Monday, February 26, 2007
Progress....
Blogging this technically after the weekend and feeling generally bored about Monday mornings . Spent the weekend catching up on some movies which was a good way of spending the whole of Saturday night. Watched Blood Diamond , Crash , Mistress of Spices, Walk the line , Dor and what not . After a long time stayed up till 7 in the morning. However the result of that activity is that I slept through the whole day getting up only for meals and more sleep . Listening to the music of Pachai Kili Muthucharam streaming over the internet on totem on ubuntu . Now thats really progress as far as Linux goes. It used to be a pain to get sound working - you needed to know myriads of options and what not to get it working - alsa - oss and some other black magic . Currently its just a simple install and everything works like magic. Now now like my uncle says that a computer is useless unless it makes food for him , I wouldn't be surprised that very soon we should have a linux powered robot which doubles up as a cook . The day such a product is made - I'll gift it to him.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Comfortably Numb"ed"....
The Sunday was spent in driving down to Bombay for the big Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon concert. Wow! it really was worth every picometre covered in the drive . The concert started bang on time and finished on time too. In the middle was all the fun - quadsonic sound, flying pigs, a number of taunts at the war(s) in Iraq and above all fantastic music. It was worth every single second spent there and every single drop of sweat spent in standing in a huge crowd which was bent on crushing every person standing ...
By the time he got to the Dark Side of the Moon the crowd was totally primed and roaring. Shine on you crazy diamond was received with absolute adulation and then once the band finished playing the Dark Side of the moon . they disappeared ...........only to make you feel cheated ... Then they reappeared to play the all time classics - Brick in the wall, Vera , Another Brick in the wall leaving the audience comfortably numbed...
By the time he got to the Dark Side of the Moon the crowd was totally primed and roaring. Shine on you crazy diamond was received with absolute adulation and then once the band finished playing the Dark Side of the moon . they disappeared ...........only to make you feel cheated ... Then they reappeared to play the all time classics - Brick in the wall, Vera , Another Brick in the wall leaving the audience comfortably numbed...
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The unexpected vacation draws to a close.
Hardly expected that I wouldn't be hacking into GCC despite sitting in the city of sweat (Madras) but then it turned out into an unexpected vacation . Here on a private visit for some functions in the family it turned out to be a lot of work in terms of running around , meeting relatives getting some decent photographs, visiting a village our so called ancestral village of Vengalathur . It was certainly a hectic trip. Today looks much better as I have to pay my yearly visit to Landmark and hopefully obtain a few books. Ah Monday Morning approaches and with it a flight at 5:30 in the morning back to what is home these days. Long week lined up but then ......
Monday, February 05, 2007
theppamcloseup
The actual theppam close up . This was shot from nearly 50 meters away with a whole bunch of folks standing between me and the theppam. Its the closest shot I could get to the theppam.
The theppams or the floats of Madras
Across the pale parabola of joy
The weekend has been spent in the city of sweat (Madras) and in the middle of all the rituals and festivities I found the time to go and see the Theppam (Float) festival on Saturday in Mylapore (Madras) .
This was organized for the first time in nearly 2 or 3 decades because of the simple reason that there was never enough water in the Mylapore tank for such events. Some stunning photos were as usual the order of the day - Links will be available tomorrow as I upload some of the pics - The advantage of carrying the D50 is that the policemen on duty here mistook me for a Press Photographer and allowed me full access. Some of the panoramic photos make for very nice viewing.
Other than today I need to get back to hacking GCC and finishing a patch that is long long and long overdue ! Its just not working and proves how much of a pain backporting patches can be .
The weekend has been spent in the city of sweat (Madras) and in the middle of all the rituals and festivities I found the time to go and see the Theppam (Float) festival on Saturday in Mylapore (Madras) .
This was organized for the first time in nearly 2 or 3 decades because of the simple reason that there was never enough water in the Mylapore tank for such events. Some stunning photos were as usual the order of the day - Links will be available tomorrow as I upload some of the pics - The advantage of carrying the D50 is that the policemen on duty here mistook me for a Press Photographer and allowed me full access. Some of the panoramic photos make for very nice viewing.
Other than today I need to get back to hacking GCC and finishing a patch that is long long and long overdue ! Its just not working and proves how much of a pain backporting patches can be .
Friday, February 02, 2007
Elections our experiment with Democracy !
Across the pale parabola of joy
Indeed our experiment with democracy leads to very interesting sights. This morning I was running to catch a train that would hopefully get me to Bombay in time when I ran into a huge traffic jam which enabled me to move nearly 400m in 45 min. Finally getting irritated I got out of the rick to walk the remaining 4 km. to the station lugging a suitcase and the customary uniform of the laptop, the nikon D50 and a smaller bag !
The reason for this was the result of the civic poll that was getting announced this morning near the Pune Municipal corporation . Our leaders were so busy getting elected that they forgot the very purpose for which they were getting elected - serve the people. They served the people well by indulging in squallid vote-grubbing exercises, providing free crap to people and forgetting to remember the fact that folks needed to travel. There was an ambulance stuck behind my rick and there was *nothing* that could be done to free it. There were half a dozen traffic cops who incidentally should get rid of their uniforms and go drown in the Mutha or the Mula which ever is dirtier (Mutha and Mula are the 2 rivers in the city of Pune which I inhabit) . The cops did nothing to free the roads of marauding crowds who had parked bikes and two wheelers on all the footpaths enabling the zillions of onlookers to spill on to the streets causing utter chaos, irritation and a n utter waste of time.
Its a miracle that the public didn't beat them up today. I was ready to jump into the melee if and when it started. What a waste of time , fuel and energy and irritation . Have a couple of interesting pictures which I'll put up once I have my set up going.
Indeed our experiment with democracy leads to very interesting sights. This morning I was running to catch a train that would hopefully get me to Bombay in time when I ran into a huge traffic jam which enabled me to move nearly 400m in 45 min. Finally getting irritated I got out of the rick to walk the remaining 4 km. to the station lugging a suitcase and the customary uniform of the laptop, the nikon D50 and a smaller bag !
The reason for this was the result of the civic poll that was getting announced this morning near the Pune Municipal corporation . Our leaders were so busy getting elected that they forgot the very purpose for which they were getting elected - serve the people. They served the people well by indulging in squallid vote-grubbing exercises, providing free crap to people and forgetting to remember the fact that folks needed to travel. There was an ambulance stuck behind my rick and there was *nothing* that could be done to free it. There were half a dozen traffic cops who incidentally should get rid of their uniforms and go drown in the Mutha or the Mula which ever is dirtier (Mutha and Mula are the 2 rivers in the city of Pune which I inhabit) . The cops did nothing to free the roads of marauding crowds who had parked bikes and two wheelers on all the footpaths enabling the zillions of onlookers to spill on to the streets causing utter chaos, irritation and a n utter waste of time.
Its a miracle that the public didn't beat them up today. I was ready to jump into the melee if and when it started. What a waste of time , fuel and energy and irritation . Have a couple of interesting pictures which I'll put up once I have my set up going.
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