Travelogue: Bangalore, Kodai

For the last few months I was getting stuck in lots of work and all I needed was a short break. And my wish was granted.

I was assigned to attend a training on Microsoft SoftGrid at MTC Bangalore in first week of July. As luck may have it, Bahadur Gabra and Richa planned to come to Bangalore at the same time. Now, my friends Kunal and Manjari who always pounce upon this kind of opportunity, came up with a quick plan for a trip to Kodaikanal... and man what a plan it was.

Gabra, Richa and I reached Bangalore airport on Friday night. I was the first one to reach so I went to Manjari's guest house. Within one hour, Gabra and Richa also reached and we were all set to leave for Kodaikanal by 4 am in the morning.

We hired a Qualis and flagged off for our destination. Four hours later, half of us were half aslepp ;). Around 08:00 am in the morning, we had a pit stop at a ethnic Tamil midway and had a good share of Idli and Sambar. Next 6-7 hours were again part of a beautiful drive on the road to Kodai. And the last leg of the drive was an awesome uphill climb on a "In the cloud" green road.


We reached Kodai, found our Hotel and checked in. And we moved on for a trip to Kodai Lake. first we planned to have a boat ride but then changed our mind. We circled around the lake on foot, then had a horse ride and finally hired bicycles for a few rounds around the lake. Kunal and Richa took a tandem cycle which was kind of funny.

And by the time we finished cycling, it was almost dark. Time for some fuel for our body and we headed for some dinner. Again some south indian food. Anyways, I survived that dinner and we went for some more shopping. After the tiring day, I had a good night of sleep.

The sun rose again next day morning and we set out to visit some toursit spots there in Kodai. After finishing these stereotypical tourist chores, we headed back to Bangalore. Reached 03:00 am in the night and guess what? I had to go for a training next day morning at 09:00 am.. I somehow managed.

You know the best part... The best part of the travel was the drive in the hills while going from Kodai to Bangalore. It offers beautiful vistas and on some occasion you go through the clouds, which is an awesome experience in itself..

So next time you are headed southwards, do pay a visit to Kodai.. it is a heaven of an experience

Travelogue: Mumbai

So, this was supposed to be my first ever official trip. And I was the chosen one along with my colleague Saurabh Diwan who was sent to attend Microsoft Techmela from HCL Comnet. Right from my day one at HCL, I have been the face of technical community at HCL. So rightfully, I was commissioned to attend this great congregation of tech gurus and tech displays.

So I reached there one day before. HCL has booked a hotel for me in Santa Cruz which was very close to the airport. However the conference venue was Hotel Renaissance in Powai.

Day One, Yours truly managed to wake up on time and reach the venue. It was a picturesque hotel with a backdrop of Powai Lake. I, being shutter friendly and having recently bought my digicam, clicked a lot. The first day started with a Keynote, followed by technology specific tracks. I won't get into those details as they may bore you to Shut Down.

Time to head home and wander in the lively city of Mumbai. This was the first time I was in Mumbai so I haven't seen much of it. Tripat and Nidhi Jalan arranged to meet me at Bandra. After losing my way twice I managed to reach there. Also went to Bandra beach. And then a trip to roadside flee market, some nice spicy chaats and time to hit the hay.

Day Two: I was delivered to the venue on time by the auto. Able to finish the day being still alive with sore thumbs and fingers while playing Forza on kiosk Xbox.

After the day was over, the real challenge was to get to some tourist like place and see something. Saurabh came to rescue and suggested about Juhu Chaupati. Hired an auto and reached there just in time that it started raining heavily. Eight O' Clock in the evening, drizzling sky and a perfect ambiance for a nice walk at the beach.

Day Three: Time to bunk the second half of the sessions. ;) Rush to Church Gate, also invite some childhood buddies and walk down Nariman Point. What a perfect setting. Then go to Gateway of India, take some photos of Hotel Taj and have a walk at Colaba flee market. Another enjoyable day


Day Four and luckily a Sunday: reached Santa Cruz station, made way to Andheri. and finally to a multiplex to watch Jhoom Barabar Jhoom! yups, such a tragic end to such a beautiful story. The story of guy who went to Mumbai first time and enjoyed first three days and ended the journey by watching such a pathetic movie!!!

Hey, as Shahrukh Khan says in Om Shanti Om - "Picture Abhi Baaki Hai Mere Dost" . So that was not the ending. Had lunch at a food court. And then, time to meet Suhas at Joggers Park. I confess, I haven't seen the movie so I wasn't expecting much. But then, it started raining and our plans to have a jog at the park were short lived. However, we had a nice tea at Irani Restaurant near Mehboob Studio. Also did some impulse shopping at Fascination (The place to buy cheap smuggled stuff. Rating: 4/5.. I got compliments from everyone in the office)

Evening time and time to get back to Delhi. A one hour date with Tripat at Balaji Cafe at the airport. and I bid adieu to Mumbai.

Bloglink: Wanderlust Gaurav Sharma

It is a bird? No... It is a plane? No... .It is Superman? No... It is Gaurav Sharma..

He is new to blogger, just started blogging... he thinks it is a fad and it looks cool,/geek/ nerdy to have a blog of yourself...he even believes it can get you laid...
Just do some ego massage for him by visiting:

http://wanderlust-gaurav.blogspot.com/

Enjoi.. if you can.

The week went by

The week, which is going on, is getting quite hectic for me.... So much to do, so less time.
Anyways, i sneaked some time from my schedule and I thought I should write something.

First, First Major phase of my System Centre Lifecyle Project is over now. We move to the Second Major Phase which is doubly complex and we are not very sure whether we will be able to deliver or not.

Second, I was preparing for my Windows Vista webinar. This is my first one, so I don't want to screw it up.

Not much to write about on the personal side..

And I am eagerly awaiting Monaco GP. I hope Kimi Raikkonen wins this time.

Books I am reading

In the past few months I read

• Paulo Coelho - Eleven Minutes
• John Grisham - The Client
• Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram
• Thomas L. Friedman - The World is Flat

I am currently reading The Google Story by David A. Vise.
The next book on my shelf is The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen.

P.S. I don't think of myself competent enough to write book reviews :)

Vista Zero Touch Webinar

Yours truly had worked on a project in partnership with Microsoft. It was a solution innovation project where our team developed a unique solution around enterprise wide Windows Vista deployment. The solution was also judged as the best solution by Microsoft. I have already given the solution presentation to 6 customers and hope to see good increase in top line.

Now, under the Microsoft Technology Community Program (TCP) , I am doing a webinar on the technology side. This will be my first webinar so will be for TCP. The webinar will be broadcasted on May 25, 2007 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM IST. I am all prepared and I hope it goes well. I will publish the webinar invitation mailer once I receive the final version.


Update: Here is the mailer

_________________________________________________________

Live Meeting Details

Click Here to Join Live Meeting


Subject: Vista Zero Touch Deployment webinar
Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join
Meeting ID: GS7SM7
Meeting Key: zerotouch
Role: Attendee

This meeting will broadcast internet audio directly to your computer.

Please ensure that you have Windows Media Player 9 or higher installed.

Conference Call Details:

US Access: 001 203 480 8000

Pass code 6339416

India Access

New Delhi Access: (011) 4422-3031 / 2654-0731

Hyderabad Access: (040) 4422-3033 / 2348-8233

Chennai Access: (044) 2831-0734 / 4422-3034

Meeting ID: 4258 2790#

PIN Code: 1878892#

Online Features:

*0 - Operator Assistance

*6 - Self Mute / Unmute

Shooting @ 10x

I have just bought a cool Nikon Coolpix S10 digicam.

And the two best things about the camera are a whopping 10x Optical zoom and a swivel lens. Alongwith it I am using a SanDisk 2GB SD card which can take 680+ shots at full resolution and minimum compression...
You can read the review of the camera at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082411nikons10.asp

Some observations till now:

• The Optical zoom is awesome and works like a breeze
• The swivel lens allows to take snaps from creative angles without you needing to bend
• It has an exhaustive list of scene modes
• You can't use optical zoom while capturing a video
• It has a Time lapse mode for movie which allows you to shot movie snippets at regular interval which can be used for making a Time Lapse Movie
• It has a sports composite mode which take 16 composite shots of a sport scene and make a 4x4 collage of that.
• The UI and controllers take some time to get used to
• There is some noise in night landscape images.
• While shooting at 10x, the hands should be extremely steady. Tripod recommended.

Burn Baby Burn

I have moved my blog's default feed to FeedBurner. It will help me in analyzing blog visits and subscription data. The new blog feed URI is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Nerd-beta

The old feed URI is no longer available.

The one thing I like about feedburner is that it also integrates my del.icio.us bookmarks in my feeds. Which means, know you can also check which sites I am visiting and bookmarking.

In future, I will also integrate my flickr account so that the feed becomes a one-stop-shop for all the updates from me.

Continuous Improvement

I mentioned in an earlier post that I will be freezing the design for the moment. But knowing myself, I knew that I won't stick to this and will surely come up with something new for the blog.

This time, I have implemented a tag cloud. The source is phydeaux3 .
The design is still in alpha phase. ;)

Man+Machine : Madness

Formula1 season opener Bahrain GP is only a week away.
So from now, i will continue my last year blogging about it and providing various useful article extracts with links to full articles. keep checking if you heart runs petrol, your body is made of carbon fibre and your physique is aerodynamically optimal. ;)

C Program to Propose a girl

Found this somewhere on the net

/*C Program to Propose a girl*/
#include
#include
#define Cute beautiful_lady
main()
{
goto college;
scanf("100%",&ladies);
if(lady ==Cute )
line++;
while( !reply ){
printf("I Love U");
scanf("100%",&reply);
}
if(reply == "GAALI")
main(); /* go back and repeat the process */
else if(reply == "SANDAL ")
exit(1);
else if(reply == "I Love U"){
lover =Cute ;
love = (heart*)malloc(sizeof(lover));
}
goto restaurant;
restaurant:{
food++;
smile++;
pay->money = lover->money;
return(college);
}
if(time==2.30)
goto cinema;
cinema:
{
watch++;
if(intermission){
coke++;
Popecorn++;}
}
if(time ==6.00)
goto park;
park:
{
for(time=6.30;time<= 8.30;time+=0.001)
kiss = kiss+1;
}
free(lover);
return(home);
if(time ==9.30)
goto pub;
pub:{
friends++;
party++;
booze++;
smoke++;
if(pub.close()){ pay->bill;
come->out;}
}
if (highly->intoxicated)
goto friendsroom;
else{
sweetpan++;
polo++;
}
friendsroom: { goto sleep; }
sleep: { *(dream)=love; }

Web 2.0

Reading a lot of Web 2.0 these days.

The concept is simple.. people create their own content, define it using tags and other methods and put in public domain for others to see. The idea is to create a participative platform for social networking and content sharing. The technical backbone is XML and with the increasing use of AJAX, which is enabling people to come up with so many creative ideas for participative semantic web.

So here is my list of Web 2.0:

http://www.netvibes.com
http://del.icio.us
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.30boxes.com
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.youtube.com

More to follow

My hobby.. Windows Customization

Desktop
Originally uploaded by hjain007.

Okie.. here is one.. my entry for Lifehacer Desktop show and tell competition..
The screenshot is quite old but still very good..
check it out

Ramp creates power as cars pass

"A road ramp that uses passing cars to generate power has been developed.

Dorset inventor Peter Hughes' Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp creates around 10kW of power each time a car drives over its metal plates.

More than 200 local authorities had expressed an interest in ordering the £25,000 ramps to power their traffic lights and road signs, Mr Hughes said.

Around 300 jobs are due to be created in Somerset for a production run of 2,000 ramps next year.

Plates in the ramp move up and down as vehicles pass over them, driving a generator.

'The ramp is silent, comfortable and safe for vehicles,' Mr Hughes said.

Underneath the Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp
Inventor Peter Hughes spent £1m developing the ramps

Depending on the weight of the vehicle passing overhead, between five and 50kW can be generated."

[Read it somewhere on the BBC website, forgot to copy the link]

Xbox 360 LIVE… Privacy? What privacy?

We know what are you doing with your Xbox..
Microsoft is following the path of Google (trying to collect data on everything what a user does)

http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4040&page=1

A clear case of manipulation of TOS..

Intel to launch sub-$220 PC with wireless Internet in rural India

Intel announced their intention today to drop a low-cost PC for rural India this December (sound familiar?)—huge market potential considering only nine of every 1,000 Indians own a computer. They aren’t the first, but Intel’s flava offers some type of rural “wireless Internet” solution (for free?), an insect and dust-proof frame, and a much needed ability to run off standard 240 volt AC or even a car battery due to erratic power issues. We assume it also has an integrated monitor, possibly used, all for less than $220US (about 10,000 Rupees)—still a significant chunk of change for the third world citizen."

Fingerprint-Lock Failure in a Prison

Fingerprint-Lock Failure in a Prison

So much for high-tech security:

Prison officers have been forced to abandon a new security system and return to the use of keys after the cutting-edge technology repeatedly failed.

The system, which is thought to have cost over £3 million, used fingerprint recognition to activate the locking system at the high-security Glenochil Prison near Tullibody, Clackmannanshire.

After typing in a PIN code, prison officers had to place their finger on a piece of glass. Once the print was recognised, they could then lock and unlock prison doors.

However, problems arose after a prisoner demonstrated to wardens that he could get through the system at will. Other prisoners had been doing the same for some time.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't say how the prisoners hacked the system. Perhaps they lifed fingerprints off readers with transparent tape. Or perhaps the valid latent fingerprints left on the readers by wardens could be activated somehow."

Forbes.com Best of the Web

Forbes.com Best of the Web

Can Google Stay Google?

Can Google Stay Google?

BBC NEWS | Technology | One blog created 'every second'

BBC NEWS | Technology | One blog created 'every second'