Thursday, June 23, 2005

Pune and 20 degrees of temperature.

Across the pale parabola of joy

Cool outside ,but work keeps ones collar sweaty. So its no different fro m Madras till I go back again next week.

Trying to spend time at work getting things sorted out , some interviews and what not. Read the papers on the GCC summit available here .

Compilers seem to be pretty hot these days. Some of the C++ extensions that are proposed are rather cool and look like a lot of cool work inside GCC . The other interesting paper was Linux running on the cell and the GCC / GDB port for this. The GDB port plans to implement a single session debug solution which is something that I looked at in the past with some heterogenous multicore chips. Hmmm. something that could have been.

Anyways thats the rant about work . There really seems to be no time to look at anything else these days. The next thing to wind up before I run away for 2 weeks is a set of evals.

Remember a quote "Death where is thy sting ......."

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Surviving Madras.

Across the pale parabola of joy

The last few hours of my vacation and I blog this from the Barrista on Nungambakkam High Road using a Wireless hotspot. I run Ubuntu on my thinkpad (no windoze yet) and boy does the thing work seamlessly. Setting up the connection was so effortless. All I had to do was to fire up network-admin and choose the corresponding service provider and things just worked. All I needed to do in addition was to buy a prepaid card for 50 bucks and then you have it, my day is done. Coffee , wifi access and Air conditioning all that you need to survive Madras, all available .

Spent some time rummaging through the older Landmark store at Gemini close to this place, the listening posts have all disappeared, dont know why , so ended up not buying any music though I managed to buy my share of music earlier this week at Music World.


Hmm things certainly have changed down here. The MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System) works finally . People are not fraid to flaunt whatever, the noise levels in Barrista certainly give coffee day in Pune a good run for its money, wireless access points to boot and what not. Its a resurgent Madras and am proud about my acronym today (themadrasi) . If it were only not for the weather this place rocks....

Some other survival tips in Madras
Do haggle with the autorickshaw driver
Don't agree for the first price with the rickshaw feller. (they expect you to bargain, so give them that pleasure . )
Do drink a lot of water. (H2O for all ye chemistry buffs)
Don't drink too much coffee .
Do make sure you have air conditioning everywhere. ( too bad the autos don't yet have airconditioning. )
Do get out early .
Do visit spencer plaza or Barrista on NH road.
Do take a siesta.
Dont take a bus.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Madras, A sweaty break.

Across the pale parabola of joy
Woh, 42 degrees and counting. Walk out of a cold shower and then you start being covered in your own sweat at the end of 5 minutes. Considering my sedentary lifestyle back @ Pune, Madras might just be the place to be to lose weight by just dummy sweating. Spent the day tying up some loose ends, finish my courier seva for a friend and then meet up with a couple of old buddies later in the evening. The other great thing is that I am using a AMD K6 500 with Windoze 98 and can't use my brand new thinkpad since the usb adsl that touchtel provides does not have linux drivers. I have to get to the bottom of this.Maybe I should get online from a cyber cafe and use aptitude :-)... Never underestimate the power of debian / ubuntu.


Saturday, June 04, 2005

Movies , movies more movies.

Spending the weekend catching up with movies that were missed , watching them. Saw a few new ones like O Brother Where art thou, finally caught up with Million Dollar Baby and saw Ram Gopal Verma's latest offering D Company. Though not directed by the man himself. it still pales in comparison to his earlier offerings like Satya or Company. The good part is Hooda's quiet no nonsense attitude as D and acting , but the additional story around is a little bit too quiet. One rather funny technique was the emphasis on not having proper dialogues between the protogamists and just putting a prologue and epilogue around each dialogue. At some points it resembled a documentary on the underworld. But otherwise its ok to watch and enjoy if you want a break.

The second movie I ended up seeing was Million Dollar Baby. It deserves all the accolades and all the oscars that it received. Clint Eastwood is awesome as a reluctant old fashioned and reticent trainer trying to help Hillary Swank with becoming a boxing champ and in the process getting over his own inadequadicies as a manager. The story is narrated from the point of view of Morgan Freeman as a has been boxing champ who lost his eyes and ended up as a cleaner in the gym that Clint Eastwood runs.

Now to watch O Brother Where ar't though and all the other movies I have missed.



Across the pale parabola of joy