance/pollution certificate or tax reciept, he asked for a Rs 800 fine... or Rs 200 bribe :)). I paid the bribe and he warned me about more cops checking vehicles near the Hebbal flyover. I took heed to his warning and closely followed a lorry, and missed the bunch of cops who were stopping vehicles at the Hebbal Flyover.

Nandi hills is located about 40 km away from the newly constructed Bangalore International Airport (BIAL), and hence the road was a 6 lane one with a 80KMPH speed limit. The P180 was rearing to go and I cruised along, but not forgetting to check out for cops at the same time. We reached Nandi hills at 3:30 PM.

The place was extremely beautiful, although there were no clouds. We had a complete view of the place around. Nandi hills was actually a fort belonging to Tipu Sultan at one time. The rock formation was awesome, and we had a walk all around the place and took a ton of pics. We also took our trademark "in-the-air" pics, where we jump, and use a multi snap capture camera to take a series of photographs spaced about 300 ms from each other. The monkeys on the hill were a serious menace, with one trying to snatch a chips packet directly from my hand. and it would not scare at all.

We started back at 5:30PM from Nandi Hills, and it was almost 8:00 PM by the time I reached my friend's house, without any further brushes with the cops :)

How people feel about themselves...

2008-11-02T08:58:00.005+05:30

In a standard departure from my normal posts about vacations/economics/linux, I have started writing about some philosophical insights too which struck me as so true... :)

I have found the weather man movie very insightful... and I liked one quote the best of all... I have modified it a bit, to make it more relevant... It never amazes me how much of this is true about how people feel....

"When we are young, we picture ourselves having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passes, few ever become any qualities that we actually have. And all the possibilities we face and the sorts of people we could be, all of them get reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they get reduced to one, to who you are. And that's who you are!"

So learn to live with yourself, stop pushing yourself too hard and be happy!

Overcomming blurred images in firefox

2008-10-28T11:46:00.003+05:30

While using firefox, I recently noticed that most of the images are blurred and/or having artifacts all over. Initially I could not understand why this was happening even with new tabs. But it looks like when you zoom in, in firefox (using Ctrl +/- or the mouse wheel), it zooms images too. Also firefox "remembers" the zoom settings in some way, so that it applies for new tabs too. This is counter productive for me, since the main reason I zoom in is to read the text better, not for images.

So for those of you who want to disable this image zooming feature of firefox, go to View -> Zoom -> Zoom Text Only.

Its a trivial tip, but it changed my browsing experience for the better!

Waynad - Trip into God's Own Country

2008-10-27T08:52:00.010+05:30

I heard a lot about Kerala being a very scenic place to visit, but could never visit it. So, last week, when my friend AJ who stays in Bangalore and is the cornerstone of all of my bangalore based trips like Bandipur, Mudigere, Shivanasamudram etc, mentioned he will be moving out of bangalore shortly, We decided to have one more trip. After throwing around a lot of names, Waynad stuck.

Located around 300KM from Bangalore in Kerala, Waynad is a popular and scenic hill station. So three of us - vamsi, praveen and myself - from Hyderabad booked tatkal tickets to bangalore. The train arrived late by two hours on Saturday morning at 8:30AM. We joined AJ and Balaji waiting in a Qualis, and started off to Waynad. After paying an RTO toll of Rs 600 at the Kerala-Karnataka border - which surprised us completely, we reached our Hotel in Kalpetta at 4:15. We then immediately left for the scenic Pookode Lake. Since we arrived there at 4:55, and boating in the lake closes at 5:00, we could not get a row boat ourselves, but had a tourism employee take us around the lake.

The employee, over chitchat, revealed that there would be treks to a nearby mountain peak daily, and we were tempted to cancel the next day plans completely and go for the trek. But he warned us that there would be leeches, but we did not care too much for them - how wrong we were! After getting off the boat, we roamed around the lake, and at one point my friend balaji and vamsi waded into a patch of water which was overflowing onto the path. Rest of us decided against it, and instead turned back. We went to the canteen and saw a group of people trying to get a leech off a guys leg using a pair of matches... Alarmed we immediately checked our own legs, and sure enough we found two leeches on Balaji's feet. It had sucked a decent amount of blood, and after removing them the blood would not clot, due to some anti-coagulant that the leech releases.

We rushed to the hotel room, and thoroughly cleaned ourselves, and vamsi who was wearing shoes, found two leeches on his sock, but which, luckily, could not penetrate the skin. After this rude jerk, we decided that tomorrow's trek was a lost cause. We then had a beer followed by dinner, and played cards until 12:30AM and then went to bed.

Next day morning at 8:30AM we visited the nearby Banasura Sagar Dam, and then went on a speed boat ride around it. Then we went to a supposedly scenic view point, but it was covered in complete clouds and had a visibility range only a couple of meters - leaving us staring into the whiteness. Finding nothing interesting in the vast whiteness, we started off to Soochipara waterfalls.

After reaching the place, we had to climb down a lot of steps to reach the base of the water fall. It was a very picturesque scene, and the water fall was in full force due to the recent monsoon. It is basically a 3 stage waterfall. After playing around on the rocks for some time, we then took a different set of steps to reach the 2nd stage of the water fall. We could not get close to it, but it was breathtaking. Later we went to another path to a view point. It was almost 4:30 PM by the time we reached the parking lot again. We decided we did not have time to visit the Edakkal caves which close at 5PM.

After buying a couple of souvenirs, We then started back to the hotel and freshened up. Later at around 7PM we started the long journey back to Bangalore. On the way back our Qualis hit a big bump in the road, and one of the tyre's rim got bent, and started hitting the disk brake. So we had to replace the tyre and were back on our way. It was almost 2PM by the time we reached bangalore.

Overall it was a very nice trip, with a lot of interesting experiences. I am looking forward to visit the rest of Kerala some time soon.

Irritating defaults in Linux Applications

2008-10-22T12:38:00.005+05:30

If there is one thing that Linux/Unix applications are famous for, other than being open source - it is the irritating defaults they set. And just when you figured out how to disable the most irritating ones, you upgrade to a newer version, and they flood you with even more irritating defaults.

Vim takes the prize in this behavior. Every time I upgrade my Fedora, I get a new version of vim, and while I stopped finding any actual improvements between the vim I used 7 years ago and now, the new set of irritating defaults gets me. After upgrading to Fedora 9, with Vim 7.1, this struck me again.

While writing a piece of C code, the program keeps highlighting matching braces, whenever my cursor passes over them. This is mightly irritating, and I could not think of one good reason for making this the default behavior. I am a hardcore programmer and I know where the F*** match for that brace is!!! And the worst part was figuring out what the offending setting was. I tried googling for it, but it was difficult, since the normal terms like "brace", "bracket", "highlight", "show brace", "show match" did not turn up any results about the offending behavior.

Then it struck me that I was searching with the wrong terms, and put in "vim irritating brace" into google and presto! there were tons of forums where people like me were bitching about that behavior. The answer to turn off the feature is to add this to your .vimrc file

let loaded_matchparen=1

Long way to go... before ppl stop messing around with defaults.. Linux is no longer just a programmer's system, but an end-user system. Not every one would like to spend hours trying to figure out why something has changed since their last upgrade... the sooner the linux developers realize this, the better.

Mallelatheertham Waterfalls - Paradise on Earth

2008-10-05T01:43:00.013+05:30

After last week's trip to Ethipothala, I could not wait to go on another trip, and this time it was Srisailam's turn. Although I was itching for a bike ride to Srisailam, I could not get my hands on a proper bike to make the trip (My own resembling a bullock cart more than a bike). So my colleague, Chandra, and I decided to go to Srisailam on a cab. We started inviting friends and soon the number grew to 10 people. So we took a Qualis and my friend Raja's Maruti 800.

We started at 7AM on saturday, and picked up our friend AJ, who was visiting Hyd at Afzal Gunj. It was around 11:30 by the time we reached the Srisailam Dam, it was beautiful, but unfortunately there were no gates open, unlike NagarjunaSagar last week - which disappointed us a bit. But the view was impressive with the river Krishna snaking across the valley. After waiting for sometime, we had Lunch and visited Sikhara Darshanam (literally translated, it means view from the mountain top).

We could not make it to the Safari, since there was little time left, so we headed straight for Mallelatheertham waterfalls. It was 40km from Srisailam dam, on the way back to hyderabad, with a 8km diversion on a mud road. It was almost 3:30PM by the time we reached Mallelatheertam. There were some steps leading to the waterfall in the valley, but we could not see anything due to the dense growth.

After reaching the end of stairs, we saw the waterfall on the left. The waterfall was much smaller than my earlier experiences at Ethipothala or Shivanasamudram (especially the latter). But the scene was very beautiful. With water falling from a very high, almost vertical rock face into the green pond below, and trees all around, It was like paradise on earth. If God gave me a real estate contract to develop a new paradise, I would definitely start with this place!

We were able to get on to the base rock of the waterfall, beyond which is the pond. Getting on the rocks was very tricky since they were covered with extremely slippery moss everywhere, except at places with the most water flow. We made it under the falls and the water was hitting us like small stones. We had to cover our ears since they were the most sensitive part of the body with our backs turned to the falls.

After staying for about an hour under the falls we started back the long ride to hyderabad, and it was almost 11:30 PM by the time we reached home, But the waterfall was the highlight of the entire trip. Smaller than most popular falls but no less exciting, overall the experience was unforgettable. More pics are available here.

Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction - Credit Default Swaps

2008-09-29T20:36:00.005+05:30

While Bush was busy searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he neglected to bother about the ones that were being "stockpiled" in his own country. No we are not talking about warheads, but Credit Default Swaps - or "Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction" as Warren Buffet, the most successful investor in the world, likes to call them. Now that they blew up in America's face, leaving the country in recession, and spreading the fallout across the world, we will try to see what these things were about.

So what exactly are these credit default swaps? Lets say Bank X loans a large sum to a lets say Tom for mortgage. There is a chance that Tom might not be able to repay his mortgage. In that case, the bank stands to lose the money loaned - which is a major risk for it. So to offset the risk the bank enters into a Credit Default Swap contract with a counter party. Bank X then starts paying fixed payments to the counterparty. In turn, the counterparty assumes all risk of the person defaulting on the loan itself. Although this looks like a typical exchange, the rotten part of it is simply that - the seller of the contract does not need to have any real assets to make the contract.. and can technically go bankrupt.

So a credit default swap makes everyone happy - as long as Tom is making his payments. For Bank X, it kept a huge amount of default risk off its books, and for the counterparty, it is pure money for nothing. But once Tom does not pay his mortgage payment, as it happened, then the system begins to unravel... Bank X demands money from the counterparty, who might go bankrupt since he does not have enough assets to make good his promise. The counterparty is also unable to raise the cash, as the house value would have fallen in the market. So it declares bankruptcy. Immediately, the huge losses starts to appear on the books of Bank X... which takes everyone by surprise, since it was not "expected".

The market for Credit Default Swaps is Over-The-Counter, and not regulated well. In some instances big firms used to buy CDS contracts from little known players, who declared bankruptcy once the defaults started piling up, forcing many big firms to become insolvent. The notional value of the CDS market grew from a couple of hundred billion dollars at the end of 2000 into more than $40 trillion by 2005.

This is one of the reasons for the US Govt trying to bailout firms. Since if they have lots of CDS contracts, then shutting them down would force some other company to take huge debts onto its books immediately, and itself become insolvent, starting a chain reaction. The govt hopes that this will in the meantime allow the values of the assets to grow slowly, and reduce the impact on the firms.

Windows and the hardcore Linux user

2008-09-28T22:47:00.005+05:30

Being a hardcore Linux user is not easy, if you are forced to use Windows, especially by official decree. When I used to work for Motorola, we used to get only Windows machines, and the closest thing to a Linux machine was a Solaris 8 server. I could not get a Linux machine without any official project requirement. In the current startup where I work, Linux is the defacto standard, so my life is much easier.

Recently as part of a new assignment, I had to use a firmware compiler, which unfortunately runs only on windows. So I started installing windows on another machine. After installing XP (after a couple of BSoDs and reinstalls tending from heavy infections), I tried to download the compiler software, and I found out that the network card driver was not installed. I was totally pissed off, and then I remembered that I had a Fedora 9 Boot CD, which made the situation akin to someone asking Salman Khan to remove his shirt, or Deve gowda to take a nap... I immediately installed Linux on the machine, and once it is done, booted into linux and figured out the type of hardware from lspci. I started downloading windows drivers for the network card, and it took me quite a while to get proper network drivers.

It made me realize that I have become addicted to Linux... which although does not have a support group like Linux Addicts Anonymous, is a serious impairment for someone living in Bill Gates's Paradise. Ever since I started using only Linux, both in office and on my personal desktop and laptop, my patience for waiting for stuff to happen was gradually thinning all the time. I became a crazed maniac asking for lower response times to actions - until now. Now that I have to use Windows atleast once in a day, I am back to being more patient waiting for my computer to respond, or taking care of it like a loving father while it throws tantrums like a BSoD or plain stops responding to my pleas or gets sick. Guess with due effort, I can become a WindowsXP certified user soon enough. However to become a Windows Vista certified user, I think I would need a prescription medication like Prozac.

P.S: I am not a Linux Fan, just a user. If there is anything I am a fan of, it would be the Windows OS from a shareholder standpoint.

Ethipothala Waterfalls - The hidden beauty

2008-09-28T08:32:00.015+05:30

It has been over a month since my last vacation at Shivanasamudram, and I was itching for some action. My friend and I decided to go to Nagarjuna Sagar, along with some of our colleagues. I was not too excited about this trip, since I have been to Nagarjuna Sagar more than 4 times before, including once on a bike. Little did I know that this trip would be an experience I wont forget anytime soon!

We took a Qualis, and started late at 8:30 AM from the City. It was almost 11:30 by the time we reached NagarjunaSagar. There were 2 gates open on the dam, which was spectacular. After roaming around at the foot of the dam for an hour, we had our lunch. Unfortunately we realized that the last Ferry to Nagarjuna Konda, an island in the man made lake, leaves at 1:30 leaving no time to catch it. So we decided to go to Ethipotahala waterfalls, about 15 km from the dam.

I have never been to the foot of this waterfall since I were never aware of any path leading there, and due to the warning signs about crocodiles everywhere, we did not venture closeby earlier. However this time a little kid approached us and said that he could take us to the foot of the falls. Initially Raja and Chandra went with the boy, while we stayed back not too excited about it. But they came back and told us that it was a must-see. So we too joined them, and the path was filled with crossing steams with moss covered rocks, making the mini trek very tricky. After about 30 minutes we reached the foot of the waterfall and it was beautiful. The waterfalls falls were filled with water due to the recent monsoon. The scenes were breathtaking. There were huge stones in front of the waterfalls on which we sat, only a couple of meters from the waterfall, with the water spraying on our faces. It was truly breathtaking! We stayed there till 5 PM awed by its beauty. However since this is in a valley, it gets darker much before sunset, so we rushed out of there by going through the same path, which somehow felt little easier on the way back.

We started the long journey back home at 6PM. I had a raging headache at that time. But overall I knew that this was one trip which was well worth it. Some of the pics are available here.

Pay your Electric Bill online (in AP)

2008-09-24T11:07:00.005+05:30

Tired of going to the E-Seva center and waiting in Q for 30 mins or so to pay an electric bill? Well if you have a Citibank account, you can pay your electric bill without any additional charge. If not anyone can pay their bills at esevaonline. None of this requires you to leave the computer at all. I am mentioning this since many of my friends indicated that you need to register before you can pay your bills online, but that is NOT the case.

To actually pay the bill in Citibank, you need to enter the information given in the bill itself in the form presented in the Pay Utility bills online section. And Citibank transfers the amount to APCPDCL without any additional charge. The only problem with this is that there is no feedback indicating that the bill was successfully paid.

If you are out of city or country, then you can use the website esevaonline.com. Register yourself and create an entry for your electric bill. Then you can check the bill amount online, and pay it through that website itself, or you can login to citibank and pay the bill there. Although I haven't paid the amount using the esevaonline website, I believe it should be reliable.

Dollar in the dump

2008-09-23T01:15:00.004+05:30

The massive bailout of the financial sector, valued at nearly $1 trillion, is causing a record deficit, which is sinking the dollar. Already investors have started moving away from dollar into commodities. Commodities across the board like Gold, Oil, Copper etc are seeing a massive rally. (Oil price increased by almost $35 to $130, and is expected to go up.) The details of the bailout have also not emerged completely, leading to volatility, which is only expected to get worse.

Dollar's position as a reserve currency will be challenged if the slide continues. China has billions of US dollars in reserves, so if it sees that the dollar value is dropping, it may start dumping its dollar assets in favor of other more resilient assets. Other countries also have substantial dollar reserves. This would release a lot of dollars into the global markets putting much more downward pressure on the dollar. The only reason against that happening now, is that the Euro, the nearest alternative, is also in a pretty bad shape.

To control the drop in dollar, the government has to reduce the deficit. One way is to reduce expenditure, which appears to be nearly impossible due to the bailout plans of Paulson. The other alternative is to increase taxes, which is equally unlikely. A weak dollar will cause much harm to the economy and raise inflation, leading to a very damaging recession.

A positive effect of a weak dollar is that it will increase exports, and make imports more costlier. But this is a long term effect, which wont necessarily kick in, in the short run.

The current bailout, as bad as it is, is the only way to offset much bigger crisis in the American economy. But the loss of confidence in the dollar will take a long time to recover.

TCP Offload Engine support in Linux

2008-09-22T15:32:00.007+05:30

TCP Offload Engines (TOE) are customized hardware which handle TCP connections completely in the network card itself, instead of in the kernel. Lately 10Gbps Ethernet cards are becoming the industry standard in the high end server market. A simple rule of thumb regarding TCP processing in the CPU requires 1 HZ of CPU for every 1 bit of TCP data handled per second. This means that a 10GigE card, requiring 10 GHz, can quickly eat the CPU like there is no tomorrow. Even with multiple CPUs and multiple cores per CPU, the impact is significant.

Added to this, IEEE standards are already being prepared for 40Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet. So in this situation, using TOE becomes inevitable. There are already many TCP functions already being done in hardware like checksumming, LRO (Large Receive offload), LSO (Large Send Offload) etc. But a TOE provides a complete end-to-end solution.

TCP Offload Engines were never a hit with the linux networking community. Linux Kernel Maintainers, esp David Miller, have been against the idea of TOE due to various valid reasons like it reduces maintainability of code, etc. Also the kernel maintainers argue that TOE was only a stopgap solution, before CPU speeds caught up with the loads, citing cases in the past where TOE was implemented even for 100Mbps links. More details about their position can be found in this article - Linux and TCP Offload Engines. This has caused a situation where the 10GigE vendors like Chelsio are forced to maintain the TOE patches to the Linux kernel, out-of-tree. This causes the code to be inherently unstable.

Anyway, the end users do not face any loss of functionality since the vendor provided patches to the Linux kernel can be used to build kernel modules, which provide support for TOE hardware in Linux machines. This is what I like about Open Source. You do not have to be bound by what others think. You leave that decision to time.

Republican VP Sarah Palin's Yahoo! mail hacked

2008-09-19T16:24:00.004+05:30

Two days ago, the email account of Ms. Sarah Palin, the current Governor of Alaska, as well as the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate's Yahoo! Email account - gov.sarah@yahoo.com was hacked. The nature of the hack is the well known "forgotten password" of Yahoo! link, which asks for some personal information before generating a new password. For a public figure like Palin, most of this information is not really private... which means the existing security measures need to be looked at in a different light. Even for normal ppl, the information is not too difficult to get, except that there are easier ways like keyboard logging, social engineering etc.

Most services on the web try to escape this predicament, by giving the option of mailing your new password to your email address. But alas this cannot work email accounts itself. It is important that this issue be addressed by Yahoo! and other webmail providers, since there are many people who lose information through such loopholes.

On your end, to reduce the possibility of such attacks, you should give fake information for such email accounts to prevent public information on the website. And you don't have to give the real name of your pet either! And for the love of God, remember that information, since if you forget that, no one is helping you out.

The complete log of emails and information used to hack the account is available at the Wikileaks website.

A Wednesday - An Exciting Thriller

2008-09-18T15:02:00.002+05:30

Generally I have a low opinion of the average run of the mill movies which get released by Bollywood or the other Tollywoods. They generally run on a hackneyed, beaten-to-death formula. But a few of them are gems. "A Wednesday" by Neeraj Pandey is one. It is a gripping thriller about a wednesday when a series of incidents changes the lives of all those involved.

The movie starts with a phone call to the police commissioner of Mumbai (played by Anupam Kher), about 5 bombs placed at various locations in Mumbai. The caller (Naseerudeen Shah) gives extremely detailed instructions about how to release known terrorists. From then onwards, the movie progresses into a gripping thriller, with many twists and turns to a very satisfying conclusion. The tempo of the film is maintained till the end, which is very rare. Most movies lose their tempo after a good start, but not this one. A definite must watch.

Five Stars any day...

Socialism for the Super Rich - Moral Hazards in US economy

2008-09-18T03:00:00.000+05:30

The recent bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG, by the US Govt to protect the faith in US markets has created a moral hazard. A moral hazard indicates that while you take a risk, the profits from it go exclusively to you, but losses are distributed to parties which do not have anything to do with the deal. This creates a situation which rewards an overtly risky behavior.

The US taxpayers are paying for the mistakes of a few who tried to make a lot of money in the US real estate and mortgage businesses. The Fed by arranging the shotgun marriage of Bear Sterns to JP Morgan a couple of months ago, while assuring at least $30 billion against losses from Bear's trades, indirectly rewarded the overtly risky behavior, by letting the taxpayers buttress the downside of the risks. Freddie and Fannie losses could potentially run into hundreds of billions of dollars. The Fed tried to take a stand by not bailing out Lehman, but the odds were stacked against its favor as the AIG posed a huge counterparty risk to all the financial markets. In the end, the AIG bailout cost the taxpayers $85 billion.

This is not new for the Fed. It arranged the cleaner disposal of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) Hedge fund after it blew up in 1998, since the fund with $10 billion in deposits and controlling over $1 trillion of the economy through leverage would have brought down the entire global economy.

Moral Hazards have always existed in the world of Hedge funds, where the fund managers gets to take home a large part of any profits he makes. Losses would typically result in him getting fired, but without any monetary damage. This caused the Hedge fund managers to take up increasingly risky trades. Mutual funds were somewhat safer due to strict regulation which limited the riskiness of trades they undertook.

In a free market enterprise the Fed has to let these institutions fail for their mistakes. But they would also cause global economic collapse and cause a lot of harm to the common man. So this is amounting to near blackmail by these firms (a more apt term would be brinkmanship).

Other than the explicit bailouts of Freddie, Bear, AIG etc, The Fed is also implicitly bailing out the other firms by keeping the interest rates extremely low, at a time when inflation is eating into the savings of the common folk.

So who is at fault? The fault is the lack of proper regulation and laws governing Investment banks and financial institutions in general. For example the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act is one such action, which increased the moral hazard since banks can also do investment actions and lose lots of money rendering them insolvent. This would cause the FDIC to dole out money to the depositors from tax payers if the banks fail. This is definitely not the best solution, but can be one solution which can be used to reduce this moral hazard, which if ignored further would result in increasingly worse depressions, as traders start taking increasingly risky trades.

Although it is against the spirit of free markets, the US Govt must be more proactive in analyzing the markets and bring in relevant laws and regulation, instead of waiting for the storm, to pass new laws.

Tunneling to the inside - using SSH

2008-09-16T16:43:00.000+05:30

Many networks are setup in such a way that you can access a machine (lets say GGG) in the network through SSH and then you can access any other machine (lets say XXX) in that network using protocols like SSH, telnet, samba etc. But wouldn't it be great to access those services right from the machine (lets say LLL) you are sitting at itself?

Enter the SSH Tunnel. SSH tunnel could be used to create an end to end SSH connection between the local machine (LLL) and the gateway machine (GGG). Then you can access any machine (XXX) from (LLL) itself. The best part is you do not have to be root for this!

First establish the SSH tunnel connection between GGG and LLL using the following command on LLL

ssh user@GGG -L 2000:XXX:22 -N

where, 2000 is the local port on LLL which will act as
       a gateway (this can be any port you want)
22 is the remote port on the machine XXX to which you 
       want to connect to (For example this will be 23
       for telnet, 139 for SMB, 22 for SSH etc)

Now your tunnel is setup. Just connect to the machine by connecting to LLL on port 2000 - you will be automatically forwarded to connect to 22 on XXX machine!

The Bursting Oil Bubble - Aftermath

2008-09-16T11:08:00.000+05:30

The Oil bubble has more or less burst for now as expected. with the price of crude down to nearly $94 from the peak of $147 in July. The main reason for the decline is that the US Dollar is once again stronger than earlier. Since Crude is priced in dollars, any fall in dollar value will increase the dollar price of crude and vice versa. Oil is one of the main commodities that is also used as hedge against the dollar, and now that the dollar is doing good, Oil is getting dumped in favor of US Treasuries and the like. The price of Oil is expected to drop further, since the Lehman bankruptcy will possibly unwind some Oil trades.

The global economic downturn is also playing its part, by reducing the demand for Oil. The last time the world economy was down after the 1997 East Asian crisis etc, Oil fell to under $10 a barrel. The cracks in the OPEC are once again out in the open, with Saudi Arabia not wanting to reduce its production. Politically also, the fall in Oil price is significant with the tide turning away from the Oil producers - especially the politically active ones like Russia.

The presumed demand from rising economies like India and China causing a global upward price spiral proved to be unfounded at least in the short run. And it also showed that however inelastic the price demand curve of oil is, there is still a curve there which causes unrealistic prices to throttle demand. Airlines can once again breathe easily.

Now-a-days, none of the bad news is really affecting the crude price slide very much. News such as Hurricane Ike likely to impede Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, increased terrorist activity in Nigeria or likewise, which would have caused massive rallies earlier, are causing no more than a whimper, and the price slide stops temporarily before resuming its journey down to a more realistic value.

On the negative side, the push for alternatives to oil is once again reducing, indicating the short sighted nature of the public. Also the reduction of premium on Oil, removes the financial incentive for private investors to pursue alternative renewable fuels. Oil has also stopped being a major campaign issue. This is high time the coming Govt in Washington takes a stand and pumps money into the research for alternative fuels, instead of bailing out companies like the Detroit Big Three to prop up the economy in the short run.

The dent made by the spike of oil prices, made the American consumer more aware of the risks of owning a gas guzzler. It will be a while before this harsh lesson is forgot, which is good news.

The American consumers at the Pump still see Oil at more than $4 since Hurricane Ike destroyed the refining capacity on the east coast, resulting in serious Oil shortages. But this is a temporary phenomenon which should pass in a week or so.

I really applaud the Indian govt's decision to NOT reduce the price of Oil at the pump, even though it is the election year. This goes a long way in reducing the oil subsidy to more manageable levels, and will leave the image of India as a good investment destination intact.

Nightmare on Wall St - Failures of Lehman, Merryl, AIG, WaMu....

2008-09-16T09:34:00.000+05:30

In The Simpsons Movie, when Bart Simpson, utterly embarrassed by a situation, moans - "This is the worst day of my life!", his father replies - "This is the worst day of your life, SO FAR". The same could be said about the happenings in the last week of the US Financial sector.

What a week it was. just when you were thinking that the worst was over, the financial sector keeps hitting new lows. Couple of months back Bear Sterns was taken over by JP Morgan in a Shotgun wedding arranged by The Fed. Markets were a bit stable, and now it spread like wildfire in the last week. These are a couple of things which went bad in the financial sector in the last week.

- Freddie Mac & Fannic Mae were nationalized
- Lehman Brothers stock in free fall resulting in its declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy
- Merryl Lynch bought over by Bank of America, after a free fall in its stock
- AIG group stock going down, resulting in its "restructuring"
- Washington Mutual (WaMu) Bank's stock tumbling
- Wachovia Bank's stock nose diving

So now out of the big Five wall street investment firms, only two - Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan were left standing. This extreme uncertainty in the financial sector trashed the DowJones, making it face the worst percentage fall in 6 years.

The ticking timebomb here is that the investment firms make a lot of trades with one another. Since there are a very few big firms taking up both sides of most of the trades, the trades suffer from counterparty risk. i.e. if you make a trade which realized a profit on the books, but the counterparty to the trade cannot pay up since it went bankrupt, then you lose too since you wont be seeing any real money from them. Now that Lehman has gone down, all the trades done with it need to be unwound, or a loss taken. When these losses start appearing on the books of other investment firms, they too will start taking a hit.

Lehman's is the biggest bankruptcy filing ever with $639 billion in assets. So there are bound to be repercussions everywhere in the financial sector. UK regulators have already asked firms to declare their exposure to Lehman. Citi group looks like it has a serious exposure to Lehman, which if it did, would seriously undermine its current precarious position.

Already there is a talk of a further rate cut by the Fed, which, at current inflation levels, can only be bad.

So is the rock bottom hit? is this the worst? I cant help thinking of the answer given to Bart Simpson...

Continue Browsing during Power failures

2008-09-14T05:02:00.000+05:30

Power cuts (or load shedding, black outs, or however you want to call them) are very frequent and frustrating here in hyderabad. Other times we face the low voltage situations (also called the brownout). In such cases I would be able to continue using my laptop (given that its a 9 cell Thinkpad), but lets face it - Very little work of value (or timepass, as my friends like to call it) gets done without the INTERNET! It is even more frustrating when you tend to work from home, and you are cutoff due to power loss and have to rush to office.

The best way to beat this situation is to bring out the old UPS you used for your old desktop. Even if u never had a UPS, you can buy a cheap one for less than Rs 1500/-. Once you connect your modem and wireless router through the UPS, you will get a backup of almost 2 hours straight. However if you are using Sify or other ISPs which given you a direct ethernet cable to your house you might be out of luck, since the local hub at your operator will lose power. This was one more reason for me to switch from Sify Broadband to Airtel, other than Sify's pathetic customer care and reliability issues (15 days of no internet in a month makes you go crazy!).

Also, if you are watching a movie with friends and power goes out, you can connect the speaker set to the UPS, to get the enhanced volume. Or in emergencies you can charge your cell phone on it too.

Converting AVI/MPG to 3GP files in Linux

2008-09-14T04:41:00.000+05:30

The best way to convert an AVI/MPG video file to 3GP (like for viewing them on your cellphone) is to use the opensource program - ffmpeg. The ffmpeg was also the starting point for the most famous movie player for linux - the mplayer suite.

To start using ffmpeg, First download the latest ffmpeg source code. Run configure on it using the following command line, followed by a make and make install.

./configure --enable-nonfree --enable-gpl --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libamr-nb
 --enable-libmp3lame

If you do not have the libamr-wb and libamr-nb codecs installed, download the following packages - amr-nb-7.0.0.2 and amr-wb-7.0.0.3 - and configure, compile and install them. The description of these packages is given in detail here.

NOTE that if you have FFmpeg installed, you need to make sure that you see both --enable-libamr-wb and --enable-libamr-nb in the configuration. You can check the configuration of ffmpeg by running ffmpeg > /dev/null.

Then run the following command to convert the AVI/MPG files to 3GP

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mpg -s 176x144 -b 300k -r 10   -ar 8000 -ab 12.2k 
-ac 1 -f 3gp -aspect 4:3 outputfile.3gp

Upload to your cell, and it will help you get over lots of boring times :)

End of Credit Crisis in Sight - Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae nationalized

2008-09-08T17:14:00.000+05:30

The Credit crisis which has roiled the markets for over 2 years is now hopefully nearing an End with the near-nationalization of the US Secondary Mortgage Market Majors - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, yesterday. This action has fed a lot more confidence into the credit markets reeling from the subprime crisis.

The US mortgage market is structured in such a way that, you have the primary lenders (banks like Wells Fargo etc) who make loans to individuals for the purpose of housing. However, these mortgages run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. So a normal lender can only give so many mortgages, before his cash flow is completely stuck in these extremely long-term (upto 30 year long) loans. So to add more liquidity to such a market, the US Govt established the Freddie Mac in c1970, which would buy the loans (at its discretion) from these primary lenders. Having got back their initial capital, the primary lenders can provide other people loans. Freddie Mac in turn pooled and securitized (oversimplification:bundled) these loans and sold the resulting securities to investors in various organizations. Freddie Mac, guaranteed the rate of interest on these securities and hence assumed the credit risk, for which it charged a fee. Essentially, this means that any non-payment of mortgage by a person, will be made good by Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae is also essentially similar, except for its beginnings. Between themselves, these organizations own over 50% of all home loans in the US.

Technically these organizations were supposed to be Government Sponsored Enterprises, but essentially private corporations owned by stock holders, without any Govt insurance for their loans. However, due to their size and presumed US Govt backing, they had acquired the tag of "Too big to fail", as in, if they fail, they would drag down the economy with them. This caused them to take up riskier mortgages from the primary lenders. At last count, Both Freddie and Fannie had over $12 Trillion exposure to the mortgage market.

Now that the Subprime crisis has precipitated a downturn in the US housing market, this downturn has resulted in a lot of mortgage defaults (although Freddie Mac does not buy subprime loans), which caused Freddie & Fannie to declare losses of nearly $15 billion last year. This has led to their credit rating dropping to Junk status, forcing the premium on loans to them (bonds) going over 2.5%, making it very difficult for them to raise much needed new capital.

To alleviate the crisis, the US Congress in July passed a law, with bi-partisan support, allowing the US Govt to step in and bail out these corporations if required. This was supposed to give confidence to potential lenders that their loans to Freddie would not go bad (thereby reducing the risk and hence premiums on the bonds). But this action backfired badly, since people know that any such nationalization would wipe out Freddie's stock value. This caused its share price to plummet to less than $5. This precipitated a crisis, forcing the Govt to act immediately and nationalize them both. As expected, Freddie Mac shares dropped to less than 25 cents.

So now the US taxpayers are "bailing" out these corporations. The impact of the bailout is not completely known, and is supposed to be in tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions. This will also cause tighter regulation in the housing markets, with people having even prime credit ratings facing difficulty to make a mortgage. The US treasury bills have also dropped.

On the brighter side, however, markets are very optimistic over the measure since the credit markets will now be more liquid, stock of various banks which gave loans to Freddie (like Citi Group) have gone up a lot, the premiums have also dropped on mortgages. The last one will once again hopefully rejuvenate the housing sector, which makes up over 25% of the US economy. So overall the housing sector can recover from the glut of unsold inventory, and once again start growing. These will also help to reduce the effects of the current recession the US economy is undergoing.

MPlayer - Overcoming in-built low volumes of media files

2008-09-06T20:25:00.000+05:30

Many times, the AVI files of movies end up with a very low audio volume causing a lot of pain for use with laptop speakers (esp like ThinkPad), which do not have a very wide range of volumes like headphones or traditional speakers. To overcome this issue, many media players provide an option to increase the volume more than 100% (upto 400% in case of VLC Media player).

After googling and RTFMing for a while I figured out that the way to do this in MPlayer is to use a software volume mixer instead of the soundcard's mixer. You can run mplayer with the following additional options

mplayer -softvol -softvol-max 400

The 400 indicates that you want to increase the output by upto 400% of the base volume indicated in the media file.

This link has more information on using an audio filter instead of using a software volume mixer to do the same. Happy movie watching!!

Ripping DVDs into AVI files

2008-09-03T03:28:00.000+05:30

Ripping DVDs in Linux using mencoder is tricky business. No doubt mencoder is the most powerful tool at your disposal with a wide variety of options to convert practically from any format to any format. This in turn also becomes its disadvantage - there are too many options, which an ordinary user cannot understand. There were nearly a 1000 options out there, with a variety of combinations between them, most of which keep taking about stuff like deinterlacing, quantization and key frames.

After trying a number of times to rip DVDs unsuccessfully in Linux, I recently struck gold, while googling, in a discussion forum on how to do this correctly. This is the command that worked flawlessly for me

/usr/bin/mencoder -vf harddup -vf-add 
 smartblur=.6:-.5:0,unsharp=l5x5:.8:c5x5:.4
 -vf scale=480:360 -xvidencopts 
 bitrate=900:profile=dxnhtntsc -lameopts
 cbr:br=128:aq=0:vol=1 -oac mp3lame
 -ovc xvid -o outfile.avi *.vob

The scale= could be used to set the new size of the AVI file. Lesser sizes will result in lesser space. The bitrate= also controls the quality of the movie generated, and is inversely related to the size of the generated AVI file.

Download the mencoder (located in the mplayer package) from some default distribution (I used yum to get it), so that most of the required options are compiled in.

Google Chrome - A New Era

2008-09-02T23:14:00.000+05:30

Recently I heard about this new browser from Google called Google Chrome, which will be available in (Surprise! Surprise!) Beta version. The Google guys, true to the innovative streak, made a comic, justifying yet another entry into the world of browsers, already filled up with heavy weights like IE, firefox etc. However after going through the feature list, I was realized that this was not just another browser. It's design was more closer technically to an Operating System, than to a browser.

There is a fundamental paradigm shift happening here. The browser is the new Operating System. We have already seen a ton of web applications, like Spreadsheet, presentation apps etc, most of which were thought to be almost impossible to run in a browser.

Microsoft with its Windows, is entrenched in the Desktop OS market. I do not see any operating system which can challenge its dominance there. But Google has, instead of taking it head-on, is completely circumventing the Operating System, making it as just another commodity. More than 20 years ago, IBM thought that hardware was the key and the operating system did not matter too much. Microsoft came and commoditized the underlying hardware, and things were never the same again.

I see the same thing happening now, with Google commoditizing the Operating System market. Beyond a point, people will stop caring about what OS their machine is running anymore than people now care about what BIOS their machine is running. (Just to complete the analogy, IBM made the mistake of not doing an exclusive license of DOS, which sealed its fate. Microsoft's mistake happened almost 9 years ago with the introduction of the XMLHttpRequest)

A New Era has begun. If Google can pull off this browser thing decently, then history will definitely repeat itself.

Shivanasamudra Trip

2008-08-18T10:27:00.001+05:30

Recently South India was seeing a very strong monsoon. This made all the water falls in the western ghats much more beautiful. So my friends and myself decided to visit some waterfalls near Bangalore. We could not go for the Jog falls, India's highest water falls, since visiting them would entail a journey of over 6 hrs, which would be difficult in a 2 day visit. So we decided to go for Shivanasamudra waterfalls.

Praveen and myself started on Friday evening by train to bangalore. The Kacheguda railway station was marked by heavy security with sniffer dogs and metal detectors. But nevertheless instead of making us feel better, we felt more conscious of the fact that we are potential targets. But I digress.. After boarding the train and getting down at bangalore, Our friends AJ and Balaji picked us up in a Chevrolet Tavera at 7:00AM and we were off to sivasamudram.

Initially we went to one place where we could see the waterfalls. The waterfalls were in full force owning to the monsoon. We took a lot of pictures and then climbed down the hill to come closer to the water. We arrived at the banks, but the water was flowing at a very furious pace, and we could not actually get into the water, since a slip might earn us a ticket across the waterfall. After spending some time taking pictures we set off to another place at the base of the waterfall.

In this place, to reach the river, we had to climb down a lot of steps. The water was relatively much calmer, but still flowing fast. We got down into the water and lazed around for about 2 hours. The water was not too cold, and we were able to enjoy by sitting on the riverbed which was hardly 2 feet deep. There were a lot of people, but the excellent weather and the beautiful river with its waterfall backdrop made it more than worth it.

After getting out of water we had hot chilli bajji, and then started climbing up the steps, which was a drag. Then we headed back to bangalore, and after getting stuck in the traffic for a very long time, we reached home at around 8PM.

On Sunday we went GoKarting at Torq03 at E-Zone in Marthalli. The karts were in excellent condition, although it was pricey at Rs 150/- for 6 laps. We went on 18 laps total, and the track was also very nicely designed. The karts were skidding nicely too, which helped us go extra fast. Overall it was a very enjoyable trip.

The Afghan - Review

2008-08-14T15:26:00.000+05:30

I had been a very close follower of the global terrorism scene long before even 9/11 happened. I still remember the days while watching "The World This Week" program on TV, showing the Taliban tanks rolling into Kabul in 1996. I also could not forget the day Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan Nothern Alliance warlord, was assassinated on Sept 9th 2001, two days before 9/11. I still vividly recall thinking "this is very bad". For someone who follows terrorism so closely, I was extremely happy when I could get my hands on a copy of The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth.The novel was very gripping, and is styled like a documentary. It given a very interesting bird's eye view into the global war on terror, not to mention giving glimpses of the Soviet-Afghan war, the resulting Civil War and the NATO Invasion post 9/11.

The Afghan starts out with the MI5 and CIA getting a lead about something major being cooked up by "The Sheik" (as Osama Bin Laden is reportedly called), and then it proceeds into a gripping tale about the guts of a terrorist operation, styled on the lines of the USS Cole Incident - only on a much grander scale. The CIA & MI5 try to infiltrate the Al Queda using a SAS operative. The novel is very well laid out, albeit for one minor sequence of events where a Fighter Jet crashes into a log cabin in the woods, setting free a prisinor in highly improbable circumstances. Other than this one incident, the entire novel was very good. Four Stars!

SFO-Hyd on Jet Airways

2008-08-10T09:21:00.000+05:30

I had taken the Jet Airways itinerary for flying from Hyd to SFO and back. Jet's level of service was pretty impressive, especially so since I was flying on the Boeing 777-300. The service was good. The economy class seats with the big LCD screens were even better.

However for someone flying from Hyderabad, by taking a Domestic Jet Flight between Hyd and Mumbai, the itinerary, especially the return journey part, is pathetic. I would say this is mainly due to the long and unnecessary stopover in Mumbai lasting about 9 hours. The worst part was that after alighting the SFO-BOM flight, a 22 hour journey, The domestic transit passengers were forced to wait standing for 3 hours for a combination of collecting luggage, customs, domestic terminal transfer etc. Then it was a wait for 6 hours at the domestic terminal. I could rant about the airport's "services" - like water dripping on people INSIDE the airport, but it would not be anything new for someone who used Indian airports.

Overall, although I hate to say this, this itinerary was the worst even though Jet Airlines was very good. I would prefer waiting a much longer time in Singapore airport while flying singapore airlines any day, than deal with the shitty Mumbai airport on any airlines. For someone flying out of Mumbai though, this is one of the best options they have got.

The new bubble - Oil

2008-07-10T09:39:00.000+05:30

Most people here in India, do not know whats going on with Oil Prices. All they know is that their Petrol costs 10% more. And they are pissed off. Driving 20 miles daily on my Bike, I am too. But the distubing part is that - the Indian govt flush with the recent huge tax revenue increases and under the influence of the coming national elections in 2009, has blatantly increased the Oil Subsidy - causing huge long term problems for the Indian economy, and will result in downgrading of its Investment grade rating.

Anyway, this article tries to focus on the reason why Oil prices are increasing on a global scale. What most people do not get is simply this - If the oil demand and supply have not changed, then the simple law of demand and supply should dictate at most a marginal increase in prices to account for inflation maybe. But why are we seeing a 350% increase in under 4 years? Its not like the demand jumped suddenly, or the supply got throttled. (For all those who believe that emerging economies are contributing to the demand increase, note that both china and India consume only a fraction of the world's Oil supply. In fact, in face of the rise in prices, demand has come down multiple percentage points.)

The main problem here is the rampart speculation in the Oil Futures market. Money from Institutional Investors (like Hedge funds) needs to be invested in areas which give good returns. Until the 2001 recession, it was the technology firms, which resulted in the the dotcom bubble and the subsequent slowdown. That money shifted to the next best thing - Real Estate. But when real estate did not give the required returns, the Sub Prime mortgage market with its high risk, high returns profile was tapped, eventually resulting in the Subprime Crisis, which has still not completely blow over. Now the money is looking for a new place to be invested - and Oil is the answer.

So when the amount of money put into the futures market increases 31 fold from $9 billion to $280 billion in 8 years, you know where the problem is coming from. Too much money, giving an illusion of demand.

So what happens next? My guess is as soon as the rate of returns starts to slow down (when the most basic law of economics catches up), money start flowing out to the next area which gets a high rate of return. This will result in a slump in the Oil prices, back to the $80 a barrel level. Unfortunately though, this market is slightly unlike others, in that Oil has a very inelastic demand curve. But with the current prices, the demand will go down, eventually leaving many casualties like the Oil suppliers. (The last time this happened after 1970s Oil crisis - the 8 year Iran-Iraq war broke out, followed by the 1991 Gulf war)

The only silver lining is that - hopefully this crisis will bring to the fore the alternative fuel technologies. But if the US Govt behaves in a shortsighted way, like it did after the 1970s oil crisis, then we set the stage open for another bubble in the future.

Why I hate Indian movies - The Formula

2008-07-06T22:03:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I was able to watch the movie Dasavataram. Kamal was at his usual best. The 10 roles he played were in some form and degree related to the ten avataras taken by Vishu in Hindu mythology. The movie had a couple of mass elements in it. Although they were necessary to make it palatable to the masses, it is a pity that the movie had to stoop to those levels. It had potential. I know that to make any amount of money back, it has to do it. Every big budget movie that gets made in India has to follow the "formula" - a derogatory term for standard fare with different packaging - different people, same formula.

Lets see the formula for most telugu movies
- one or two mass songs (read as songs with busty babe(s))
- four or five fighting sequences (hero kicking ass)
- couple of sentimental scenes (hero feeling senti)
- hero is invincible, villan is evil
- Feel good factor

Although most hollywood big budgets are mostly mindless action packed fares, Sometimes you get to see some really good movies (Syriana comes to mind), played by good actors. There is a uniqueness to most movies. This is seriously missing with the typical Indian fare.

Another scourge of the Indian cinema is the "image". For an actor in the Indian industry, image is everything. A hero is a hero - he should be invincible in every movie... For the Indian movies, the word "protagonist" can be used interchangeably with the word, "hero". So most good actors do not get to do any roles other than those they have the "image" for. And those roles are always the macho man roles, because others carry the liability of at best addressing only a part of the market, and at worst destroying the image - rendering him "untouchable" in a bad way.

With respect to Indian movies, I see a beacon of hope in the Parallel cinema revolution that has arrived in Bollywood. These movies are sustained by the spreading multiplex culture in the Indian metros. But south Indian movie industry still has a long way to go, before big actors start acting in good movies.

T61 - The Thinkpad Chronicles Part II

2008-06-28T12:58:00.000+05:30

There are some things, you never expect would happen, but they do anyway, leaving you spellbound...

The fingerprint reader on my Thinkpad is one such thing. I have never expected that it would have a proper driver in Linux at all, leave alone be of any proper use. It all changed after I found out about the thinkfinger package. After installing the package and editing some files thanks to www.thinkwiki.org, I ran "su -" and got this prompt - "Password or swipe finger:". It blew me away... Never had I thought that this would happen.

The other surprise was the BlueTooth. I tried to enable bluetooth manually and failed miserably. Then I found out about KBlueTooh. And things were never the same again! I no longer use my cellphone's data cable. I just select files in my phone and do a send via Bluetooth and it immediately starts downloading to my PC. Great!

The next biggest surprize was KPowersave. One I started it, I saw that it had all these fancy options like Hibernate and Sleep. I thought that this is one feature which would never work because you need tons of devices, to work together and go to sleep or wake up across PCI/USB etc buses. Needless to say, They worked like a charm.

For the windows user, the above stuff means nothing. It just works and it always did. But for someone like me who has not kept up with Linux since FC3, this is truly amazing stuff!

The Weather Man

2008-06-28T02:20:00.000+05:30

I recently saw this movie called "The Weather Man". The movie is a beautiful piece of art. It stars Nicholas Cage as David Spritz, a successful weather guy, who desperately keeps trying to get his personal life back in order. Cage's character suffers from Low self esteem which is reflected in various scenarios. The movie is a slightly dark comedy, and has a motif of random people on the street throwing fast food at him. The archery theme is also very well done. It has pearls of wisdom strewn all over. Some of them seem to be so correct, that it both frightens and enlightens at the same time

- "In Life you will have to chuck some things"

- "When you are young, you have this view of yourself in the future with many positive qualities. With each passing year, the qualities keep on decreasing, until you are left with - yourself."

The End of Outsourcing?

2008-06-20T17:32:00.000+05:30

Outsourcing has been a boon for many third world countries. It changed Wealth creation in many fundamental ways in China and India. Many detractors of outsourcing point out that US is losing jobs fast, and is piling on debt due to this globalization of manufacturing. However recent events show that these trends might soon be reversing.

Recent jumps in Crude Oil prices have been pretty disturbing. The $4 oil is cutting into consumer pockets and hence some analysts are predicting that this will push manufacturing of more and more goods to low cost manufacturing destinations like China. But there is something missing in this whole theory. The cost of outsourcing is not constant. Manufactured goods from China have to come to the US in shipping containers, the cost of which have proportionally increased due to the oil price increase. Given a weak dollar, China's rising costs and this added transportation cost - the outsourcing of some class of products might soon be coming to an end. Business week reports that this is already happening with products like batteries etc, which cost a lot to transport.

Coming to the Indian story of IT and IT enabled services outsourcing we are seeing the rapidly increasing wage bill of the Indian outsourcing firms which is cutting into their profits. This is affecting India's ability as the destination of choice for the IT related outsourcing areas.

Although this is a blow to Outsourcing, there is no denying that outsourcing is here to stay. But the outsourcing industry as we know it might soon be gone. The outsourcing bubble would have burst.

Firefox 3 is Here!

2008-06-18T12:33:00.001+05:30

FF3 download record is a big hit, albiet notwithout some hiccups with the download servers crashing initially. Already 5 million downloads completed, and still 12 hours to go... Firefox 3 Rocks..

Here is my "certificate" about contributing to the record :)

Compiz Rules

2008-06-07T19:07:00.000+05:30

Recently installed Compiz-Fusion on my Thinkpad T61, and it rules... ok ok.. what is compiz-fusion? I would say it is the next best thing since the Linux Kernel itself! It is a 3D window manager which started as Compiz, then it was forked into Beryl, only to be merged back again.

Anyway the effects that are possible with compiz are not just cool, but extremely effective too... Imagine you had 10 windows open, and want to go to the one you need. How many ALT-TABs can you do? now with Compiz, you dont have to do any of that painful stuff...

Detailing the features is difficult, so I will let you watch it yourself in this video I made..

T61 - The Thinkpad Chronicles Part 1

2008-06-02T10:14:00.000+05:30

I recently bought a Thinkpad T61 with, god forbid, Vista pre-installed. I thought that I would use my Desktop as the Linux machine, and Vista as the laptop one.

One day into using Vista, I ran into this wierd issue where the packets would go only to machines in the local network. Although I set the gateway etc, and no firewall was installed, the packets refuse to move beyond the gateway. It must have been some wierd "user-friendly" setting I guess. But 3 hours down the lane, no luck.

I thought of installing Linux on it. But the Lenovo guys install one big fat C: and thats it. I have to download partition magic - but again no gateway for that.

So I went ahead and formatted the entire C: broke it into 5 pieces and installed Fedora 8 on it. I was using FC3 earlier, and going by the common "knowledge" about hardware support, I assumed I would have half of my functionality not working in Linux. But that was no reason to take crap from Vista.

After installing Fedora 8, I was totally surprised by how well it was designed and how all the laptop functionality was working. Linux has come a long way in the past few years. I would go to the extent that it is just the perception that remains that using Linux is difficult. But it got so much easier.

If you love Firefox...

2008-05-29T16:26:00.000+05:30

Download firefox3 on the first day, and be a part of a new world record... OK that sounded too much like the spam you get daily... But I have been using firefox 3 Beta for 2 weeks and I can say its the best piece of software that I ever used for browsing...

Enough Talk now go to this link and pledge to download firefox3 - http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ :)

Trip to Yosemite National Park

2008-04-01T23:50:00.001+05:30

This weekend Rags, Deepu and Rags Friend Kranthi and myself went on a trip to Yosemite national park. It was a 4hr drive from Bay Area. Yosemite is the first national park in the US established in the 1800s.

We started at 7AM and picked up the others. Around 10PM we saw a beautiful reservoir by the freeway - 152 - the San Luis Reservoir. There was a small side road to it, and we went on it and stopped there. It was very beautiful. However we could not stay for long as that would cut down on the time in Yosemite.

We arrived at the Yosemite Southern entrance from Freeway 41. Just after entering, we saw the Mariposa Grove closed to traffic, and covered with snow. We parked our car there and started walking on the Mariposa Grove for some time. We could not reach the grove itself and turned back after sometime, but it was my first experience with touching snow :)

After that we went to the Yosemite valley. The mountains around were majestic. We also got down by the side of the road and climbed down on rocks, almost 1 km downhill. From there we had a nice view of the waterfalls. Later we went to the Yosemite store in the valley and bought a cake to eat, as there was no other food available :)) Then we stopped by the side of the Merced river, where there was lots of people with grills and other stuff enjoying in the pleasant weather. By 4:00PM we started back by I120. The roads were under construction so we had to stop for almost 15 mins since only one lane was open.

Overall it was a very nice trip. I plan to visit it once again in the future and this time try to make a night stay at Yosemite to explore the valley completely. I have heard that camping here is so popular that they open these camp sites for reservation almost an year in advance, only to have them gobbled up in a few hours.

They Screw up, We pay?%&#*@

2008-03-17T19:37:00.000+05:30

Imagine you have a friend who borrows money and invests it in a venture. If it pays up, he returns the money he owes you. If not he just reneges on the debt. This is a win-win deal for him and obviously a lose-lose deal for you - the sucker. This is EXACTLY what is happening with the Credit crisis in the US.

These companies repackaged extremely risky sub-mortgages and traded them like securities, without bothering about the inherent amount of risk that was being created. During the boom these companies made tons of money on these kind of deals. The corporate management took home huge bonus for their "achievements". Now that the boom is faltering, they are threatening to take down to US economy with them. Enter Fed. It reduces the interest rate by multiple percentage points. So how does this affect you? Simple. Reduce interest rate, and inflation goes over the roof... and what is inflation? - though few people realize it, its just fancy talk for saying - the dollar in your pocket is worth lesser than before.

If you were thinking - "Hmm.. Tough luck US residents, Thank god I am not in the US" - you are missing a very basic point about how the currency system works. Countries whose major trading partners include the US, generally have lots of dollar reserves - so that the balance of trade does not push up their currencies. China is one which has used this to the point of "abuse". India is not far behind. So when the dollar goes down, these countries with their *HUGE* reserves of the dollar find themselves poorer.

So now the world is the sucker. No wonder the saying goes - Life is not fair...

Transit in Singapore

2008-03-17T19:09:00.001+05:30

On my way to San Francisco, I had 11 hr stopover at the Singapore airport. Although I heard that they give a 2 hr free tour of singapore, I was not too happy since that would leave me with a lot of time to kill.

Now I know I should have been sad that it was ONLY 11 hrs. There were enough places to see in the entire airport, which would take more than 11 hours. The tour which involved a 30 min boat ride which was very good.

What struck me as very different was the extremely tourist friendly nature of the Singapore Airport. They had free internet kiosks, free local calls etc. Everyone knows that most of the time people would not like to pay for such basic services in airports etc, not because of the cost, but rather the hassle of changing currency etc. Everyone was very enthusiastic to help the travelers. There was no apathy to be found, which is extremely uncommon in India. Monopolies ensure that even the private sector in India is apathetic, and dont even get me started about the govt.

I was told that the Singapore govt arranges this tours to increase tourism as it is facing significant pressures due to the moving of its strengths from hardware manufacturing to cheaper destinations like China. Whatever the reason might be, at the end of the day this approach works. I am definitely doing a stopover in Singapore on my return flight.

The Man from Earth

2008-03-13T23:33:00.000+05:30

One of the best films I ever saw... I came across this while looking through a list of Sci-Fi movies, and the concept behind the movie - a man who is 14,000 years old - struck me as interesting. It was an independent 2007 film with a little known cast, and a director whom I never heard about - so I was not having much expectations. How wrong I was!

I started downloading the movie, and read some reviews. Some were positive and others were negative indicating that the entire movie was shot in a single log cabin. I started watching the movie, and it was more like reading a novel. So full of depth. The direction and screenplay was awesome.

The best part was that, you feel like you are a part of the conversations that are going on. You do not feel that you are watching a movie, you get sucked into the world. Five Stars!

TCP Congestion

2008-03-05T16:45:00.000+05:30

It surprises me to no end that TCP, the most widely used protocol, has remained practically unchanged from its RFC proposal in 1982. From a time where connections were in hundreds of bytes per second to 10Gbps links now-a-days, It is still used in a more or less unchanged form.

However this flexibility comes at a cost - you will not get the maximum throughput your link supports right away. The "right away" part is important. True TCP can eventually take up the entire bandwidth. But there is an over looked issue - TCPs Congestion control. TCPs congestion control rapidly reduces the connections speed as soon as it starts seeing lost packets, and it does not recover as quickly. This has caused linux to adopt newer congestion control algorithms in TCP in a pluggable fashion.

The default congestion control algorithm is CUBIC which is a less aggressive version of BIC. You have a plethora of congestion control algorithms to choose from. They can be checked by reading from and changed by writing to /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_congestion_control file.

This Linux Gazette article has a detailed description of the remaining options.

Hyderabadi Weekends Suck

2008-03-01T10:16:00.000+05:30

Hyderabad has very few weekend getaways for its denizens. For me, Its always going to the movies, malls or to Necklace road. Pubs and Restaurants are not my thing. So it becomes very hard to just go to some place over the weekend and freak out. Complete weekend enjoyment is seriously lacking here in hyderabad. I had been to Anantagiri Hills, NagarjunaSagar. The only nearby place which I did not visit yet is Srisailam, which I am planning in the near future. Once these are over, you are pretty much forced to visit other cities for nearby destinations.

Bangalore comes to my mind all the time. Located near to the Western Ghats and Nilgiris, Bangalore has tons of places where you can be closer to nature and cooler temperatures. I had visited Nandi Hills in Bangalore, and a 650 KM bike trip to Bandipur, Trekking and Whitewater kayaking in Mudigere. The next weekend I am again going to bangalore for a trek in Antaraganga, and later to pune for the Good Friday weekend.

Sigh! If all else fails will just have to go to some resorts - which suck the least...

New form of interrupts - Message Signaled Interrupts

2008-02-28T11:07:00.000+05:30

The other day I was looking at the /proc/interrupts file, and I found a line similar to below


494: [   ff]        46   PCI-MSI-edge      eth4
495: [   ff]         0   PCI-MSI-edge      eth4
496: [   ff]         0   PCI-MSI-edge      eth4

First thing off is the presence of 3 interrupts for eth4 device, which is an NVidia NForce card with the forcedeth driver. Also the name "PCI-MSI-edge" is a type I have not head about before. The other was the range of the interrupt number - which was above 255, the max valid interrupt range.

After some googling, I found out that it was the new Message Signaled Interrupts, which were mandated by the PCIe standard. Now instead of a single interrupt, where we have to query the device for the actual event that happened, device drivers can put up an interrupt for each and every event - like in the case above one for rx, one for tx and other for link status etc. This simplifies and cleans up the code. On the hardware side, it makes interrupts in-band, and removes the necessity of a separate pin, reducing the chip's footprint.

Take a look at the <linux kernel src>/Documentation/MSI-HOWTO.txt for more details.

Drivers & Hardware

2008-02-27T18:16:00.000+05:30

My friend who works in NVidia always complains about how Software drivers have to cover all the mistakes in the hardware. I never faced any issue like that, until today. There was this GBPS network card which gives a pathetic netperf throughput of 780Mbps. After checking a lot of stuff I chanced upon a discussion in netdev about the same driver and how the driver works around a software bug by disabling a very important feature.

I removed the workaround from the kernel, recompiled and installed it on the test machine. I ran netperf and presto! It comes to 989Mbps, as close as possible to the line speed of the interface! As for the hardware bug, it does not get triggered in this particular hardware setup since it requires the PCI-X bus running at 100/133MHz, whereas the test machine's bus is only 66MHz. Problem solved.

Same Subnet Interfaces in Linux issue

2008-02-26T19:35:00.000+05:30

I always thought that the Linux Networking stack was a fully functional component which is never lacking in features, when compared to other OSs. However a few days ago, I came across a missing piece of functionality - interfaces on the same subnet issue.

You see when you configure 2 interfaces on the same subnet, and try to talk to other machines in the subnet, something unexpected happens. The packets can come in on both interfaces, but can leave only on one of them! This is because of the inherent design of the Linux Forwarding Base, which routes solely based on the destination address, ignoring the source.

Ofcourse its not a deadend in any way. You can still configure a bonding between the 2 interfaces and then assign the 2 ips to the bond virtual interface. But that would be too much trouble, and not exactly a solution for someone seeking resource compartmentalization. Solaris provides a concept called interface grouping for this issue.

Nice Try

2008-02-25T23:26:00.000+05:30

Today I was trying to print some variables from the tg3 network driver in the running linux kernel, using GDB on /proc/kcore. Being the lazy type I tried to check kernel variable values though GDB instead of using /proc or /sys interface.

After printing the variables, I started a test to see how it would change. The test went to completion and surprize surprize the value never changed! I did not know what happened and re-ran the test, but no luck. Then I looked through the code and after making sure that the value absolutely has to change, I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with GDB and restarted it, and presto the new values were visible.

After some googling it turned out that gdb tries to cache the values it retrieves from the core file. The intresting part was that, even though we indicate to GDB that the target is live it still does this. Anyway the solution, from LDD3, is to run "core-file /proc/kcore" everytime we want an updated value.

Trek to Anantagiri

2008-02-24T18:48:00.000+05:30

This Saturday, my roommate and two of my colleagues decided to go to some place. After searching on the net and asking people, it turned out that Anantagiri Hills near Vikarabad, about 76 KM from Hyd might be the ideal destination for the weekend. At last count there were four of us - MJ Pavan my roommate, Ravi Sankar my btech class mate and colleague, Kanishk my colleague and myself.

So on Saturday morning we woke up at 4:15 AM. After dressing up, and packing in a ton of biscuts, cameras, route maps etc. MJ, Ravi and I started for Anantagiri hills at 5:40 on 2 bikes - MJ's Unicorn and my TVS Fiero. On the way we rendezvoused with Kanishk at Nanalnagar near Mehdipatnam. There was a lot of traffic on the way in the city, especially near Mehdipatnam where a flyover is being constructed. After wading through the traffic and then crossed Langer house. Once were were out of the city and near Moinabad, the road turned out to be of excellent condition and have a lot less traffic. This prodded me to floor the accelerator and went for about 40 KM at 90KMPH. About 10 KM from Vikarabad, I stopped as the guys have fallen behind, and then noticed that my bike's engine was leaking engine oil. It was a quite a scare, but anyway the bike appeared to be in running condition, so we continued to Vikarabad. We stopped to get some food in Vikarabad but it was not prepared yet, so we had some tea, asked for directions to Anantagiri and left.

We reached the temple near Anantagiri by 8AM and then parked our bikes in a parking spot. We then went down the stairs near the temple and into the forest. The forest was not very dense. Initially we tried our hand at proving that humans descended from monkeys. Then we came to a place where there was a small elevation in the ground similar to a small hill about 3-4m high. We tried to climb it and took snaps. After this we took a less traveled path into the forest instead of the bigger road-like path. Here had our first experience with some thorny bushes, and after strolling for about 30 mins or so, we came across a green patch of trees. It was a Eucalyptus plantation by some kind soul. There we found many birds like Parrots, finches etc.

Behind this Eucalyptus plantation was a small hillock about 12m high, It was grassy with a few trees on the sides. We decided to climb the hill - little did we know what we were about to face. The slopes were at a 45 degree angle and the soil was very loose with many small pebbles. It was difficult to get a good grip easily. At some places all we could hold on to were blades of dry grass. To crown it all there were many thorny bushes, although my jeans and woodland "tractor" shoes (which we named for its remarkable tread and extraordinary struddiness) saved the day - but not before i got struck by the branch of a thorny bush on my arm.

The view from the top was very beautiful. We took a few pictures and started down on a different side which was less thorny but had more incline. Although this was safer and easier than the uphill route we took, the downward descent made it harder. At one point the branch I was holding to broke and it make me slip a bit although it was not too hard. After that we carefully climbed down and found our way back to the temple.

In the temple they were installing a new idol of Lord Vigneshwara, and MJ helped them a bit. We saw a colorful puja mat there, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a design drawn with colored rice grain. After that we took a group photo and then went to the parking area. It was about 11:10 , when we started to move when Kanishk called me to check his back tyre. It was a biker's worst dream - a flat tyre. After enquiring we found out that the nearest puncture shop was 5km away. Kanishk took my bike and got the repair guy who took the tyre and then repaired it back at his shop and came back and installed it again. MJ, Ravi and myself were meanwhile resting in a small hotel/dhaba. After an hour the entire process was over and we started back. On the way back Kanishk was very pleased to see his bike do 100 KMPH.

MJ, Ravi and myself planned to go to the Ocean park while Kanishk had some work to do in the evening, so he left and we went to the ocean park. But we found all the rides and wave pools filled with children from 4 different schools. We decided against getting down into water and instead rode some non-water based rides like dashing cars, dashing boats etc. We started back at about 4:10 PM from Ocean park and it was about 5:00 PM when we returned home. Ravi then left for the 5:45 MMTS train to his place.

Overall, discounting the tyre puncture and Ocean park rush, it was a very good trip. I think now I know a place to take my friends who visit Hyderabad :). More pictures are available at Picasa

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Whitewater Kayaking & Trekking in Mudigere

2008-02-20T07:32:00.000+05:30

The planning started with a sudden impulse, which is normal whenever I feel my life slipping away. I mailed my friends about organizing a trip to some beautiful place, and AJ who resides in Bangalore took the initiative. First thing I did was to book tickets to and from Bangalore for the folks from Hyd - Pran, Naresh and myself. After checking a lot of alternatives, we zeroed in on Capture Adventure Tours and they planned a tour for us which would involve White water Kayaking and Trekking near Mudigere in a 2 day tour.

On Friday Evening, Pran, Naresh and myself came in early from office and started to the Kachiguda Rly Station. We hired an auto, and the autowala was a pure nutcase. Anyway we got there on time, and boarded the train. Next day morning at 7:00 the train pulled into Bangalore. We met with AJ who was waiting along with my B.Tech classmate Revanth, Nirmal his roommate and his colleague Shekar. After exchanging pleasantries we started toward Mudigere about 300 KM away. The first 200 KM was normal, but the next 100 was a Ghat section. By the time we came to our destination - Avanthy Estate, It was almost 2PM.

We met Mr Shabbir, the estate manager who informed us that due to a slight change of plans, it would be better to do the Water Kayaking today and the trek tomorrow. We started for Water Kayaking immediatly. After driving a couple of km along the banks of Bhadra, we stopped at a good spot. Vinay our Instructor was already present there, and we helped him unload the kayaks from his jeep to the river bank. After a couple of instructions about Kayaking, we got into the boats. Nirmal and myself were paired into a boat.

Handling a Kayak, like many adventure sports, is an order of magnitude difficult than what it seems like. We were rowing, but being the first time, unable to maintain any sync. This caused the boat to swirl rather than reasonably move forward. Although it was probably a Class 1 route, we were getting stuck in every rock near every rapid possible. Very soon we were slowly learning the tricks. But the initial effort tired us. The later part was more easier. We did this for about 2 hours until 6 PM or so. Then we went back to our rooms. (Whitewater Kayaking Pics)

That night a campfire was arranged and we had a great time drinking beer and shouting boisterously. Naresh and the others took at pulling pran's leg about his "exploits". After some time we retired to our rooms and then fell asleep.

The next day we woke up at around 7 and Shabbir took us on a Van around the estate. After going for 3 KM we were dropped there, and walked back through the coffee plantation. Later we talked with Shabbir about the trek and we realized that there was a miscommunication due to which no real trek was organized for us. So after some discussion, Shabbir agreed to take us to another nearby Estate called JainKhan estate, behind which there were hills.

After spending some time in the JainKhan Estate, we started our trek at 1:30 PM, and we started to climb uphill. After some time Nirmal, who was not feeling very well, and another group who were with us, turned back. We continued our trek to the summit. The view was beautiful, and we took many pictures at the top. After some time we started our trek back, and lost our way. Luckily we found another way and got back through it. (Mudigere Trek Pictures)

After going back to the room, we had a heavy lunch and some beer. Then at night after dinner, we started back to bangalore at 9:30 PM. It was a long ride, and we reached Bangalore by 4:00 AM on monday morning. After sleeping for a couple of hours, Nirmal and Revanth left for office, whereas the rest of us just lazed around and in the evening we started back to Hyderabad.