ferris wheel || Canon400D/EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 | 0.3Sec | f3.5 | ISO100 | 09Jun'07 20:05 | Handheld

Mahim Fair/Mahim Causeway

From today I will try and publish at least one post a day. If I don't have anything to write, then 'Daily pix' will be used as fillers. It will be a record of my visual experience (photoblog). Most of these pictures are shot on specific occasions, either during a trek or some visit. But, hopefully, I will have enthu to do photo walks specifically for this.

equipment list
.. Canon digital Rebel XTi (400D) body
.. Canon EF 18-55 f3.5-5.6
.. Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 DG MACRO
.. Vivitar VPT-1200 Tripod
.. Canon Powershot A400

software
. Gimp 2.6.1
. Canon DPP 2.2
. Irfan View
. Qtpfsgui 1.9.0
. FDRTools 2.2beta3

Brief technical details of the picture will be above each photo.

1. Dirty Politics

Modi announces Rs 1 cr for slain cops' kin

Martyr's father snubs Kerala chief minister

'Politics of martyrdom'

2. Bumbling Politicians

"bade shahron mein aise ek adh hadse hote rahte hain. Woh 5,000 logon ko marne aye the lekin humne kitna kum nuksan hone diya" - Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil

“Before I could reach there, the terrorists who had attacked one of the hospitals, the Cama Hospital, had left and those who attacked the railway station had also left.” - Home Minister Shivraj Patil (more gaffes)

"If it had not been (Major) Sandeep's house, not even a dog would have glanced that way." - Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan

3. Mumbai Cops

Hats off to the brave cops who braved the terrorists. But the potbellied, lathi wielding and 303 carrying force needs a serious makeover...

4. Dumb advertisers

I don't know what to say of this advert... "During these challenging times in Mumbai we are with you. To register your claim if any please call our 24x7 toll free number 18002098888. Be safe. Team ICICI L"... and I am not even registered with them!

Another political one upmanship...

5. Rumour Mongers

Rumour-mongers keep Mumbai on the edge

6.Sensational Media

Nov-28 2008:1.36 PM: Fresh terror attack outside Mumbai. Firing outside RBI headquarters - CNN-IBN

They say that everyone in US remembers what (s)he was doing on Sept 11, 2001. I guess, every one in Mumbai will remember the same on Nov 26, 2008. And now that the 3 day ordeal is over, I am sure every one here has a story to tell. I have mine and it will take some years for me to forget what happened on Wednesday, November the 26th.

So here are how the events unfolded for me...

9:20 PM: After a thoroughly frustrating day (in more ways than one), I decided to head South of Mumbai on my Thunderbird, to sit by the sea side and think over the events of the day. One the way, I stopped near Mahim Station and gave a call to my friend Saroj who stays on Marine drive thinking that we can catch up on things and share frustrations. Within a few seconds plans to catch a movie at Sterling cinema at 10.45 PM were made.

9:45 PM: Reached Chowpati. Stopped near Wilson College and called Saroj to check his co-ordinates. Then headed towards Air India building to meet up with him.

9:50 PM: Reached Air India building. Waited for a couple of minutes for Saroj to join. We then headed towards his house. For a change he decided to drive my motorcycle and ended up driving it on the wrong side of the road.


View Larger Map

10:02 PM: Saroj's roommate was returning from his dinner at Bademiya, a popular joint behind the Taj Mahal hotel and happened to be one of the first to hear about the shooting at Leopold Cafe. He SMS'd Saroj to stay put as there were 'some gang wars going on in Colaba'. We decide to call and check with the Cinema house. I fired up Safari on my iPhone searched for the cinema and directly dialed the number. The call was immediately picked up and the person on the other side confirmed that the movie will start at 10:30 and tickets were available. We decided to take our chance and head towards Sterling cinema near CST/VT.

10:12 PM: Almost reached Sterling cinema and saw crowds running in all directions randomly. Saroj said that we better get out of that place. He knew the geography of South Mumbai much better than I and we headed back towards his house. He pointed to a shorter route out avoiding Metro cinema and we take that.

10:30 PM: Reached his place. Parked the bike and decided to head to Marine Plaza hotel to sip some coffee. By the time we reached the entrance, rumors had already spread across Mumbai about the incident. But, nobody seemed to know what exactly was happening. We enter the coffee shop and sit next to the window to get a view of the Marine drive.

10:41 PM: 2 blasts go off in quick succession in Oberoi. The place we were sitting shook. We decide to stay put till things calm down.

12:40 Midnight: We reach Saroj's place. By this time, the hyperactive people in the complex had created enough ruckus about an unidentified motorcycle (my bike) parked in the premises. Deflated both the tires and were planning to call the cops and report about the bike. We calm them down and I decide to stay at Saroj's place for the night.

Well, that's my story.

Of all the things I can remember. two things stood out...
- the Security guard (a Bihari) and the Darbaan(a Punjabi) of Marine Plaza stoically stood outside the hotel assuring every guest that they were safe inside and that they will ensure that no one suspicious will enter the hotel.
- the residents, long time residents of Mumbai, were the ones who feared their lives and did all things possible to damage that of some one else

This one is a share from my RSS reading list...

Heard about Joe a few days back. I am that kind of guy who usually forgets names. But this guys name stuck in my mind because he was making $250K a year! And he is a PLUMBER!!

The Analysts at CNN were already blowing this guys name up much before McCain (almost surely) made it a Dictionary term by mentioning it 21 times! I think this was more than the number of times he mentioned Senator Obama (For the record, he mentioned Obama 41 times)!!!

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Check out the number of Ads that show up when you search Google for this guy. He is already selling Tax calculators, T-Shirts and hair treatments.

And just for the heck of it, I created this word cloud of the top 50 words mentioned by McCain during the 3rd presidential debate from the transcript using Wordle.

And almost immediately after I finished it, looks like some one did the cloud for Obama's transcript :).

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Nice comment on the state of India... Not sure if this can be attributed to APJ Abdul Kalam...
------------

I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in a developed India. For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.

Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.

Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.

• YOU say that our government is inefficient.
• YOU say that our laws are too old.
• YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
• YOU say that the phones don't work; the railways are a joke, The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.
• YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say. What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a name...YOURS. Give him a face...YOURS.

• YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. - In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores.
• YOU are as proud of their Underground Links as they are.
• You pay $5(approx. Rs.250) to drive through Orchard Road(equivalent of Mahi Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM.
• YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over-stayed, identity. In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU?

• YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan,in Dubai.
• YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah.
• YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds(approx. Rs.800) a month to, "see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else."
• YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son.
• YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand. Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston????? We are still talking of the same YOU.
• YOU can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch the Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India?

Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal Commissioner of Bombay, Mr.Tinaikar, had a point to make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place," he said. "And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?

In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?" He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pickup a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.

We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff that is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry,girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forgo my son's rights to a dowry.

" So who's going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and The government. But definitely not me and YOU.When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.

Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. - When New York becomes insecure we run to England.
When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. - When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, the article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too?

I am echoing J.F. Kennedy's words to his fellow American to relate to Indians?. "ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY" Let's do what India needs from us.

Found an interesting article shared by a friend.
I thought that Orkut was more popular - appears facebook is? A little dig into Google Insights for search (trends.google) gave the results better for India. India seems to be showing every where inthese heat maps with just 5% penetration of internet! And someone seems to be stealing my BP :(

The first(Mantra to Remove Karma) of the 12 video featured on the YouTube blog is no longer available! Wonder who or why it was removed so fast from the site?

Interesting! Found a result of a page indexed in the last 15 minutes
on google main page searching for a new bowler.

Code swarm has some great visualizations on Open Source contributions.

Below is the Code_Swarm of Apache webserver.

code_swarm - Apache from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

Since the iPhone entered my life, I found great use of it in the small intervals of time - macro breaks. Earlier during activities like traveling (bus, train,taxi) and waiting (for appointments, meetings, queues), I used to just sit and observe around. Occassionally, with the iPod phones in my ears listening to music. Now, I have the option to read books, browse websites, watch videos (Youtube or otherwise), play games and the like...

Here is a link on a study done to understand mobile TV consumption and its implications. Interesting observations...

One fine day, I flicked the switch of my iPhone Wi-Fi Network on and stumbled upon free bandwidth - not one, but two hot spots in my appartment complex to pick and choose!

Couldn't agree more on this 'confessions of a Wi-Fi thief'.

Google announced today that it has improved its flash indexing algorithm with Adobe providing Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo!

The exit of Bill Gates...

• Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool
• Go Home, Bill: It's time for a new era at Microsoft -- if only the company were ready
• The secret of Bill Gates' success

The other day, I was desperately seeking information on the schedule and availability of tickets for a movie. I thought, checking the schedules on my iPhone would be better than calling the theater number (and then waiting in a long queue for someone to even pick up the phone). After all, iPhone features a full fledged web-browser!

Searched on Google for the web address of the theaters and as usual, the results page loaded extremely fast, about 0.16 second for the query and about 7-10 secs for the full page to load (incidentally the mobile version of Google home page takes much longer to load).

Then went on to individual Websites...

Adlabs Cinemas (Rating - 1/2 star): Even the low bandwidth version takes extremely long to load. The drop down selection doesn't work. Very mobile unfriendly with heavy use of images. The only saving grace, I got the phone numbers of the theater call center!

Inox Movies (Rating - 1/2star): Again very mobile unfriendly. Heavy use of Flash (with no back up images) which doesn't load on the phone and also heavy use of images. Adlabs, at least had a phone number on the first page, on this site, you have to guess that 'insta tickets' means/will have more details of Phone numbers! Anyways, found the movie, selected it and 3 page loads later its a dead end - application error! Complete waste of time.

PVR Cinemas (Rating 0 Star): First load - Server error! Second load, the initial screen for selecting cities - What's with those huge square boxes before the city name? Select city, next page load, server error! I am not going to try anything more on this site.

Cinemax (Rating 1/2 Star): The page takes ages to load! Layout is extremely bad. Luckily, I spot the registration link, refrain myself from even searching as I guess that even listing movies will require me to login (which is true!). Saving grace - phone numbers on top.

Fame (Rating 1/2 Star): Graphics heavy. A flash image has the phone numbers, which cannot be seen on the iPhone. Could find the movie timings at the least.

Overall, futile 15 mins spent. I had a phone, so probably should have called them and wasted 15 mins instead to get info as per my requirement.

I am pretty sure its the same on any (smart)phone with any type of browser. Infact, I don't think they should be rated at all. The fact that I could atleast get the theater phone numbers was the saving grace which I could have got from the Google search results page itself with a proper search query!

A couple of years back, I remember sitting in the Google Mumbai office and talking to the head of Marketing of Google India on what TG they should target for faster adoption of its GMail offering. Then, without batting an eyelid, I said 'Youth'. If the same question were asked to me now, the answer would be the same but with a few more caveats and sentences thrown in.

A few months after that discussion (or probably a year), AOL India launched its own mail platform, and looking at the TVC's it was pretty obvious they were targeting the same set we had talked about.

Orkut I thought, went a step ahead and changed when it changed its logo when it was given an Youth icon award by MTV. Now, they have added an app called Sony Ericsson MTV Roadies Battleground. I am not averse to having 3rd party apps on Orkut, some of them I think are exceptional. What turns me off in the above app is the blatant branding (where are adversitement/sponsored link text next to this banner??) and use of words 'powered by orkut'. Did I say that the logo looks like it is a new product from Mozilla.

What I foresee happening is that the Google India team in its quest of getting higher user and activity numbers is targeting the Youth with extremely shoddy short term marketing partnerships and strategies.

These youth might not be what the marketers advertising on Orkut are targeting in the first place. And then, the bigger issue which will happen according to me is the mass migration of Orkut users to other niche social networks depending on their needs.

I use the Google Reader to manage and read my RSS feeds. Its adaptation for the mobile is really neatly done.

A few days back they have launched a new iPhone vetsion of the Reader (www.google.com/mobile/i). Reading feeds on the phone has never been better. However, I miss
the earlier functionality of launching links in a new page using GWT to strip the page of heavy graphics and formating to load quickly on mobile.

I was in Delhi recently on a visit to one of the offices of the world's leading retailer's setup in India. And right next to the parking lot in-front of this office, a competitor has set up this...


Either this competitor has a great sense of humor or is trying to rub somethings in. Can't be a coincidence.

After my previous phone - an e2800+, one of the first Linux smart
phones to hit the market - got destroyed in an in-office cricket
accident, I got an iPhone as a gift...

Its a great phone and with looks that kill. Why did some of the existing
phone manufacturers not think about such a design is beyond me. And
with an SDK that people can use to create their own apps it is bound
to get a huge developer base quickly. I have no doubt that Apple
will become a major player in the mobile space in no time!

As I got it as an unexpected gift, I didn't do my background work.
Though it was bought this year, the seller in the process of unlocking
it, downgraded the software to 1.1.2. Didn't realize it immediately
then, but over the next couple of months my frustrations grew with the
phone because of this...
- It didn't have bulk SMS or SMS forward facilities
- The caller id was not recognized or the SMSers number wasn't
recognized depending on the way you stored a number
- You Tube wasn't working
- Bluetooth wasn't working
- I couldn't rearrange icons
- I had to have only a couple of more apps installed as it didn't
allow multiple screens
- Worst of all, the only computer which I had access to, my office
laptop, had Windows 2000 running on it. So no sync of contacts, songs
etc., etc., (for a brief time I was thinking of hacking it to book
Windows XP if an USB harddisk drive just to use iTunes and sync stuff!)

Its a great phone (with as much power as by first computer) but I
wasn't utiliIng it to the full extent or making its more friendly to
use.

So finally managed to cracked it on a fateful Saturday (use ibrickr or
betterstill ziPhone to unlock it). Installed a few apps and its a much
better phone now!

I suggest the following must have apps on iPhone...
-BSD subsystem
-Open SSH
-AppSupport patch
-iSms
-Installer
-VoiceNotes
-ShowTime
-Squid
-Term VT100
-Sysinfo
-Books
-SafariPatch

The playing with it still continues though and today I decided to blog
after a long time using it.

~Blogging using my iPhone.

NYT has an interesting and neatly done representation of how movies have fared at the box office.

A quick follow up on my previous post on Online Job hunt... Alootechie reports -"40 per cent of those surveyed in India found their most recent job online". Interesting!! More on this will follow...

Browsing through the Advertisers section on Facebook, I found the section on choosing the right audience really interesting. Its a little random though giving slightly different statistics each time I run it (table below is the numbers it gives - age group of 13-40).

It gives you some good insights on people from India (hopefully) on Facebook. (though not everyone updates everyting). Here are a few statistics I gathered at around 8:00 PM IST on 25th Jan 08 .

Age group - 13-40:

• Who's on Facebook? : US with 22 million, UK with 7.6 million and Canada with 7.3 million rule! Turkey which is 4th has 65% lower number of people on Facebook than Canada which is at 3rd.
  
• Numbers from India? : Around 473,000 people were registered from India. This makes it 13th in terms of number of people on Facebook in the 13-40 age group.
  
• Demographics-Ratios? : As expected, higher number of Men than Women from India were on this network.
• Demographics-Age? : While you expect young audience to go online, almost 90% of the users in this group are less than 30 year old.
• Wonder what they are doing on Facebook? : Close to 70% of the people are 'Single' :).
  
• Taken quickly?: Higher proportion of Women on Facebook were either 'in a relationship', 'engaged' or 'married'. Ironically, a slightly higher proportion of Men in the age group of 21-30 were 'in a relationship'
  
• Child marriages :p :Around 2.5% of the people are married before the age of 20. Its 3.8% in the case of Women.

I can go on, but its really interesting that Facebook reveals so much to its advertisers openly!

My experience with Job hunting thru online Job portals has been disastrous. In my case, its always been a placement consultant who has contacted me after going thru my profile on these sites and never a Company directly. Aren't the Job Portals supposed to directly connect the seeker with the company recruiter?

This brings me to the other method of reaching the company directly online. The career's section of Company Websites. My own company has the worst careers section I have ever seen. I don't think it has been updates ever since I joined the company (which has been long). Leave alone a slow technology adopting companies like mine, some of the best online companies out there suck as far as their careers section go!

Check this section on Yahoo! India, which shows how proactive they are in looking at online applications.

Some time back I blogged about Google Transliteration tool. While I was doing my morning mail and search ritual, I found the Rediff language search page. Good integration of Quillpad I should say.