Exceptions..

Your blog is not a place to merely post links to other blogs, but couldn't resist posting this one here.

How to Do what you Love

Where's the Globe Warming ?.

Certainly not in UK. It's snowing in October. First there was this travel warning for Birmingham in office, then there was the BBC weathers snow icon. We ignored it religiously as it has failed us before.

But by 8:00 in the night came the call. "See outside, do you see anything?", asked Murali. I couldn't just spot the empty street. "It's snowing here" he was excited for sure.

Too bad snow didn't came out way, but it will, eventually. knowing the English weather, it could be tomorrow , next month or even next year. But it feels like the winter has already begun. I could spot an inch of snow on top of the cars coming from up north.(In UK, such feelings are mostly short lived, come next week, we might see the summer weather again)

Anyway, the Global Warming books are not going to sell well this year. Why don't someone write a book on Global cooling or going with the current state of affairs, Global warming Recession ?

Blogs. So 2004 like ?

Came up on this article on Wired today which argues that blogs are so...hmm .. 2004. This, just a day (and a rather rainy one) after i was trying to convince narthana that goining to shops and shopping is so 2000 like to escape the weekend shopping.

The arguments are plain and simple. What made blogs attractive is the ability of having personal opinions on issues from people who are independent of the media circles. blogs became extremely popular but the mainstream media soon turned to blogging. When a media firm employes full time bloggers to blog on issues, it is difficult for the part-time, blogging-for-fun armatures to match up to that.

Wired argues that on mediums like Twitter, where one post can contain only 140 words, the twitters (if I can call them that) are in level playing field with the pro's.

The argument looks good first, but I don't see why the media moguls can find some expert twitters who can focus full time and make better twitter trails to beat the armatures.

I agree that maintaining a blog on US election/Financial crisis and beating the big players would be a day dream. But personal blogging is here to stay.Where else can we publish the personal stories and opinions so quick and relay it to the world?. And for aspiring writers like me, where else do we write and get the feedback?.

So Blogging is gonna stay and make me happy. meanwhile shopping out too will stay making the other half's happy !.

Autumn colour tracker.

To a man who is averse to cold as much as I am, passing of summer and the start of autumn is not something to look forward to. But one thing I defenitely look forward to this autumn is the colours it will bring. I hope the predictions that a hot (??) summer would eventually lead to better autumn colours are true.

After a wonderful trip to Box hill & Richmond park with Murali & Family, I was googling to find a good place to visit for the autumn foliage.Sometimes, you have the luck to find the exact thing you are looking for, and that's how I felt when I found the Forestry Commisions Autumn Tracker.

With places to visit in autumn marked on the UK map and tracking the colour change in each place through a legend of 5 colours, this looks like the comprehensive guide to autumn colours in UK. They also have the top 10 places to visit and promises to change it as the autumn progresses and colours unleash.

They say satisfaction is a hard thing to achieve and it really is. After 15 minutes with the site, I wish I had a post code search which shows us our nearest autumn spots.

anyway, a nice site if you are planning for an autumn colours trip in UK.

Ad Block Plus.

This post is with the assumption that you are using Mozilla's Firefox browser. If not, probably, it's already time to change over.

This short post is to let you know the most useful add-on I have come across in Firefox. The Ad Block Plus Saves us a lot of time and unease by blocking out the banner ads & the sounds announcing that you have won an Ipod for free. Try it out.


Ad Block Plus

Once you select the filter from your region, it will block out most of the banner ads. You can also add the remaining banner ads by right clicking on it and selecting Adblock.

Obviously, there are 1000's of add on's and you'll find quite a few to your taste and choce, but this one had an immediate impact on our browsing experience. specially on sites like Rediff.com

While a lot of us are happy to have a better browsing experience, theere are worrying sounds from the industry that If it becomes a standard browser feature, (which a lot of add ons do in later releases) it has the capability of kinlling the internet revenue of sites and in turn make internet less profitable. articles like below, highlights the same. And who is at the wrong end of innovation this time, Google !

Ad Block Plus Threat

The microsoft reaction looks interesting. We will have to wait and see how the game develops.

My experiment with counters

There is no higher pleasure, for me, as a blogger to know that my blog is being visited by people known and unknown. As much as I enjoy writing these entries, it's always nice to know that people read them.

So,curiosity got the better of me on last weekend and i knew it was time for a hit counter on my blog. So I Search on Google. As it so often does, Google comes up with links full of information. In short, this is what I understood.

1. The good news first. Hey, getting a counter on your site is easy !

2. In the old version of blogspot, you had to go to one the "counter" sites, create a login id, chose a counter and then point it to your Blog address. What's more, the site will give you a piece of HTML code and you need to paste it in the HTML source of your blog.

3. You an in for an easy ride if you are writing blogs now. All you need to do is to sign in to blogger, go to the layout section, click on "Add New Gadget", select a hit counter and Bingo!, you have a counter on your site.

Easy for the new age Blogger, right?. oh, How I wish all these fancy stories they tell us were true. Sadly, they are not. Blogger has some gadgets which appear to be counters, but on adding them either I get an empty white box or a box with a random number. The gadget section is filled with count of people in Malaysia to global counters to count down to Doom's day but not a single decent hit counter.

Okay, So much for the great gadgets, it's back to basics. So, I went to Netbb.com a website which has a clean interface and offers a good counter as well. 10 minutes and one HTML copying-and-pasting later, I have a counter at the bottom of the site. Job done !. It may not the best solution. Sites like Google Analytics offer lot more, but all I want is a counter, so it's just fine.

This short experiment took place on last Saturday. Looking at the counter today makes me a happy man. 82 Hits in 7 days. Even if I assume that I visit my site 4 times a day on an average, that leaves nearly 50 hits on my site in 7 days. So, If you are planning to have a blog, having a counter might be a good idea. Each hit clearly inspires you to write more.

Google Chrome.

Google Entering the Browser Market. Before I write my thoughts, I thought you should read this. An excellent way to present their new browser,named Chrome.

Google Chrome Cartoon

The Chrome has made us happy already by running our application much faster than FireFox or IE. With Google getting into the browser act, I wonder what would happen to FireFox?

Google seems to be paying a handy amount of money to Mozilla for keeping Google as the default homepage and search option. Google seems to have paid nearly 80 % of Mozilla corporations revenues in 2006 (56 million out of the 65 million).

With Google starting to pursue it's own browser, Mozilla would be feeling the heat already.

When will we have the "Indian" Desktop PC ?

For the last three years, there are two definite dialogues which happen between me & my father every time I visit home.

Me : "Achan ennanu njangalude aduthu varunnathu?" When are you coming to Visit us ? (To then Mysore/ now London)

Achan : Samayam akumbol varam. (When it's Time). The Time, obviously never comes and it's his way of dodging the question in a nice way.

Dialogue No 2 is on buying a computer. Like many retired middle class men in kerala, Achan also was smitten by the share bug couple of years ago and in a way, that's keeping him busy & active. From the opening bell to the closing time of Indian share market, chakyarampurathu house is a busy place. There are so many funny stories made by my brother on the same that I will reserve it for another blog.

Acahn does his business by watching TV and calling up the share broker and placing the selling/buying order. I always thought it could be more easier through a computer.

Me : Acha, ee share business cheyyan oru computer vangichu koode?. (Father, why don't you buy a computer to do your share business?).

Achan : Samayam akumbol varam. (When it's Time)

Me being the lazy son i am, never took the matter any further. But this time, I have decided that I am going to buy a computer at home on my next visit. With both me & my brother far away, it would make it easy for us to communicate and would help them to watch us photos online. Achan can do his share business on it if he pleases. With smart cousin's around, It will never be under used.

Okay, so, a Laptop or Desktop?. I decided to go with the Desktop for the following reasons.

1. We are not planning to move it around.
2. We can have a bigger resolution Screen, which is better for the eyes.
3. It's comparatively cheaper & as we will be buying it from the nearest town, and known vendors,service would be better.

"But you have to buy a UPS too" says Prashanth, my brother. No surprises there. With the power situation at home (daily planned power cuts & sudden unplanned ones) we need a UPS so that computer can be shut down safely whenever the power is cut.

But then, the laptop does not have this problem. the variation in voltage could be an issue but having the battery charged while we are on power ensures that it's not damaged by power going off all of a sudden.

In the western world were Desktop PC's were invented, there is uninterrupted power and hence no need of a backup mechanism. But in countries like India, why no one is thinking of having a battery backup option for the PC?. having done that on laptops. it should not be a technological issue. Having a battery inside the PC and getting it charged while on power like the laptop will altogether eliminate the need for an external device like UPS.

I find it hard to believe that with huge potential markets like India, China, Africa & South America(Places where I assume there will be power shortage) no PC manufacturer has taken a stride on this direction. Google didn't show us anything concrete on this topic as well.

Can the markets neglect such an economical and better option for long?. I think Not. Or is it that i missing out on a basic concept?. Either way, Do you think we will ever have that "Indian" Desktop?.

Good bye Beijing.

Such a wonderful Olympics. What more can I ask when all 4 of my Olympics wishes have been granted. It has been a truly entertaining two weeks. Made more entertaining by the No Focus group discussions.

So, Greatest Olympics Ever ?: Haven't seen enough to compare. But possibly the grandest opening ceremony I have seen. Definitely in terms of scale.

Michel Phelps / Usain Bolt? : When someone jogs through the second half of an Olympic 100m final celebrating through the final 10 meters and yet runs the fastest in history, it's easy.

Sorry phelps, for an average viewer, it's Usain. period.

Trading Death : The Lord of War

"You do not avoid work by sitting idle, you avoid it by doing something else" says Paul Graham. It's on on one of these "something else" moments that I stumbled on this movie, "The Lord of War".

Expectations can play a part, like anything in life, in you liking a movie, and my expectations were indeed low when I started watching the movie. But from the very second dialogue (There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11? ) I was impressed.

The movie charts the Life of Yuri Orvalov, played by Nicolas Cage, a Russian arms dealer. Yuri starts by selling arms to local mobsters in Manhattan and becomes a master arms dealer. There are sub plots of Love, a cat and mouse chase between Yuri and the honest cop Jack, and the turmoil of Yuri's family & his brother.

I liked two aspects of the movie. One, it's presentation. Shot in docu-drama style, most of the story is narrated to us by the main chartacter. Dialogues are short and crisp and pack the punch. The script is neat and moves the movie at a brisk pace. shot in different locations of the world, it's a mini tour of the Arms Dealers world.

Secondly, the movie refreshingly refrains from taking a moral stand or logical conclusion. There are no pointed out villains, or heroes. It tries to show the world of Arms dealers, dictators, genocides, honest cops, corrupted officials and leaves the user with the choice of conclusions. No good-over-evil victories, just the different view points.

Yuri knows well what people do with his arms, but he knows too well that if not him, someone else will do this job. And as he points out to his wife, it's not only money, he does it because he is good at it. On the other hand the director shows us the mental turmoil of Yuri when his family leaves him. But still, he goes on. Through yuri's brother the director shows us a person who is affected by the out comes of the arms deals.

If you would like a sneak peak at the global arms dealing, and the lives around it, I suggest this movie to you. Be warned, you'll have to draw the conclusions !.

Behind the big battles

I would be lying to you if I said I enjoyed history in school. It was another subject to pass, and the process of remembering the dates,writing the lengthy essays & more mugging up followed. unsurprisingly, I don't remember most of what i have studied in school.

The first time I enjoyed reading history is when I read "Freedom at Midnight". It truly fascinated me. That's the first time I realized that history can be interesting. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to know about the Indian partition days.

Anyway, this column is not about my interest in history, and honestly that's not a story of significance either. This is about my thoughts on how the ancient battles were won.

Here's one for the sample, The battle of Gaugemela. 100,000 Persians against 47,000 Macedonians. The result, A Macedonian victory. causalities, 40,000 Persians and 4000 Macedonians. (there are no fixed numbers in ancient history, I am just choosing the highest numbers on the Macedonian causalities). Victory to the great Alexander.

Wait a minute !. If my math is correct, each Macedonian has to fight 2 Persians and more surprisingly, for each Macedonian killed, there is roughly 12 Persians dead on the other side. On a plain field face to face battle, how can this happen?. when you consider that 40,000 of Alexanders men were on foot, it becomes more difficult to imagine. On foot, face to face with no terrain or weapon advantage, how can you fight with two people at once?. and how can you kill 12 people before one person from your side is killed?.

it is impossible. If you take boxing as a civilized form of war, how often do you see a knock-out?. Can you imagine even the best boxer in the world winning against two boxers at once?. No. So however gallantly the Macedonians fought, I don't believe they were like the matrix hero's killing 4 or 5 people without getting injured. Then, how on earth did the macedonians win it?. and more importantly, how did they kill so many Persians?.

To understand it, we need to understand how the ancient battles worked. Two things were immensely important in old battles. The discipline & ability to strike fear. If the size of the armies are same, the battle will be a stalemate unless one of the armies begin to retreat. Once an army runs out of fear, the carnage begins. For the outnumbered armies, it's important that they strike fear into the other soldiers as early as possible to avoid getting encircled and eventually massacred. And the easiest method to strike fear into an army?, Kill their leader.

Alexander knew too well that on a face to face confrontation, the Persians can not be beaten. so he went for one of the boldest moves in military history, to kill Darius, the king of Persia to win this war. Darius stood behind a thick wall of Persian soldiers. To reach him, Alexander devised a strategy. he drew to the left of Persian fleet with a small number of soldiers and as he expected, Darius sent a large fleet of Persians to encircle and kill him. This created a gap in the Persian line and Alexander in a sudden strategic turn lead his army through this weak link to reach near Darius and attack him. fearing for his life, Darius Fled. And with him the Persian Army.

Once an army is showing it's back and is running for life, chasing them and cutting them down is much easier and they always made sure that they killed as many as they can so as to reduce the strength of the opponent.A lot of the soldiers surrendered to save their life but were eventually beheaded.

So, when you read or hear about another great epic war, do remember that they are not won like they show in the movie "300". They are won by strategies of course, but also by cutting down the men in fear running for their life and the surrenders.

Olympic Medal Tables.

The Olympic medal table is an interesting read for all of GB these days. Britain on 3rd position, their best haul of golds since 1908, leading the European pack, and above all, topping Australia in golds & medals. Can it get any better?.

Though I share the enthusiasm of some of my colleagues, this post is about some of the interesting medal tables/representations i saw over the last week.

The award for the most creative Olympics medal table has to go to Channel 4. Other than the gold medals order, they also have a way of arranging the medal table by GDP, Population & Human Rights ? (Obviously lead by US).

Slovenia & Jamaica leads the population medal table & do I need to tell you who is in the last position?.Browsing through all these, I find it's better for India to stick to the original table :)

Channel 4 Medal Table

The most interesting Olympic medal mapping over the years comes from NY Times. it's a fantastic link to track the medal map over the years. Rise & fall of soviet union and East Germany, Rise of US from 1996, and now the rise of China. try it out.

NY Times Medal map

Historically, Olympic leaders are always decided based on the golds they have won, and china is clearly taking US to the cleaners this time. But the American media has other idea's.

Both CNN & NY Times still shows America on position 1 as they have ordered the medal tables by medals won. They just don't like to loose, do they?.

NY Times

CNN

To be a bit more fair to them, they have always represented the medal tables this way. some consolation !.

Geni : Build your Family Tree

Another Lazy weekend for me, but a highly productive one for Team GB in Olympics. It was fun watching them storm ahead of the Aussies. and above all, the brilliant Usain Bolt.

Thanks to Dhanya Chechi, did something other than watching Olympics over the weekend. After accepting her invitation, started building the family tree. And surprisingly (with some good help from narthana) it went better than expected. already finished adding 100+ people and uploading the photos. sent the invites to young cousins & they have accepted it too. The tree is growing fast.

Can't make much of what I am excited about ?, Try building a family tree for yourself.
http://www.geni.com/home.

How to complicate stuff.

What's the first thing I do once i reach office?. Head to our pantry for a Tea, of course. One of these days, I noticed something interesting. Though there are about 20 people drinking tea in the morning, the tea kettle is empty most of the time. Which means I have to fill up water every time I need to drink tea. Won't it be efficient and easy for me) if the first person filled up the kettle before heating it?.

"So, Is it a technical issue or a social one?" my great uncle Muralee Thummarukudy will ask. With the social solutions beyond my powers, why don't try to solve it technically?.

What is the obvious technical solution?. Easy. Just design the kettle to heat up only when water is filled to a specific level. So unless and until you fill in the water for 10 people, you are not getting your tea.

"What if someone feels like having a tea at say 1:00, when nobody else is interested?" I hear you say. We need a way to switch off the water level flag, so that if the security guy wants to have a tea at midnight, he need not fill the kettle.

"What if people keep switching off the flag too often ?". Aha, why not have a way to auto-configure the timings when the water level flag is on?. We should can set it on for 8:30-10:00 AM & 4:00-5:00 PM.

Now, How do we make sure that people are not toying around with this configuration to get around the issue?. Pre setting the timing from manufacturer is too risky, they can get it wrong and every office can have different routines.

So, you need one person with exclusive access to set/reset these configurations. Does it mean he has to have a swipe card for the machine?. or do we run a software on the kettle and log in from our terminal with the required credentials?.

ha ha, look how easy is it to complicate stuff :)

Patch Tuesday & Exploit Wednesday !

Came across this interesting bit while browsing through the net. till now, I didn't knew that Microsoft releases all the windows patches on a monthly basis on the second Tuesday of every month,named Patch Tuesday.

More interestingly, once the patches are out, the next day is the best day for hackers all over the world to exploit the vulnerabilities, making it "Exploit Wednesday". Nice !!

More in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday

Thanks Abhinav !

No other Olympic medal has made such an instant impact in our life. Hey, I am not singing the "This-medal-will-change-Indian-Sports" song, we all know where that will be in 2 months.

When I watched the event live, I was very happy that Abhinav Bindra won the gold but the "Impact" of it was not so evident until I walked into our neighbourhood Chinese take away yesterday evening.

Yan, the boy in the counter was cheerful than usual. clearly an effect of Olympics running in the kitchen TV. He was all the more happy that his last week prediction to me of China overtaking US is falling into place. this short exchange followed.

Yan : Hello, u see Olympics?

Me : Yes, Yes

Yan : We leaders, you know?.

Me : Yes.

Yan : We got 8 gold, We will be leaders, America second, you know ?

Me : ha.. Yes.

Yan : You, Any medal?

Me : Yes. (thank god he asked this today.)

Yan : Bronze?.

Me : No, Gold.

Yan : You Gold ?, that Yellow Gold, in Olympics. ( he can't believe it and is showing an around the neck sign to make sure that I understand.)

Me : Yes. Yellow Gold In Olympics Shooting.

Yan : Oh...good.

Thanks Abhinav Bibdra !.

Some Olympics Morning !!

This olympics morning will take some beating to overcome. It was a chance morning though. Got up at 3:00 BST due to slight fever and breathing trouble. it's a bit frustrating when it happens at the start of the week. The breathing trouble was with the me for that last 15 years, so have got accustomed to such early wake up calls.

With the sleep gone and feeling a little hazy, tuned into olympics through BBC. First came the sensational victory of Rebecca Adlington in Womens 400 meter freestyle. No where in the top three after 350 meters, and trailing katie Hoff by quite a distance, she swam sensationally in the last 25 to take the gold. First female swimming gold for britain after 48 years !!.

Next came the 4*100 meters, 2nd in Phelp's quest for 8 golds. And what a race it turned out to be. australia leading on lap1, france taking the lead on 3, and with 25 meters to go, phelp's gold was all but gone with france leading the race. Then came the sensational surge from Jason Lezak making sure that phelps still hangs on to his dream of 8 golds !!. what a headline that could make...

I was already feeling as if it was a good morning to loose sleep, but it was nothing compared to what was in store for me.. With swimming finished and another hour to go for the morning, I clicked on the Shooting stream. The first image on my screen, well, Abhinav Bindra from India on 3rd position after 2 rounds in 10m Air Rifle finals. Honestly, it was the fist time I was watching a shooting competetion. Bindra was improving by the rounds and with one shot to go, he was level with the opponent from Finaland and just .4 ahead of the chinese opponent.

I was tensed, Will it be india's first ever individual gold?. It was !!.. a 10.8 on the last round to the cool Bindra who did it in style !!. What a morning..if I ever loose sleep, I would like it to be on mornings like this :)

Olympics, Ahoy !

Google Reminded me on the morning that Beijing '08 is just hours away..The most auspiciously oriented Olympics of all time, (how else do you define an Olympics which starts on 08.08.08 with the opening ceremony scheduled at 08:08:08?) may also turn out to be the best organized ever.

A lot of column inches are already dedicated on the great stadiums, china's human rights, pollution, torch relays and now on the great organization. I am not intending to bore you with any of these. Instead I will bore you with some other stuff.

It's when we visited the Olympics Museum In Lausanne last year that we got the initial glimpse of Beijing 2008. It's narthana who pointed to us the five Olympic Mascots for Beijing : Beibei (blue Fish), Jingjing (black Panda), Huanhuan (red Flame), Yingying (yellow Antelope) and Nini (green Swallow). First part of Their five names together - "Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni" - translates as 'Welcome to Beijing'. Just shows the meticulous planning that has gone in..

As I write these, Chinese are producing a truly colourful opening ceremony. Though I liked the initial part, didn't quite appreciate the air run to lit the flame. looked ordinary to me. Barcelona, anyone?.

For an Indian, proud Olympics memories are hard to come by. In fact India didn't win a even a single medal in the first three Olympics I have witnessed.

My most colourful memory of tha Olympics is that of a TV. The first TV I was allowed to touch and operate. Year was 1984, Los Angeles Olympics. Though I remember nothing of watching that Olympics as a 5 year old, I remember the pride I felt when Vanajammayi tole me that my grand father has bought a TV in my mothers ancestral home in Vengoala.

Television was indeed a rare commodity back then, In Pulluvazhy, where I was born and bought up, I remember seeing TV only in two houses. understandably, children were never allowed to go too close to these 'complicate' machines let alone operate them. So when I was turning the Nob and changing channels, it felt the equivalent flying a plane. Thanks to Olympics !.

Times Indeed have changed, TV is so common these days and,I have decided against it in my home as it becomes an addiction & waste of time. talk about the full circle of life Huh?.

That's for the past bit but in the present, I look forward to China overtaking USA in the medal talley, India winning more than one medal, Great Britan Beating Australia on the medal talley and Roger Fedrer clinching the Olympics gold. How many of that will happen?. Well, We will wait and see.

Let your baby smash on !

While I was young, touching the electronics stuff at home was a strict No-No. But who cares when someone has as many people around. By all means I had a gifted childhood, being the only baby around in my father's and mother's home.

Times have changed, and it's evident from the my-baby-playing-on-my-laptop photo's in Picasa.

While browsing through the net, found this interesting little software which truly mix technology with fun. It helps your kid to play on the laptop without making creating any trouble to files/folders.it looks interesting. a few positive comments from my friends who used it for their kids.

http://www.hanselman.com/babysmash/screenies.htm

though you may not be lucky if your sweet heart is like ani, according to Aji Chettan's response "Ani literally 'smashes' the key board and unfortunately no software program can prevent him 'unplucking' the keys" :)

What is your first memory ?.

These days, We see children growing up a lot more closely. Thanks to Akshadha, Appu & Ani, kids from our friends & family circle in London.

They are in the 9-18 months age range.Every time we see them, to our Joy, they seem to recognize us. So they have their little memories !!. good enough proof to conclude that children have memories from 9 months?. Wait a second, No matter how hard I try, I can't remember a single thing from that age of mine.

In fact my earliest memory is when I am nearly 3 years old. not particularly a happy one. It's the sight of my father sitting with his head on his hands near the dead body of my grand father. Though I was too small to understand the whole idea of death, the image is still vivid on my memory.

So, Do I forget fast, let's cross check with my wife. her first memory is also at the age 3, predictably related to some choclate. Where did all our earlier memories go?. time to Google.

The answer Lies in Childhood Amnesia, a term used to refer to inability of adults to remember pretty much anything before the average age of 3. That's a relief !. Our cells are not dying, yet.

Wikipedia gives the following definition..

"Infantile, or childhood amnesia is characterized by the relative absence of memory before 3 or 4 years of age. It is important to note that the term does not refer to complete absence of memories, but the relative scarcity of memories during infancy — a scarcity that cannot be accounted for by a forgetting curve.[citation needed] Additionally, the boundary is malleable and can be influenced by both individual experiences (Usher & Neisser, 1993) and cultural factors (Wang, 2001). "

Want more ... read this one..
http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-bauer.html

Meanwhile, What is "your" first memory?.