Tech_stuff

Misplaced Significance

2010-02-26T23:49:00.000+05:30

Oh! The Places You’ll Go! - Dr. Seuss

2008-10-09T21:08:00.001+05:30

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

RISK

2008-09-01T22:34:00.000+05:30

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to others is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken,
because the greatest hazard in life is to do nothing.

The person who risks nothing,
does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.

They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.

Chained by their attitudes, they are a slave,
they forfeited their freedom.

Only the person who risks can be free

The Drunken Spartan (Sailor?)

2008-04-26T09:19:00.002+05:30

What do you get when create a parody mish-mashing a Victorean era sea ditty and Gerard Butler from 300, you get AWESOME ...

This song is great and the animations are spot on in this one.

Harnessing Wind power for Micro-level Power Generation

2008-04-25T23:09:00.004+05:30

As they say great ideas are generally pretty simple resulting from the need to create something simple from a complex problem; leading to a great Eureka moment.

I think invention definitely has the power to change the way in which wind based power generation schemes are viewed. For the first time there is an effective alternative to large and unwieldy turbine based system to generate power at a micro level.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1214137061/bctid1233395616

What bugs me is the simplicity of the invention ... How come I didn't think of that.

Simply Beautiful

2008-03-31T18:43:00.002+05:30

Words from one of my favorite songs.

This song just reflects the inner turmoil and angst that any young soul faces before it finds its place in this world, just makes me wish I never grew up in this 'logical' world

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Wont you please, please tell me what weve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

Now watch what you say or theyll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Wont you sign up your name, wed like to feel youre
Acceptable, respecable, presentable, a vegtable!

At night, when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man.
Wont you please, please tell me what weve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

The Decemberists : Finally something worth listening to

2008-03-28T22:17:00.003+05:30

One of the best Indie rock bands going around probably one the best of all time. One noticeable feature of their songs is the mellifluous sound and one of the best lyrics of any band.

Engine Driver : Picaresque

Summersong : The Crane wife

and a personal favorite

O'Valencia : Picaresque

Just listen to them and keep rocking

Undersea cable cut

2008-02-17T01:42:00.001+05:30

As all the IT people in Bangalore would probably be aware that an under-sea network cable to the US was cut on Wednesday, and as result the connecting network infrastructure was running painfully slowly since Wednesday

Here is some more info about this so called Alexandria 'incident' when a ship's anchor cut through two cables - SeaMeWe4 and FLAG Asia-Europe

makes for pretty interesting reading.

Looks like the Earth's under-sea areas are becoming like the back of my PC - a mass of twisted cables.

Process Control using a fly etching

2008-02-02T20:50:00.000+05:30

A self explanatory image if ever there was one

Using etchings of flies on urinals for 'process control' I was left speechless when I first saw this pic. The first question that comes up in my mind is WHO THINKS UP THIS SHIT?

Can anyone who has visited Schipol airport (male of-course Don't know if 'process control' is needed in female loos as well) confirm whether this is a real pic or not

Rogue Traders or Rogue Business Models?

2008-01-26T12:20:00.000+05:30

Just how much money can an individual hope to loose at the stock markets? For the privileged few who have enough finances to dabble in securities and speculations the figure maybe a few thousand rupees or may even rise up to a few lakhs as witnessed in the crash of the BSE/NSE indices this week. But how about a single person loosing an amount to the tune of INR 2,85,00 crores ($7.14 Billion). Please take a deep breath and read the last line again that is correct the figure involved is – Rupees Two lakh Eighty Five thousand crores.

One of the biggest frauds in financial-services history was disclosed recently, apparently carried out by a single trader at Societe Generale SA’s (SG) Paris headquarters. The trader "had taken massive fraudulent directional positions"— bets on future movements of European stock indexes—without his supervisors' knowledge, the bank said. Because he had previously worked in the trading unit's back office, he had "in-depth knowledge of the control procedures" and evaded them by creating fictitious transactions to conceal his activity. Jerome Kerviel, 31, was the trader held responsible for the loss. To put the figure into perspective the figure lost is around 9% of India’s total GDP of about 32,00,00 crores.

This shocking revelation begs the question - How is this even possible? This is a ridiculously large amount for a single person to loose; are there no checks in place against such rogue traders and if so what are they. This is actually not an isolated incident and there are many examples if we look at the history of stock exchanges around the world. Nicholas Leeson is the most well known example of this breed - a former derivatives trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused a loss of $1.4 billion and the subsequent collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest bank. Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parikh are two names that come to mind when we look nearer home at the Indian Stock markets.

If we peer closer we can see that these rogue traders have certain common characteristics, firstly the losses are mainly due to trading in derivatives, exotic securities and futures speculations and secondly, almost all of them have moved up from the back office work at investment banks to the risky front office trading position. So using these common features as a base we can develop a working hypothesis and analyze the rise of these rogue traders and the causes of such spectacular losses.

Experts have always advised maintaining a strict separation between inherently risky trading activities and careful back-office controls as a key tenet of banking regulation. In derivatives trading, there's not as strong a separation between trading and back office as in other parts of the bank. Letting employees move from the back office to the trading floor is uncommon but generally not prohibited by banking regulations or banks' own rules according to investment banking experts. In light of such a scenario risk-management experts contend that such a scandal was inevitable, given the global boom in trading exotic securities as investment banks increasingly are moving away from traditional banking into riskier trading activities. Although Societe Generale is the global leader in equity derivatives, other banks are heavily involved in the business too, including the global No. 2 player BNP Paribas, German giant Deutsche Bank, and New York-based Goldman Sachs. So we could more of such spectacular losses in the future with the world markets at an unprecedented level of volatility and turmoil.

In the end I would say that SG's problem was – “A rogue business model and not a rogue trader” and could have been prevented by application of simple hard nosed conventional banking wisdom of applying regular checks on front office positions especially when dealing with such double edged swords such as derivatives and exotic securities and maintaining a clear demarcation between the front and back office operations of the bank.

- Arant Agrawal

The First Poem Written for Computers

2008-01-16T23:28:00.000+05:30

<>!*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED

For you somewhat cybernetically challenged, it goes something like this (using the proper cyber-names):

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH

Put a shark in your tank

2008-01-08T14:42:00.001+05:30

I am interested to share the below ……..a small story with you.

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the water close to Japan has not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring the fish. If the return trip took more time, the fish were not fresh.

To solve this problem, fish companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer.

However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen fish. And they did not like the taste of frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So, fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, they were tired, dull, and lost their fresh-fish taste. The fishing industry faced an impending crisis! But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan . How did they manage? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks but with a small shark. The fish are challenged and hence are constantly on the move. The challenge they face keeps them alive and fresh!

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired and dull? Basically in our lives, sharks are new challenges to keep us active. If you are steadily conquering challenges, you are happy.

"Your challenges keep you energized. Don't create success and revel in it in a state of inertia. You have the resources, skills and abilities to make a difference. Put a shark in your tank and see how far you can really go..! "

The prayer machine

2008-01-07T22:59:00.001+05:30

What life has become

2007-12-29T11:04:00.000+05:30

Does this represent what life has become in the the internet age

As Tyler said

" This is your life and its ending one minute at a time"

AI Fleet History

2007-12-28T17:25:00.000+05:30

Was going through the fleet details of AI and struck paydirt

All of AI's current fleet with aircraft subtypes detailed along with their registrations and links to the photographs for each

AI
http://www.planespotters.net/Airline/Air-India

IX
http://www.planespotters.net/Airline/Air-India-Express

IC
http://www.planespotters.net/Airline/Indian-Airlines

One interesting observation is why all IC aircraft are names as VT-E** any special significance of the E in the name

CD
http://www.planespotters.net/Airline/Alliance-Air

An interesting history of AI's aircraft fleet
http://www.airwhiners.net/whine_cheez/20040726.htm
The second link is great and gives a detailed history of the names and types of a/c types ever operated by AI. The history of the AI fleet is quite fascinating frankly
and is great to raed through Hope AI can reattain its position as a strong carrier in the asia pac region once again.

If I Had My Life to Live Over

2007-12-19T11:11:00.001+05:30

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.
I'd relax. I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.
I would take more trips.
I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd
have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly
and sanely hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I've had my moments and if I had it to do over
again, I'd have more of them. In fact,
I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments.

One after another, instead of living so many
years ahead of each day.

I've been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter next time.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.

By Nadine Stair (age 85)
from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul

AI special livery to spread AIDS awareness

2007-12-07T09:36:00.000+05:30

Great to see AI doing something good as part of their CSR initiatives. As part of the
celebrations for World AIDS Day they have come out with a special all red livery with the AIDS awareness ribbon on one side.

To be nitpicking, too much of red in my view as the undercarriage and the wings too have been painted red but the aircraft still looks pretty beautiful kinda like the all red Air Asia livery and definitely makes a statement.

The official for the pic at airliners.net is below

http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=1302009&WxsIERv=Nveohf%20N320-231&Wm=0&WdsYXMg=Nve%20Vaqvn&QtODMg=Zhzonv%20%28Obzonl%29%20-%20Puungencngv%20Fuvinwv%20Vagreangvbany%20%28Fnune%20%2F%20Fnagn%20Pehm%29%20%28OBZ%20%2F%20INOO%29&ERDLTkt=Vaqvn&ktODMp=Qrprzore%205%2C%202007&BP=1&WNEb25u=Cenwnl%20Cngry&xsIERvdWdsY=IG-RCX&MgTUQtODMgKE=Serfuyl%20Cnvagrq%21%20Va%20Fcrpvny%20Pbybhef%20gb%20fcernq%20Njnerarff%20bs%20UVI%20NVQF%20sbe%20Jbeyq%20NVQF%20QNL.%20NPG%2707%20vf%20gur%20zbirzrag%20gb%20fcernq%20njnerarff.%20Qbvat%20Syg%20VP179%20OBZ-VKR.%20Gunaxf%20gb%20Avgva%20Fneva%20sbe%20Rqvg&YXMgTUQtODMgKERD=11440&NEb25uZWxs=2007-12-05%2004%3A40%3A26&ODJ9dvCE=&O89Dcjdg=058&static=yes&width=1024&height=695&sok=JURER%20%20%28nveyvar%20%3D%20%27Nve%20Vaqvn%27%29%20%20BEQRE%20OL%20cubgb_vq%20QRFP&photo_nr=3&prev_id=1302224&next_id=1301947

The aircraft registration is VT-EPK and is a double bogied A320-231 aircraft belonging to the erstwhile Indian Airlines one of the oldest A320s in their fleet.
Great to see that the old bird has some life in it yet.

Keep flying old bird and congrats for the new coat of paint. Some more pics of this dashing aircraft can be found at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bowzer91/BOMApronSpotting

Moments

2007-10-29T17:39:00.000+05:30

You only get a few of moments that can change your life ... sometimes only one ... if you don't grab them then they are gone ... gone for ever and the only thing left behind are regrets and tears

AI's new Livery

2007-10-11T18:03:00.001+05:30

Salivate ...

A-319

A321

A-310

B-747-400

B777-200LR

AIX-B737NG

AI-777-300ER (just delivered today)

These are what dreams are made of huh ...

Random musings

2007-10-06T19:27:00.001+05:30

How much can you find out about your self if you never take a risk ... I don't want to die without any scars ... I fought the good fight and I tried

Master or Puppets ....

2007-09-30T12:45:00.000+05:30

End of passion play, crumbling away
Im your source of self-destruction
Veins that pump with fear, sucking darkest clear
Leading on your deaths construction

Taste me you will see
More is all you need
Youre dedicated to
How Im killing you

Come crawling faster
Obey your master
Your life burns faster

Obey your master
Master

Master of puppets Im pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you cant see a thing
Just call my name, `cause Ill hear you scream
Master
Master
Just call my name, `cause Ill hear you scream
Master
Master

Needlework the way, never you betray
Life of death becoming clearer
Pain monopoly, ritual misery
Chop your breakfast on a mirror

Master, master, wheres the dreams that Ive been after?
Master, master, you promised only lies
Laughter, laughter, all I hear and see is laughter
Laughter, laughter, laughing at my cries

Hell is worth all that, natural habitat
Just a rhyme without a reason
Neverending maze, drift on numbered days
Now your life is out of season

[fade out with evil laughter].

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eSnips Social DNA

What being a pilot means ...

2007-09-12T15:28:00.000+05:30

An extract from a letter I received from a friend of mine

I’m an airline pilot, and I can tell you this is a pretty tough career! You will work hard, you will put in lots of hours of study, take lots of exams, and spend a lot of money. But here’s the thing… When you get to see the sun set from 6 miles above the Earth… When you see a thunderstorm lighting up clouds at night like giant fireworks… When you level off at 35,000 feet, roll your seat back, pop open your bag of peanuts, and watch the world drift by below you- you will instantly realize that for everything you put into it, you got back times 10.

"Learning To Fly"

2007-09-09T20:08:00.000+05:30

Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction holding me fast, how
Can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted Just an earth-bound misfit, I
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to find my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

I am the 'Co-P'

2007-09-04T18:54:00.000+05:30

I am the co-pilot, I sit on the right,
It’s up to me to be quick and bright;
I never talk back for I have regrets,
But I have to remember what the Captain forgets.

I make out the flight plan and study the weather,
Pull up the gear, stand by to feather;
Make out the mail forms and do the reporting;
And fly the old crate while the Captain is courting.

I take the readings, adjust the power,
Put on the heaters when we’re in a shower;
Tell him where we are on the darkest of night,
And do all the bookwork without any light.

I call for my Captain and buy him cokes;
I always laugh at his corney jokes;
And once in a while when his landings are rusty,
I always come through with, "By gosh it’s gusty".

All in all I’m a general stooge,
As I sit on the right of the man I call "Scrooge";
I guess you think this is past understanding,
But maybe some day he will give me a landing.

I want to be a pilot because ...

2007-07-12T19:24:00.001+05:30

Any questions now ?

Youre in the army now ... Great song one great message

2007-07-12T13:41:00.000+05:30

A vacation in a foreign land
Uncle Sam does the best he can
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Now you remember what the draftsman said
Nothing to do all day but stay in bed
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

You be the hero of the neighborhood
Nobody knows that you left for good
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Smiling faces as you wait to land
But once you get there no one gives a damn
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Hand grenades flying over your head
Missiles flying over your head
If you want to survive get out of bed
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Shots ring out in the dad of night
The sergeant calls (stand up and fight)
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

You've got your orders better shoot on sight
Your finger's on the trigger
But it don't seem right
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Night is falling and you just can't see
Is this illusion or reality
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now
You're in the army now
Oh, oh, you're in the army now

Oh, oh, you're in the army now

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Wings of Fire ...

2007-06-27T19:11:00.000+05:30

APJ Abdul Kalam : A life worth emulating

I went through Wings of Fire, the autobiography of the erstwhile president of our country Mr APJ Abdul Kalam and it completely blew me away. This is one person who deserves our respect , this is one person that can certainly be classified as a perfect role model. Such sincerity and devotion to a cause is seldom seen and he is shining beacon of light in todays dark political firmament.

I highly recommend this book for all those who want to know more about the "missile man", father of the SLV program and a person who dedicated his life for the betterment of his nation. Not for him the lures of worthless greenbacks, his journey was his own reward which I found really insightful and hope to learn from.

In fact his insights into the way he managed the SLV project would put CEOs of multi-national companies to shame. How he was not satisfied until the SLV was made fully indigenous and how the French were so impressed by his ingenuity that they actually wanted him ... a third world country scientist to build a launch vehicle for the French aerospace program. All this is really inspiring and Kalam's is truly a life worth emulating.

Some of the quotes in the book are themselves worth their weight in gold.

This Earth is His, to Him belong those vast and boundless skies;; Both seas within Him rest, and yet in that small pool He lies.
: Atharva Veda(Book 4, Hymn 16)

You may charge me with murder
Or want of sense (We are all of us weak at times)
But the slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes!

Lewis Caroll

We create and destroy
And again recreate
In forms of which no one knows

AL-Waquiah Qu'ran 56:61

And my personal favorite which I really hope to learn from

For all your days prepare and treat them ever alike.
When you are the anvil, bear; When you are the hammer, strike.

Anonymous

Choose Life

2007-06-24T17:28:00.000+05:30

Trainspotting : Not for the faint of heart or feeble of mind

Read Trainspotting recently and was completely blown away by Irvine Welsh's magnum opus
Do yourself a favor and go read this book ... but a word of caution it's true meaning can be understood only by the insane dreamers of this world like me

There is one poem called Choose Life in the book by John Hodge and it should make amply clear the kind of people who are going to like this book and for whom it as written ...

Choose Life

Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars,
compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good
health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed
interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your
friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a
three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing
game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose
rotting away at the end of it all, phishing your last in a miserable
home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up
brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

-- John Hodge

Garbage Rules

2007-06-19T17:57:00.000+05:30

Garbage the band

I just heard Garbage's song Cup of Coffee and was simply blown away by it
The lyrics are absolutely amazing ...

You tell me you don't love me over a cup of coffee
And I just have to look away
A million miles between us
Planets crashing into dust
I just let it fade away

I'm walking empty streets hoping we might meet
I see your car parked on the road
The light on at your window
I know for sure that you're home
But I just have to pass on by

So no of course we can't be friends
Not while I'm still this obsessed
I guess I always knew the score
This is how our story ends

I smoke your brand of cigarettes
And pray that you might give me a call
I lie around in bed all day just staring at the walls
Hanging round bars at night wishing I had never been born
And give myself to anyone who wants to take me home

So no of course we can't be friends
Not while I still feel like this
I guess I always knew the score
This is where our story ends

You left behind some clothes
My belly somersaults when I pick them off the floor
My friends all say they're worried
I'm looking far too skinny
I've stopped returning all their calls

And no of course we can't be friends
Not while I'm still so obsessed
I want to ask where I went wrong
But don't say anything at all

It took a cup of coffee
To prove that you don't love me

Here have a listen to this ...

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The 787 cometh ...

2007-06-14T19:17:00.000+05:30

As every man and his chimp knows that the plane dubbed the Dreamliner arrives next year
Here is something that will hold you in check till then

http://newairplane.com/

As they say cometh the hour cometh the plane and what a dream machine this is ...

Wolfmother Rocks --- Joker and the thief

2007-05-22T18:33:00.000+05:30

Wolfmother Rules

Joker and the thief

I said the joker is a wanted man,
He makes his way all across the land,
See him sifting through the sand,

So I'll tell you all the story,
About the joker and the thief of the night,

Always laughing in the midst of power,
Always living in the final hour,
There is always sweet in the sour,

We are not goin' home,

Can you see the joker flying over,
As she's standing in the field of clover,
Watching out everyday?
I wonder what would happen if he took her away?

What you see well you might not know,
You get the feelin' comin' after the glow,
The vagabond is moving slow,

So I'll tell you all the story,
'bout the joker and the thief of the night,

All the people that he see in the night,
Hold their dreams up to the light,
The old beast is searching for sight,

We are not goin' home,

Can you see the joker flying over,
As she's standing in the field of clover,
Watching out everyday?
I wonder what would happen if he took her away?

Tell you the story 'bout the the joker and the thief,
I said, I'll tell you the story 'bout the the joker and the thief,
I said, I'll tell you the story 'bout the the joker and the thief,
Of the night

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Fool's Graden -- Yellow Lemon Tree

2007-05-17T17:42:00.000+05:30

The cover from lemon tree single

This is definitely one of the best songs I have heard and the lyrics are so relevant for me ...

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I'm sitting here in the boring room
It's just another rainy Sunday afternoon
I'm wasting my time
I got nothing to do
I'm hanging around
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I'm driving around in my car
I'm driving too fast
I'm driving too far
I'd like to change my point of view
I feel so lonely
I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens and I wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree

I'm sitting here
I miss the power
I'd like to go out taking a shower
But there's a heavy cloud inside my head
I feel so tired
Put myself into bed
While nothing ever happens and I wonder

Isolation is not good for me
Isolation I don't want to sit on the lemon-tree

I'm steppin' around in the desert of joy
Baby anyhow I'll get another toy
And everything will happen and you wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
And I wonder, wonder

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see, and all that I can see, and all that I can see
Is just a yellow lemon-tree

Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized that have helped to define you as a person ?

2007-05-16T16:34:00.000+05:30

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

This is really freaky ...

2007-05-11T17:13:00.000+05:30

Try this out :

Step 1: Open your Notepad in ur computer and type the flightnumber i.e Q33N
Step 2: Increase the Font Size to 72
Step 3: Change the Font to Wingdings.
Step 4: Step back and gasp ... you will be amazed by the findings

Man this is really freaky why did AL-Qaida choose plane number Q33N
Is this a conspiracy theory or is there some substance behind this ?

DCE Convocation -- The Music Video

2007-05-05T19:35:00.000+05:30

Man I knew that DCE facchas had a lot of free time on their hands ... but this much even I am astounded. Though the effort definitely needs to be appreciated so here it is without further adue ... DCE Convocation -- The Music Video

The song is really catchy too ... so sing along and partake in the dubius glory that is pure 'DCE'ana
(proud NOT to be an NS*ITian)

Pablo Neruda

2007-05-03T15:05:00.000+05:30

I do not love you - By Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where "I" does not exist, nor "you,"
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.

This poem so aptly describes how much I love flying ... I can never conjure up such beatuiful prose as Neruda

Aviation Industry in India -- Present Scenario and Future Trends

2007-04-25T13:18:00.000+05:30

Introduction

Praful Patel, India's civil aviation minister has declared the start of an "air travel revolution". According to the Director General of IATA, Giovanni Bisignani, "The expansion of air transport in India is among the fastest in the world." This is being reflected in the double digit growth rates of passengers and aircraft orders placed by Indian carriers. To meet this growth there is an immediate need for improvement in existing infrastructure. Modernization of 30 airports by 2009 has been proposed by the ministry and the process of raising an amount of approximately US $1.2 billion has begun.
In the next 10 years India's aviation sector is expected to see investments to the tune of US $50 billion. These will be made mainly in the form of airport infrastructure upgrade and fleet acquisition by carriers. Private sector and the government are expected to invest about US $30 billion in this sector in the next 5 years.
This makes India a very attractive market for airport and avionics equipment manufacturers and service providers. The Government of India policy to liberalize the civil aviation market also presents foreign firms with significant export and investment opportunities.

Air Traffic:

Present Status:
* From just 5.1 million passengers in 1970, domestic and international air passenger traffic has grown to nearly 59 million passengers in 2004-05.
* International passenger traffic has grown from 16.6 million to 19.4 million and domestic traffic has grown from 32.08 million to 40.09 million from 2003-04 to 2004-05. According to an ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India) Eco Pulse Survey, international passenger traffic out of India enjoyed a 17% growth, while domestic traffic witnessed a 24% year-on-year growth.
* Growth of domestic air traffic in the first half of this fiscal year has been ranked only second to China by growth analysts.
* Cargo traffic has grown from 979,000 tonnes (646,000 tonnes of international and 333,000 tonnes of domestic) in 2002-03 to 1.06 million tonnes of cargo (693,000 tonnes, international and 3.75,000, domestic) in 2003-04.

Future Growth:
* International passenger traffic growth of 8.4% annually between 2005 and 2009. If domestic traffic is added, the figure comes close to 12%. Industry sources feel that these figures can be less because air transport grows twice GDP. Considering that the GDP growth is expected at 7.2%, air traffic growth can be expected in the range of 15%. By 2010, the forecast is that air traffic will increase to around 90 million.
* The Indian market for international freight expected to grow by nearly 10% annually over the next five years. Air cargo exports from India are expected to rise from the present 0.8 million tonnes to 2.4 million tonnes while domestic cargo will rise from 300,000 tonnes to over 1 million tonnes by 2010.
According to estimates, the present infrastructure can support a 20 per cent growth in passenger traffic and 10 per cent growth in cargo traffic. The need for improvement in infrastructure to meet these growing demands has been recognized and the Ministry of Civil Aviation estimates that there is a need for an investment of Rs. 260 – Rs. 360 billion.

Airlines:

* The number of carriers operating in India has grown from two state-owned players in 1991 to 11 today. Another four carriers are set to start operations soon. Several low cost carriers including Deccan Air, Kingfisher Air, Go Air, Royal Airways, Air One and Indus Air have begun operating flights in the domestic sector. International airlines like Jet Star, Valueair and Tiger Airways are planning to introduce flights in 2005.
* More than 60% of the domestic aviation market is accounted by private airlines.
* With increasing popularity of air travel, airlines like Air India, Jet Airways and Indian Airlines posted profits last year.
* Investors from India and abroad are so eager in investing in this industry that Jet Airways IPO was sold out within minutes of being launched.

Airplanes:

* To meet the growing demand, Indian carriers are placing major orders for aircrafts.
* Indian carriers placed orders over US $12 billion in this year’s Paris Air Show.
* Of the 280 aircraft order received by Airbus at the Paris Air Show, 135 are from Indian carriers. has received order for at the Paris Air Show, 135 are headed for India. Moreover, of the $50 billion that Airbus can earn from these deals, the contribution of Indian carriers is over $15 billion.
* Airbus forecasts that the number of new aircraft it would sell to Indian carriers would go up to 400 by the year 2023. This will make the India the third largest market for new aircraft in Asia, behind China (1,790) and Japan (640), according to Airbus' Global Market Forecast 2004-2023. The aviation industry is of the view that the European aircraft maker may have to again revise its projection upwards.
* Boeing expects India to buy aircraft worth $35 billion in the next 20 years.

The Center for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) estimates India's domestic airlines would need 650 new aircraft by 2012, up from the current 210.
* Every new carrier launched in the country will need to buy a minimum of five aircraft to start operations, as stipulated under the license condition, in the next 12 months.
* InterGlobe Enterprises has placed firm orders for 100 aircraft worth $6.5 billion.

Carrier
Proposed to Add

Air India
50
Air India Express
18
Indian Airlines
43
Jet Airways
30
Air Deccan
60
Kingfisher
48
Spicejet
20
Indigo
100
GoAir
15
Magic Air (to be launched in 2006)
10
Paramount
5

Airports:

* India has a civil aviation network comprising 449 airports/airstrips.
* However, Delhi and Mumbai airports handle 70% of the passenger traffic and contribute 80% of revenue. Both the airports are facing significant capacity constraints.
* The Indian government plans to spend $20 billion over the next 5 years upgrading airports and expanding two government-owned airlines to win passengers from the regional hubs of Singapore and Dubai.
* The restructuring of the first phase of Delhi airport is expected to be completed by 2009 at a cost of Rs 1.9 billion. Expansion and upgradation of the current facility at Mumbai is already under way.
* Work has started on a new international airport at Bangalore by Siemens AG and Unique Zurich Airport at the cost of US $325.6 million.
* Apart from strengthening of the Hyderabad runway at a cost of Rs 700 million. Malaysia Airport Holdings is building a new airport in southern city of Hyderabad. The cost of this new airport is expected to be around US $320 million.
* The government has also decided to modernize 25 airports in non-metro cities. Improvement of another 55 airports is also on the anvil.
* AAI has suggested upgradation of the airports and provision of facilities such as duty-free shopping and recreational activities that would lead to growth in tourism, business travel and exports.
government has decided to encourage private sector investment in such activities, including shopping complexes, golf courses, entertainment parks, aero-sports, etc near airports to promote tourism.
* The state government of Maharashtra has proposed the construction of an International Multi Model Passenger and Cargo Hub (MIHAN) at Nagpur.
* India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation will outline the significant new investment opportunities arising in the sector as a result of its USD8.4 billion airport upgrade plan.
* According to Praful Patel, Minister of Civil Aviation, some 400 airports would have to be developed in the long run.

Opportunities:

• With new airports and up-gradation of existing airports on the anvil opportunities exist for various organizations including those involved in airport management, terminal construction and design, passenger and cargo handling, strengthening and extension of runways, aprons, aircraft parking stands, taxiways and aerobridges.
• This growth potential, coupled with the government's decision to allow private sector participation in the running of five key airports as also in airport modernization, ground services, aircraft manufacture, makes India a very attractive market for airport and avionics equipment manufacturers and service providers.
• The Government of India policy to liberalise the civil aviation market also presents foreign firms with significant export and investment opportunities.
• Also, CAPA estimates India will need a further 3,000 pilots. There will a sharp rise in demand for trained cabin crew not only for the domestic airlines, but also for international carriers," said Sapna Gupta, chief consultant of the Air Hostess Academy. " In the entire Asia-Pacific region, the total human resource requirement in the civil aviation industry will be to the tune of 94,705.

Pain

2007-04-22T19:03:00.000+05:30

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."

--Lance Armstrong

Pilots like to have fun too

2007-04-15T18:26:00.000+05:30

This is what really happens during sim training ... honest

Check it out and enjoy

Deliver Me from Consumer Counter Culture -- A Prayer

2007-03-30T16:14:00.000+05:30

And open the door and step inside.
We're inside our hearts.
Now, imagine pain as a white ball of healing light.
That's right, it's pain the pain itself is a ball of healing light.
I don't think so
This is my life
Good to the last drop
doesn't get any better than this
This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
This isn't a seminar
This is no weekend retreat
Where you are now
You can't even imagine what the bottom will be like
Only after disaster can we be resurrected
It's only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything
Nothing is static
Everything is evolving
Everything is falling apart
This is my life
It doesn't get any better than this
This is my life
And its ending one minute at a time
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake
You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else
We are all part of the same compost heap
We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world
You are not your bank account
You are not the clothes you wear
You are not the contents of your wallet
You are not your bowel cancer
You are not your grand latte?
You are not the car you drive
You are not your f**king khakis?
You have to give up
You have to give up
You have to realise that someday you will die
Until you know that, you are useless.
I say let me be never complete
I say may I never be content
I say deliver me from Swedish Furniture
I say deliver me from clever art
I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth
I say you have to give up
I say evolve and let the chips fall where they may
This is my life
Doesn't get any better than this
This is my life
And its ending one minute at a time
You have to give up
You have to give up

Snow Patrol ~Chasing Cars~ Beg Borrow or Steal

2007-03-16T11:47:00.000+05:30

Finally a good song ... Check out the lyrics

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
they're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

And the riffs are too good to be true

Dreams

2007-03-11T15:02:00.000+05:30

1) Get into IIT
Couldn't achieve this
2). Become a Pilot
Probably will achieve this
3). Get into HBS
Will achieve this
4). ***************
Not possible now or is it ?
Will try at least once ...

50% dream fulfillment ... an unfulfilled life ? Oh ! well at least I tried ...

What is more important the Journey or the Destination

2007-03-11T14:06:00.000+05:30

Read up "What should I do with my life" - Po Bronson

Great book and the best part it was about real people and their struggles to find an identity
and voice that is truly their own not something drilled (programmed ...?) into them by their
social conditioning.

The one learning that I took from this book was that sometimes the changes that people want to make in their lives come about gradually there is a gradual transformation process that makes change possible ... it's not an overnight phenomenon.

The author does not preach and seems to have his heart in the right place as he himself underwent this process (left his job at First Boston to become a writer). The challenge faced by all individuals is how to walk away from money ... the temptation of greenbacks is generally too strong.The author describes this journey from the perspectives of ordinary people and the challenges that they face in their lives sometimes this process is more interesting than the final reward itself.

The harder you work to achieve something no matter how small the value for it increases that much more.

Free Will: Myth, or Reality?

2006-08-08T23:16:00.000+05:30

I finally got around to watching the Matrix. All the kung fu and killing things wasn’t really for me (though some of thosemoves were pretty insane). But I noticed some really deep and strong philosophical undertones. Throughout the first two movies, it seems to always be a question of choice, and a question of free will for the heroes and heroines -- are they making their own destinies, or simply falling into the ways of those before them? This is just a rant, inspired by the first two movies, about the concept of free will, and choice. I wrote this this morning between 4 A.M and ... some other time, and I didn't bother to proofread, but spelling and grammar isn't much of a concern for me right now. I think it's mostly legible, you should be able to read most of it, by just omtting any minor grammatical or spelling errors.

Free will among humans is expressed, via , as ‘The ability or discretion to choose; free choice’. This has been a concept that has been debated for a fairly long time now. Probably several millennia, at least. It has always been a wondering question to some people, if human beings really do have free will? Or is everything pre-ordained, through a God or a Fate, or something beyond ourselves? Is everything we do is part of an already pre-destined plan, in which we have no escape from? Or is free will actually real for us? Do we actually have the ability to choose, and the ability to do things in a way where we create or destroy ourselves?

I have always viewed the concept through three scenarios. Number one, there is no free will—everything is preordained, via a God, or Fate, or something else. Number two, there is free will, and everything you do is of your own making.

Whoa, but hold up, I can hear some of you thinking. ‘Well, I believe in God, but I still believe in Free Will!’ Now, now, sunshine. Hold up yourself. It can’t be both ways. If you believe in the omnipotent God, who knows all, sees all, and is all, there is no free will. Why, you may ask? Well, if God knows everything, including futuristic events that have not yet happened for us, then there is no Free Will. Everything we’ve done, and will do, has already been preordained, because God has made the decision to create us in that way himself. Therefore, for those who believe in Heaven and Hell, and the judging of Souls, there is no judgement, because we are all created of this God who has made us, so we are fated to go to Heaven or Hell. It is, however, arguable, that Earth is actually a second step in a three-step program. For example, in a world before this one, you have free will, but in this world, this is your last stop of desire and enjoyment before you’re off to Heaven or Hell—it’s basically the place where you can do whatever you want, without consequ—Oh, wait. That’s right—you don’t have free will! Oh, well, looks like this doesn’t change anything. Right, right. Back to the point anyways. If God is real, and knows all, Heaven and Hell are places we go to without choice—people are murdered, simply because God has created us with that in our future. Now, that, to me, doesn’t sound like the benevolent God pictured in the Bibles. So, it pretty much comes down to a decision within a decision—is the Bible wrong, and God isn’t all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, the creator of humanity, or something like that? Or is the God depicted in the Bibles real, and truthfully a malevolent fiend? It’s not my place to say, truthfully. And I ask you not to gut me like a fish, quite yet. There is more, in which I may redeem myself, if you just keep reading.

And then there is the second scenario. The scenario in which free will is real, and we, on a daily basis choose to make our own fate through our culminating actions, which eventually result in an end of our lives. This scenario is obviously more human-oriented, where there are no divine beings that interfere with our lives, we simply do as we please, when we please, how we please, where we please, why we please. Yes, well we are known to please.

But, some of you now, may be wondering about that ever-elusive third-scenario. This one is my favourite—it’s like a compromise between the two extremes presented above. I know that I came up with this version of it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if other people have thought of this near-same idea before me. This third scenario, basically states what free will is an ability to choose. Free will is merely the ability which we are all imbued with to make decisions in our lives. There is in fact, a divine being in the universe (or not, if you wouldn’t like there to be), but at least something that’s greater than ourselves—that’s all-knowing, and all-powerful. Well, at least, somewhat all-knowing. This theory is basically the concept that the idea of an all-knowing being is impossible, in order for choice to be present in humanity. But, what if there was a being of probability who was able to know everything in the universe, based on the simple bouncing of molecules at the start of all eternity? What is this being, either a God, or just a force, managed to calculate to a 99.999 (repeating decimal bar notation there) chance of the universe occurring the way it did. In everything this being is mostly correct. However, there is always the factor of choice. People are able to choose what they would like to have happen in this universe. However, because this being has become so powerful and so knowing of the universe, it has been able to pinpoint pretty much everything we’re ever going to want, and so, everything we’re ever going to do. It is able to understand people, and then know how they’re going to react before they do. They know the universe inside and out, and everything is in near perfect symmetry. The only thing that is a problem, is choice. So, it doesn’t come down to being a question of free will, as much as it does to being a question of whether or not we’re as happy with our universe as it is. There are things we’d all like to see changed, but we’re not willing to make the decisions to change them ourselves—we are faced with this reality and we accept it. We don’t look beyond the norm, for the most part. We don’t try and understand. We accept, and we are. In the end, I believe, it is always a matter of choice. There is always that choice to do, but there is more often than not, a reaction to don’t. . It would appear as though such a universal being would have come to the conclusions of what we are all going to do, because it knows us. If we ever learn to know ourselves, then perhaps, just perhaps, we can make our own fate. But to the person who doesn’t know him or herself—to know what they want—then the universe has it already decided for you.

So, what do you believe in now? Free will? Fate? Or is it just simple Probability?

Desolation

2006-07-30T19:35:00.000+05:30

Ye,that inhabit the realm of the living hearken
I write here on the pages of pachment with a stylus
freshly imbibed with the wings of poesy an ode to desolation

The winds rustled through the trees playing hide and seek
with the flowers of spring still bursting with colour and insence,
The shy mimosa rising and smiling at me trough the shadows,
and how the gaia spirit rose to the paint the maudlin colours,
yet my heart sees not all the beauty around me and
fills up with stygian gloom of a moonless night,
as the shadows lengthen across the moonscape of my soul,
I seek redemption can ... I ever be saved

Hmmm....

2006-06-24T19:11:00.000+05:30

$>>grep love ~arant/*
$>>ls
$>> greed hate vice crap
$>>exit

Money Vs Passion

2006-06-03T22:21:00.000+05:30

"Life is too short, and it is. Too short for office politics, for busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve some ever-receding definition of success. Too short as well for worrying whether we bought the right suit,the right breakfast cereal, the right laptop computer, the right brand of underarm deodorant."

--Christopher Locke, The Cluetrain Manifesto

Whatever you are building, it's about passion, and less about the money. Your goals should be about changing the world, or making the world a better place. There are many people who set out to change the world a better place and didn't make a lot of money. But there are even more who set out to make a lot of money, did not make a lot of money and did not change the world.

-- Guy Kawasaki, STVP

What you want is not what you need

2006-05-06T18:11:00.000+05:30

I ASKED FOR STRENGTH
GOD GAVE ME DIFFICULTIES TO MAKE ME STRONG

I ASKED FOR WISDOM
GOD GAVE ME PROBLEMS TO SOLVE

I ASKED FOR COURAGE
GOD GAVE ME DANGERS TO OVERCOME

I ASKED FOR PROSPERITY
GOD GAVE ME BRAIN/BRAWN TO WORK

I ASKED FOR LOVE
GOD GAVE ME TROUBLED PEOPLE TO HELP

I ASKED FOR FAVOURS
GOD GAVE ME OPPORTUNITIES TO GRAB

I RECEIVED NOTHING I WANTED
I GOT EVERYTHING I NEEDED

Fight Club : A Philosophy ; A way of life

2006-04-23T17:47:00.000+05:30

Some quotes and dialogues from the greatest movie of all time

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Narrator:A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.

We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

"After fighting, everything else in your life has got the volume turned down."

Narrator: "When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that will name everything: The Ibm stellarsphere, The Microsoft galaxie, Planet Starbucks."

Norton's Character: "You want me to deprioritize my current reports, until you advise a status upgrade."
Richard Chesler Regional Manager (Zach Grenier): "Make these your primary action items."

"The things you own end up owning you."

Dilbert oil economics ...

2006-02-19T21:31:00.000+05:30

As usual the most pertinant points are raised once again by Scott Adams through Dilbert one of the most literate comic strips I know of ... This one's about oil oligopolies funding terrorism and dogbert's twisted mind at work ... If you don't it get then you probably should'nt really be here go to some mind numbing goth shit ...

Jack Welch - A Working class Hero

2006-02-11T20:34:00.000+05:30

I was reading Jack Welch's autobiography and man did it leave an impact on me I was an instant convert to his way of looking at things.Jack's is really a tale of an average man getting lucky but then grabbing his chance by the balls so to say.The practices and the drive that he displayed left an impact on my mind His focus on People,results and quality is truly the way forward for every cooperation looking to remain competitive and more importantly to grow even in the face of cut throat competition.Though the changes that he brought to GE are too enormous to list, but the main focus of his statetegy of bringing about organizational change included :

1).To cut down Bureaucracy : To bring down the level of hierarchies existing within GE so that even a worker on the shop floor got high visibility and space to grow.
2).Feed the Strong and Prune the week: His strategy of the vitality curve in my view is the best way to build an A grade team that can take the pants off the competition.He took the top 20 % of superachievers and gave them all the great bonuses and incenties retained the mediocre to average middle of the road 70 % of the people and cut out the rest 10 % of underachievers "perform or Perish" was his motto and should be so for any winning team
3).Six Sigma:For him quality was not another management jargon but a core principle of GE, it became one of the values that GE stood for and internalized.
4)Boundaryless : Jack rated his managers not only in terms of acieving results and targets but also wether they globalised their bussiness and explored new markets ... he recognised that new markets mean new avenues for growth and expansion so vital for a stagnating behemoth like GE ...on a side note the concept was brought home to Jack when he visisted the Bahamas once during his christmas holidays (Yeah even CEOs get holidays)and came accross a black santa ! The popular perception of a white man being santa was broken down, this truly was globalistion in it's truest sense.He got the feeling that the world was actually changing.Old paradigms and bussiness models could'nt hold in this changed world scenario and he had to give up the old inward looking paradigm and develop ab broad global outlook.
5)Make your back office someone's front office : This is the one concept that I like the most ... This concept was developed by management guru Peter Drcuker ... but Jack was one of the first bussiness leaders to adopt it on a large scale ... What it basically means is that you should concentrate on your primary(core) activities and subcontract the activities that aren't directly related to your core profile to others.This concept spawned the now ubiquitous word called Outsourcing i.e tranferring back end jobs and low end activities to more cost efficient read cheap locations linke India,China and thier ilk and increase profit margins.

Green Day rules ...

2005-12-24T22:15:00.000+05:30

After ages I finally heard a rock song can you believe it that the lyrics actually made sense not some crappy mumbo jumbo like the pseudo rock shit called Coldplay...

Check the lyrics of their single Jesus of Suburbia man I am an instant fan

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/greenday/jesusofsuburbia.html

Another crappy quiz ...

2005-12-21T19:58:00.000+05:30

Man everyone is interested in knowing when they are going to leave for their Heavenly(or Hellish) abodes ,take thy pick.

Got mah age prediction right here ....
http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_dead.php

ROYKSOPP ..

2005-12-18T20:12:00.000+05:30

Was channel surfing to fill up my all too ample free time when I came across this really eerie video on VH1 and with a really crazy tune to go with it.I couldn't at once identify the genre to place it into so lets call it electronica/alternate rock for the moment.

Saw the credits and the song was by an obscure band called ROYKSOPP.Checked out the band on the net and sure enough the band ROYKSOPP were norwegian ... man these days all worthwile music seems to come out of scandinavia ...case in point Sigur Ross

Anyway enough of mah rambling check out the video on ROYKSOPP's site ...

The video's name is What else is there ?
and the link can be found in the videos section at http://www.royksopp.com

The $100 laptop

2005-12-16T21:26:00.000+05:30

I guess people must be aware that MIT has come up with a great idea for information dissemination among the poor and under priviledged in the society.Today the impact of technology has not really perculated to lowest echelons of society and the impact of e information rmains a elitist pheneomenon.By bringing down the cost of a laptop to $100 MIT hope to break down this barrier to information access and provide eveyone with an equal opportunity to gain from the information age.Hope they succeed in this endeavour.

For more check out ... http://laptop.media.mit.edu

The impact of the WTO policies on drug prices

2005-12-16T20:55:00.001+05:30

Well, there has been a lot of news recently on the kind of impact the policies adopted by the World Trade organization(WTO)that kind of cosiders itself as a global policeman on free trade.Free Trade a term which has been convoluted beyond recognition by developed countries after all every one wants his pound of flesh.

First some back ground ...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) established in the last millennium has a philanthropic objective of achieving a single world market and economy. It views a world with no trade barriers of social, political, cultural and geographical nature. It wants a vibrant economy to play in the whole of the world. The advents in communication technology, co-operations in science are in fact giving a futuristic vision of one world and one economy.

Clash of Civisations ?

There is a vertical division of the world in to developed and developing countries. The rise of patent regimen, General agreement on tax and tariff (GATT) and Trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) has given suspicion in the minds of the developing countries policy makers that WTO is used a device to maintain the economic scale of development always remains ahead of developing countries than developed countries.

The Problem ...

The poor infrastructure, fragile economy, unemployment and poverty are in fact holding back development of economy in developing countries. Pharmaceuticals are health inputs and are not to be treated par with consumables.

World health organization (WHO) essential drug policy clearly aims at providing a health for all and accessibility of primary health care and medicine to all the human beings of the world, irrespective of color, creed and economic status. It is continuously impressing upon governments of developed and developing countries to make prizes of the drugs such that for want of money no one get deprived of medicines and suffers morbidity and mortality due to diseases.

The Hathi Committe

The beginning of major drug policies in India took place with the establishment of Hathi Committee to look into price trends, competitiveness and feasibility of making Indian drug units to become self-sufficient. There were two major concerns that were on the cards. First, India was dependent largely on western countries for its supply of medicines. The growing monopoly of MNCs in Pharmaceutical Industry was the issue of concern. Second, though the Indian drug prices were comparatively quite low internationally, the MNCs tried to produce much of the inessential drugs and kept the prices of essential drugs high when compared to the purchasing power of the Indian masses.

Based on the Hathi Committee's recommendations, the profiteering attitude, which neglected the welfare of the Indian people, was tackled with the establishment of first Drug Price Control Orders of 1978 and 1979. For the first time, comprehensive price control was introduced in the drug industry (though few measures had been in force since 1970).
The new DPCO then grouped the drugs in four categories:
Category - I (Life saving)
Category - II (essential)
Category - III (less essential)
Category - IV (non essential/simple remedies)

Among these the first three categories were price controlled with mark up (profits allowed) of 40%, 55% and 100%, respectively. In all 347 drugs (about 90%) came under this price control categories. The philosophy behind the graded system was to make essential drugs cheaper. This approach of control on the price of essential drugs resulted in the shift in production pattern and this made the availability of essential medicines difficult than before, as can be seen from Table 1.

Table 1: Drug Production in Response to Price Policy (in percentages)

DPCO Category------1978-----1979-----1980
I Life saving------4.5 ----- 4.2----- 3.6
II Essential------16.7 -----14.8-----13.2
III Marginal------67.1 -----67 ------68.6
IV Decontrolled---11.7 -----13.2-----14.6

A second major reform at the manufacturing unit level took place around the same time with the liberalization process. The MNC's started to pressurize the government to bring down the number of drugs under DPCO. Government decontrolled some of the drugs from the purview of DPCO, reducing them to 166 only. But this was not free from a hike in price of few decontrolled drugs. Further, the price difference between the MNCs and indigenous firms became very significant.

Further the outcome of DPCO 1982 has resulted in the increase in the number of nonessential dosage forms by the MNCs to keep the margin of profit high.

Impact of Liberalistion OR Where WTO crashed the party ...

The liberalization policy continued with more and more drugs going out of control from DPCO. The drugs under DPCO decreased by 1995, as few as 73 and 39 drugs by 2002 remained under the purview of DPCO.

The outcome of dilution of DPCO was evidently the increase in prices of drugs in India particularly of decontrolled drugs. The average increase in price among 18 major drugs was observed to be 44.6% during 1993-1999.

It clearly reveals that the average change in this significance of Patent act 1970 which helped Indian Pharmaceutical Industries to come up with the generic version of the existing drugs.

Invariably, fixing the criteria for keeping or withdrawal from DPCO was the most difficult task. It was observed that every time the drugs were brought out of the DPCO, there was a hike in the price of medicines coming out of DPCO. This was mainly due to the criteria used by DPCO. The Drug Price Control Order mainly considers the total sale, monopoly and competition in the production and marketing of a particular drug. The concept of essentiality is absolutely misquoted in this context. Any drug, which has sales less than the prescribed amount, would qualify to automatically come out of the purview of DPCO. Many a time the price of drugs under DPCO has been less than that of the ceiling price fixed by DPCO/NPPA. The system of ceiling price is slowly becoming absolute due to market driven price. Thus the role of DPCO is effective only if the producer has monopoly prices over and above the ceiling prices. Thus two forces were acting simultaneously. While the prices of drugs going out of DPCO's control were to go up, the competition driven market has always succeeded to keep the prices of such drugs below that fixed by the DPCO/NPPA. Competition emerged due to the process patent. Furthermore, it is the function of NPPA to keep a watch on the prices of drugs and to fix the ceiling price for new drugs/dosage forms.

DPCO also was finding it increasingly difficult to fix the drug prices due to (a) increasing number of formulations (about 75,000) due to relaxation in the patenting system, and (b) time taken by the authorities to fix a ceiling price for the formulations and the bulk drug being very large, leading to lot of inconvenience in the production pattern of the required drugs. Further the need for DPCO's intervention to control will arise only when the prices are driven by the monopoly and not by the competitive system, which grew due to the process patent system that made India to develop in to technologically advanced country in the field of Bulk drugs. This makes it necessary to have a close look at the Patent system in India.

In such a scenario the WTO and its policies are going to change the scene of market topsy-turvy. The WTO emphasizes on product patent and does not recognize process patent. There may be a very convincing argument for the above rigidity in the policy its impact on a developing country and its intellectual development will be halted for just want of sophisticated technologies, which are too expensive to offer by an innovator from a developing country.

Leader of the free world(sic) on vacation ...

2005-12-16T20:22:00.000+05:30

It's great to enjoy a great holiday with your near and dear ones ,it's great to go on fishing trips and stuff, while that certainly fosters togetherness can't gaurentee the results for the general population.

Well check out what Dubya and Bush sr were up to when Katrina struck New Orleans ... They were right there when the battle lines were drawn, they were brave and unshakable, they fought the good fight against the worthy adversary and finally won ...and then gulped it down a large cool one ... ahhh burrp ...

The Relevance of free speech

2005-12-15T20:12:00.000+05:30

The right to information and free speech is one of the most fundamental elements of a democratic society,without this right people are mute and an atmosphere of fear is created.The state media can control their sources of information and they can't form opinions based on their own judgements.Their opinions are the opinions of the mob and what the mob decides is good enough for them.They can never speak up aginst anything as that means going against the opinion of the majority and the majority is powerfull ...

Why speak up about things that don't seem to affect you ? Perhaps Pastor Martin Neimoller's view in one version of his quote will answer that question.He supported the Nazis until he realized, too late, what they were really about and was sent to Dachau concentration camp.He was one of the fortunate to be freed and live until 1984.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Social Democrats,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew,
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Update on the Saddam Situation ...

2005-12-15T20:07:00.000+05:30

As everyone knowa Saddam was captured by the american liberation forces and put to trial to atone for the atrocities taht he commited in Iraq,The following flash is an actual recollection of the events that took place at the trial ... HONEST

http://rockpapersaddam.com/flash

Go check it ... out it's the funniest piece of flash ever.

The language guide

2005-10-12T22:39:00.000+05:30

This is for all you software freaks out there who like to have a little sense of history before learning a language check out this language guide and get all that you want to and probably don't want to know about any computer language under the sun

DCE

2005-10-12T22:22:00.000+05:30

DCE
Originally uploaded by Arant Agrawal.

Hey people was fiddling around with google eatrth today and came up with this pic for my "beloved" alma mater...

It looks so futuristic and modern a great temple of learning ;-0

But once you zoom down form a range of 100 metres to 1 metre ... you know what I mean

Doble Century ....

2005-10-12T22:11:00.000+05:30

Hey whaddya know hit a double century of visits today (excluding my own :-D of course)
keep up the good work people together we will hit a triple soon...

The wonderfull thing called ORKUT

2005-10-12T21:55:00.000+05:30

Hey was just surfing the net today and came across the orkut website and got a membership from somewhere it gave an oppurtunity to catch up with some of my long lost friends from both my school and college days ... brought back memories for sure keep up the good work orkut.

Take my advice and get an ORKUT membership from somewhere you never knoe whom you may find... want an orkut invite contact by leaving a message at my blog with your email id

Smoke Kills

2005-10-08T21:21:00.000+05:30

Hey everyone,

Hope you guys are still with me This is a great link check out the great swf movie.
It's really good.The chain of events that can lead to disaster.

http://fun.drno.de/flash/smokekills.swf

and Hmm yeah it's got a great message too.Keep your speakers on for the full effect.

DCE from space

2005-09-26T23:04:00.000+05:30

I was playing around with google earth and came up with the picture of our "beloved" campus.
I didn't know DCE looked so futuristic from space.Check it out.

btw DCE is an engineering college in India from which I completed mah graduation...

You've got to find what you love...Redux

2005-09-22T21:10:00.000+05:30

I think all of us know the feeling when inspiration runs dry ... The tap is open but the water just dosen't come out well.I am just passing through one such phase ... what with no sleep for days on end, man I am gonna die of insomnia ... Hope this gets me back on track This is one of my previous posts with one of the most inspiring pieces of oratory ever... Check it out

http://arant-agrawal.blogspot.com/2005/06/youve-got-to-find-what-you-love.html

The Sambhar of 69 ...

2005-08-01T20:36:00.000+05:30

Long time no post but it's been worth it I've finally found the original inspiration for Bryan Adams' rock anthem "The Summer of 69"... the original lyrics were penned by an out of luck madarasi standing out side his favourite Udipi joint ... so sing along and enjoy

I had my first real six rupees,
stole it from my father's pants.
went to a madrasi hotel,
to eat the sambhar of 69.
Me and some kadke dost,
had it all and we caught bukhaar,
jimy puked, joey got ulcers,
and Bagga ne maari dakar.

Oh when I went back there now,
the food was as stale as ever,
and though it was 1999,
still the sambhar was being served over there,

that was the worst food of my life.

Therez no use in complaining,
when you got no other place to eat,
rushed in the evening to the doctors clinic,
but he too was at the toilet seat, yeah

standing there waiting outside,
nurse told me I will wait forever,
oh and when I held my breath,
I knew that I had to use that loo there
That was the worst food of my life.

Back to the sambhar of 69.

Man I was getting killed,
I was full and restless,
I needed to unwind,
I guess nothing can wait forever - FOREVER... NO!!!!

And now the dhabas are changing,
new dishes have come and gone,
sometimes when I pass that old madrasi lane,
I still smell it, I can't be wrong.

Standing in those unwashed clothes,
the waiters still call me in there,
oh the way my nostrils burn,
I know that it will be served forever,
what was the worst food of my life.

yeah it was the sambhar of 69,
the sambhar, the sambhar, the sambhar of 69 ?????

My work week

2005-07-23T11:00:00.000+05:30

Hey guys its been a while since I logged on to the group again.Got really caught up in work designing a glitch free clock mux ... DUH!

Well this week was pretty interesting to say the least I got assigned my department and manager who is a french person by the name of Mr. Laurent Perier pronounced (Loura'Peri),I really liked the guy and we had an informal chat and stuff about our group and my role in the company, he talks with a really thick french accent and I had a hard time understanding what he said.

I was given a project on designing the clock management unit of a ARM7TDMI core based device that controls the powertrains in automobiles thats where the glitch free mux comes in to switch b/w the clocks without producing glitches on the line.

Real training starts next week when we cover specman a tool to cover faults on HDL descriptions using a radom fault coverage algorithm and E language a language for making design verification simpler.

The great thing is that we use Solaris workstations and I have this thing for unix terminals and feel really comfortable using it.The food was great as usual and I enjoyed myself out there, the work atmosphere is as chilled out as it comes and no pressure at least till now...

I'll keep u guys posted on any new developments.

My first day at work...

2005-07-18T19:49:00.000+05:30

Well, I guess there comes atime in everyone's life when you have to leave the cocoon of comfort of home that we are all enveloped in and move into the real world. A world where there are no freebies anymore, a world of PF accounts,Medical reimbursements,Bank accounts and Pay slips.
A world where every step is taken with caution and calculation ... Well to cut a long story short I entered the workforce of the world on the 18th of July'2005.

My first day began when I arrived at STMicroelectronics Noida R&D/IP Centre at 9.00am after putting in some long hours in our extremely "reliable" bus system.The ST building looked quite good.There I met some of my batchmates and people from other colleges all coming in for their first days. I could sense the excitement in the air and almost see the dreams in their eyes.We were shown into an auditorium where an orientation program was conducted for the new recruits and groups were assigned to us all.

I was assigned to the APG (Automotive Products Group) at ST working in car navigation system design, GPS, Fuel monitoring ang efficient delivery platforms, car audio video systems etc.

Now we had to fill in some forms and other legal and financial stuff... yada, yada, yada.

Mr Rishi Chibber then conducted a presentation regarding the general overview of the company structure, command structure, financials, company verticals and horizontals during which I must have gone horizontal as well...

After that we were divided into random groups and were asked to introduce our group partners mine were two guys from PEC and MNIT, Allahabad.We were asked narrate any embarassing moments in our lives just to break the ice, well I have had embarassments galore in my life one of them was when I tore my kit while playing in the school football team and was basically playing in my undies the whole match.

So then about 2.00pm we had some lunch and true to form ST canteen wallahs did not dissapoint the food was great especially the choclate cake which was yummy.

Then after lunch we again moved to the second round of the orientation program taken by Mr.Rahul Bharti he covered the stuff about our salaries, reimbursements, appraisals,taxes etc
Then we filled in some more forms and the day came to an end.I took a bus started by ST for home and met some seniors from NSIT on the bus and had a great chat with them along the way. Well my first day was nothing earth shattering but something that can make me look forward to going tommorow

Finally a comic strip for techies...

2005-07-12T22:54:00.000+05:30

After years of waiting I have finally found a comic strip that does not violate my sense of normality, after years of tolerating brain numbing crap like the fat cat and despo guy, obese viking, stoneage nuts etc ... you know what I mean except C&H ofcourse and to an extent the Wizard of Id and Charlie Brown, here comes the comic strip for techies.Check out a sample below

Not another dumb comic strip

Now for some background,In this strip a tech geek named Bilo who uses Debian is pitted against his lil bro nano who is as small as his name sounds, he has a neighbour who uses mandrake and is completely smitten by the various useful ? wizards in there one even to plan his saturday nights !This is one of the few strips that is wonderfully literate and does not assume that it's target audiences are lame brained zombies.Some of my other favourite (mis) adventures but be warned ... you have to be a Geek and not the common garden variety geek but one witha capital G to get some of the jokes

you can get the complete set at this link

Lance lays down the law

2005-07-12T22:42:00.000+05:30

Hey finally I can't stop smiling, man after 215kms of riding with two category 2 and one category 1 climb in today's stage, it even hurts my eyes when I see these guys race.But Lance is Lance and he set an incredible tempo that no one save Valverde, Rasmussen and Mancebo could match and Lance took home an advantage of a minute over Basso and over 2minutes over Ullrich.I think he is almost home and dry now even though Vaverde took the stage win with a brilliant sprint finish.

Valverde wins the battle and Lance probably the ... war

The mountains cometh...

2005-07-10T21:33:00.000+05:30

Finally the flat stage shit is over and the Tour moves on to the mountains, if today's stage was any indication I can't wait for the day after tommorow.This is where the grain is seperated from the chaff and the big boys come to play.

Rasmussen wins today's stage in style

What a lone breakaway by Michael Rasmussen to get himself the overall lead in the King of the mountains, and finally Lance is dethroned from the maillot jaune by Jens Voight of team CSC but I think only for a day as the big mountains come the King is sure to assert himself on the main field.

Voight gets overall lead

Take this job and shove it ...

2005-07-10T16:49:00.000+05:30

If you work in an office and you have not seen the movie Office Space, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. If you work in the computer or "hi-tech" industry (shudder), then you should be double-ashamed. Although classified as a comedy, it is actually more of a documentary, and quite frankly, an inspiration for all tech workers. Please do yourself a damn favor and go see it, preferably with co-workers.

After, I saw this movie I was absolutely blown away by the amount of humour that is drawn from real life situations eg: A guy drives on a freeway when cars on all lanes are whizzing past, so he decides to switch lanes and then... you gussed it, the traffic in his lane comes to a grinding halt and that in the lane he switched from whizzes by... a perfect example of Murphy's Law in action.

There is a hilarious guy named Michael Bolton, whose name causes a lot of confusion and an indian techie Samir with a jawbreaker of a last name who hatches a plan to take revenge on the company along with Michael Bolton when they get a pink slip from from their company named Initech.Some of the scenes where the efficiecy expert reviews their performance are absolutely hilarious... and chillingly real at the same time I couldn't help but thinking, Hey this could happen to me too.

Samir whatshisname and Michael Bolton

But my favourite character is Bolton's boss Bill Lumbergh, a bit like Dogbert the evil director of Human resources in Dilbert who speaks in a really funny emhasized manner.

Bill Lumberh

Needless to say this has become one of my favourite movies of all time .Go check it out.

Swami Vivekanada

2005-07-07T00:04:00.000+05:30

Swami Vivekanada
Originally uploaded by Arant Agrawal.

Swami Vivekananda was one of the most important religious thinkers that India has ever produced. His visionary and progressive ideals have had a profound impact on the rise of human consciousness through the twentieth century.

The Human Mind

Here I quote verbatim a snippet of his thoughts regarding the turbulent, inherently restless nature of the human mind ...
(I think this definitely applies to me)

"How hard it is to control the mind! Well has it been compared to the maddened monkey. There was a monkey, restless by his own nature, as all monkeys are. As if that were not enough someone made him drink freely of wine, so that he became still more restless. Then a scorpion stung him. When a man is stung by a scorpion, he jumps about for a whole day; so the poor monkey found his condition worse than ever. To complete his misery a demon entered into him. What language can describe the uncontrollable restlessness of that monkey? The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature; then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance. How hard to control such a mind!"

"....So unless we learn to control our minds we can not control our thoughts and actions, and if we cannot control our thoughts and actions my friends, how will we control our destinies"

The power of Self-Belief

Another of his famous quotes that I am influenced by and which illustrates that there is no force greater that a human being can possess is the power of self-belief.

" You cannot believe in god, unless you believe in yourself"

"...So my friends have faith in yourselves, because faith alone guides us through our darkest hours..."

Denial...

2005-07-06T20:49:00.000+05:30

denial
Originally uploaded by Arant Agrawal.

This must be one of the most beautiful and imaginative Calvin and Hobbes strips ever... I really like the way that Calvin imagines himself as a pteradactyl and soars about the prehistoric landscape of his mind untill his teacher bring him back to planet earth and then what can you say about the punchline...

The future of 8 bit microcontrollers – A Design Engineer's Perspective

2005-07-05T17:54:00.000+05:30

Introduction

The venerable 8-bit microcontroller just keeps chugging along. Despite the performance advantages of its 16- and 32-bit siblings, 8-bit micros still accounted for a substantial percentage of the dollar volume of all worldwide microcontroller sales in 2003 and more than half of all unit shipments. In a world that appears to dote on high-performance, wide-bandwidth, and an overabundance of I/O ports, 8-bit micros still find a lot to do—and do well.

In order for 8-bit micros to survive and even prosper for more than four decades, the chip designers who create them have evolved their silicon accordingly, most notably by adding a rich selection of peripherals and memory. The system designers who use them have responded with ever more innovative solutions to more and more control applications. Low-cost chips and inexpensive development software is generally acknowledged to be the primary reason for 8-bit staying power. These attributes align perfectly with the system engineer's mission to design the most cost-effective solution. Ironically, the sophisticated systems that require high-performance chips to execute primary function often have quite a few mundane control functions to handle as well—and these are frequently best serviced by a distributed network of 8-bit microcontrollers.

The Platform Strategy – “Balancing Low cost with High Margins”

If there is one aspect of the microcontroller market that bears watching by design engineers it is the product strategies of the semiconductor vendors. Their goal is to maximize revenue by finding the perfect balance between high-volume, low- profit-margin 8-bit parts with lower-volume, higher-profit-margin 16- and 32-bit parts. Most observers do not see a particularly bright future for 4-bit parts.

The two largest players in the microcontroller market—Renesas Technology, which leads the Japanese market, and Freescale Semiconductor, which leads in North America—both have carefully planned strategies in place to allow design engineers to move as effortlessly as possible from 8- to 16- to 32-bit microcontrollers. Most other microcontroller players have similar strategies. But the financial investment required to implement both a hardware and software continuum—compatible architectures for hardware and consistent user interface for development software—is an expensive proposition. The dynamics of a platform strategy are more complex than simply moving designers along a path to higher functionality from 8- to 16- to 32-bit devices. As systems become more complex, distributed intelligence—particularly in relatively simple control functions—is the trend. A 32-bit microcontroller might "run the show" in such systems but there is room for 8- and 16-bit devices as well and a common platform makes design considerably easier.

Market Segmentation

Analysts vary in their estimates for the size of the microcontroller market. But all agree it is big—something on the order of $10 billion for all microcontrollers in 2003. Depending on the analyst, the 8-bit share of total revenue in 2003 can range widely—from about 30% up to 40% or more. The varying estimates reflect differing methodologies. Research firms generally predict a stable if unexciting future for 8-bit micros. A conservative view of the market segmentation between 4-, 8-, 16-, and 32-bit microcontrollers is shown in Figure 1. Some research firms would argue that the 8-bit share is closer to 40% with most of the gain subtracted from the 16-bit slice.

4-bit = 4%
8-bit ===== 29%
16-bit ======== 53%
32-bit === 14%

Figure 1: Market segmentation among Microcontrollers

Changes in design strategies

As shown in Figure 2, peripherals and memory, in particular, occupy most of the die. This allows for a considerable amount of customization—matching chip functionality to the application with peripherals and memory. In control applications, in particular, retaining the same microcontroller core but adding memory or peripherals can prolong a design's useful life as succeeding generations of the application become more complex.

Figure 2: Memory and peripherals occupy most of an 8-bit microcontroller's die

Freescale also provides overlapping solutions between architectures. Memory options for 8-bit micros range from 1 to 60 Kbits of Flash; 32 to 512 Kbits for 16-bit micros and over 1 Mbit for 32-bit micros. Freescale calls its strategy a controller continuum. Development software is another important aspect of a continuum. Freescale and its tool partners maintain a consistent user interface across architectures.

The platform strategy at Renesas emphasizes 16-bit cores, which can be accompanied on the die by 8-bit peripherals and an 8-bit bus to derive the benefits of smaller die size and power consumption. In terms of die space "you almost don't care what the CPU is," says Sessions.

Another aspect of projecting a platform strategy into the market is to appreciate the coding preference of many engineers. Renesas built its 16-bit cores to be C-code efficient, he says, because companies want to be able to reuse the applications programs they develop. In addition to the trend away from assembly language programming, using C and C++ means that code reuse is easily accomplished.

Other companies are on the same general track but with variations often dictated by their product portfolio. Philips, for example, advocates a leap from 8-bit micros to 32-bit, which leaves 16-bit parts more or less out of the migration equation. But the fundamental strategy remains the same: having its software partners provides very similar tool environments for both architectures to reduce the learning curve for design engineers. And no one is predicting the imminent demise of 8-bit micros—the idea of mixed architecture environments with efficient migration paths prevails.

New Opportunities for the system designer

The familiar plot of chip complexity vs. time illustrates the classic exponentially rising curve of Moore's Law and the area underneath that curve is proportional to the cumulative number of electronic applications that have been created over the years. As the Pentium/Cray bleeding edge shoots skyward, he says, the cost of designs closer to the X-axis becomes less and less expensive. That's the bailiwick of 8-bit micros and it could be called the real technology revolution because it is happening where it affects people the most, at the low end. Every Pentium price drop enables dozens of new applications in the scum on the bottom of the pond. That's where the action is. 8-bitters will never die. Neither will RS232. The future of 8-bit micros seems secure.

C&H contd...

2005-07-04T22:14:00.000+05:30

Philosophy

This is another of my favourites check out the irony...

Calvin on Philososphy

Calvin feels happy for a while but then he has to show his true colours after all... .I think the writer tries to make the comment that we tend to follow ideologies of others based on hearsay rather than doing what makes us truly happy.

Manipulating the System

I think the strip just shows us what our education system has become just mug up useless facts and get marks.It completely stifles the inner creativity of a person. I completely identify with this strip more than any other C&H panel. You just have to beat the system that's all no matter if you learn anything... and Calvin does it.

Calvin beats the system

Calvin and Hobbes...My favourite comic strip

2005-07-02T15:53:00.000+05:30

Hundreds of comic strips have been published in newspapers. The majority are terrible, and almost all the rest are mediocre. There have been maybe four or five good comic strips in the history of the world. So saying that Calvin & Hobbes is the best comic strip ever doesn't really hold a lot of weight.

And it's really a sham that it's so difficult to quantify this strip's greatness. Sans this strip, the industry is characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a fat cat gobbling up food and cracking jokes at his owner,a fat ale swilling viking running around and trying to make some wisecracks along the way.Calvin & Hobbes ran from 1985 to 1995. Bill Watterson drew thousands of strips, and while I wish like hell that he would come back and draw more, it's probably best to reflect and be thankful for what he's done.

I post one of my favourite C&H strips which basically highlights the irreverant natue of the strip

This strip takes a potshot at the way humans rationalize hunting animals for food or sport.It highlights the love that the strips' creator had for animals.Any other strip just wouldn't have the guts to print something like this in a mainstream newspaper and therein lay C&H's greatness.Beginning today I'll post more of my favourite C&H adventures which highlight some of the aspects of Calvin's interaction with the world around him ... a world he never really understand or care about.

Into the Shadows...

2005-07-01T13:03:00.000+05:30

Poe-Master of the macabre

"YE WHO read are still among the realm of the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.For indeed strange things shall happen, and strange things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memeorials be seen of men. And when seen , there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who shall find much to ponder upon in the characters here engraven with a stylus of iron"

FROM SHADOW-A PARABLE by Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe the master of the macabre is one of my favourite authors his command over language is amazing. His tales are full of imagination and extradordinarily vivid visualization and imagery.Have you discovered him yet ? If not then check this link out.

Latest on Longhorn

2005-06-30T23:53:00.000+05:30

I presume, everyone knows that Microsoft is developing a successor to the Windows XP version of its ubiquitous Windows OS codenamed "Longhorn". It recently came out with the prelimnary alpha version1.0 of the Longhorn to test some of the features and I must say the graphics on this baby look ... awesome.

Some intersting new features also have been added in as explained in the pics below,again I'd like to point out that this is just the alpha version and the OS is still two years from release so the final version may be completely different from the alpha release, Yet we can get some interesting insight into what the guys at Redmond are planning.

I made a collage of some of the wallpapers available on the alpha.Check it out...Man I love Picassa. I'll be posting them for download soon. So watch this space...

Some of the wallpapers on Lonhorn alpha v1.0

I'd rather dance with you....

2005-06-30T18:52:00.000+05:30

KoC band members singer/guitarist Erik Glambek

Bøe(left with glasses) and guitarist Erlend Øye

I heard the new single from The Kings of Convenience and got blown away ... Man this is awesome stuff.
If you guys like catchy dance music check out their new video and get ur feet movin'. You won't be dissapointed.The tune is so eeriely catchy, you won't believe.

(To get a preview of the song click on this link)

You've got to find what you love...

2005-06-28T17:43:00.000+05:30

Steve Jobs,CEO,Pixar Animation studios

This is a commencement address made by Steve Jobs,CEO of Pixar animation studios at Stanford, on June14,2005.This is really one of the most wonderfull and inspiring things that I have ever come across.All I can say is WOW!!!...Steve you taught me something about life today.Hope you guys find it as inspiring as I did.

*************************************************************************************
Steve Jobs to the Stanford class of 2005

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college.Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about...

"Connecting the dots"

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about...

"Love and Loss"

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking untill you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about ...

"Death"

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because lmost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish"

Thank you all very much.

We didn't start the fire...

2005-06-28T13:29:00.000+05:30

Hey, I heard the Billy Joel classic we didn't start the fire and was completely blown away... to say the least.
The song gives you the entire events of the 20th century in a nutshell plus the tune is catchy and you can sing along.Here are the lyrics with links to the references...makes for intersting reading.Entire history of the last century in one cool song...WOW.
Here are the lyrics...

Sing Along...

WE DIDN'T START THE FIA...HHH!!!!

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom

Brando, "The King and I",
and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, vaccine, England's
got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana
goodbye

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser
and Prokofiev

Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu
and "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place",
trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide,
children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel
is a no go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola
and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

CHORUS

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon,
back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

"Wheel of Fortune" , Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone

Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

Here is a great link that you can sing along and view the images too.

Do you know where you are going ?

2005-06-27T20:52:00.000+05:30

Alice came to a fork in the road.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Chesire Cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't really matter."

Suprising stuff about Coca Cola.....

2005-06-27T01:01:00.000+05:30

Coca Cola is so popular worlwide , it is the ultimate symbol of the americanised/westernised way of life.I believe everyone of us has drunk Coca Cola at some point of time. But have any of us stopped to think about some of the eye opening legends sorrounding famous coke logo ?

Legend no.1
Coke displays an anti muslim slogan when read in the mirror ..... True

If you guys don't believe me then look at pic below.

Coke...anti muslim ?

Whoa, now that is an eye opener isn't it.

Legend No 2.
The coke logo shows a person snorting cocaine when viewed at an angle of 180 degrees...False/ambiguous.

This legend has a reference to the belief that Coke contains Cocaine as a part of it's secret formula.I think u can see the guy snorting if u look closely... though it might take some time.(Focus on the right side of the image)

Person snorting Cocaine ?

I found some stuff on the net against the same

"Coca-Cola's distinctive script logo was created by Frank Mason Robinson in 1886 when he wrote the first Coca-Cola label in flowing Spencerian script. Robinson was a partner with pharmacist John Pemberton (who made the first Coca-Cola syrup), and it was Robinson who gave the beverage its name. Robinson created the logo in 1886, at a time when cocaine was readily available in all manner of over-the-counter products. Unlike these days, however, when we think of cocaine as coming in the form of a fine, white powder that has to be snorted through a $100 bill, consumers of the 1880s knew the drug as a liquid. No one snorted cocaine in those days; they drank it. The idea that an artist would in 1886 incorporate into the logo a visual representation of a drug behavior that didn't then exist is a bit much to swallow."

Legend no.3

Coca-Cola's initial transliteration of their name into Chinese produced a rendering whose meaning was "bite the wax tadpole." .......False

When Coca-Cola first entered the Chinese market in 1928, they had no official representation of their name in Mandarin. They needed to find four Chinese characters whose pronunciations approximated the sounds "ko-ka-ko-la" without producing a nonsensical or adverse meaning when strung together as a written phrase. (Written Chinese employs about 40,000 different characters, of which about 200 are pronounced with sounds that could be used in forming the name "ko-ka-ko-la.") While Coca-Cola was searching for a satisfactory combination of symbols to represent their name, Chinese shopkeepers created signs that combined characters whose pronunciations formed the string "ko-ka-ko-la," but they did so with no regard for the meanings of the written phrases they formed in doing so. The character for wax, pronounced "la," was used in many of these signs, resulting in strings that sounded like "ko-ka-ko-la" when pronounced but conveyed nonsensical meanings such as "female horse fastened with wax," "wax-flattened mare," or "bite the wax tadpole" when read. Coca-Cola had to avoid using many of the 200 symbols available for forming "ko-ka-ko-la" because of their meanings, including all of the characters pronounced "la." They compromised by opting for the character lê, meaning "joy," and approximately pronounced as "ler." The transliteration of the name 'Coca-Cola' they finally settled on used the following characters:

Coke's final chinese translation

This representation literally translated as "to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice," but it acceptably represented the concept of "something palatable from which one receives pleasure." It was the real thing, with no wax tadpoles or female horses, and Coca-Cola registered it as its Chinese trademark in 1928.

How nerdy are you ?

2005-06-26T23:57:00.000+05:30

What is your nerd rating ?

As we know most of us engineering guys are pretty nerdy (with some exceptions of course).Wanna find out how nerdy you are then take this pop quiz to answer the eternal question.....AM I A NERD ?
Well as expected my nerd score came out 92 and I was awarded with the epithet of a supreme nerd by the rating software,... well well what do you know.I can take some consolation from the fact at least 8 people were more nerdy than me .... Sure would'nt like to meet them.

The Virtual Keyboard

2005-06-26T20:04:00.000+05:30

The Virtual Keyboard

Today a mobile device encompasses camers to email capability to FM radios all on a single platform.The phone of the future will be your office,TV,entertainment hub all in the palm of your hand.There are some great technical innovations coming up these days,targetting the next killer application(aka killerap in techie lingo) for the mobile/wireless domain could this be it?

The Virtual Keyboard (VKB) is an innovative input device for PDAs, PCs, Laptops and Smart Phones that projects a full-sized virtual keyboard on to any flat surface for rapid text-entry and navigation. Utilizing an efficient method for projecting an optical image of a keyboard, the Virtual Keyboard provides the user with a vital anytime and anywhere mobile companion solution.

Specifications for the VKB

Detection Rate	Up to 400 characters per minute
Detection Algorithm	Multiple keystroke support
Effective Keystroke	Approximately 2mm
Battery Capacity	>120 minutes continuous typing
Compatibility	Windows 98/2000/NT/XP, PalmOS4.0 & 5.2.1, Pocket PC 2002 & 2003, Smartphone 2003
Dimensions	90mm (L) x 34mm (W) x 24mm (D)

Top 100 Gadgets of all time

2005-06-26T19:44:00.000+05:30

Tody our lives are ruled by gadgets, mechanical innovations that make our lives easier.Though some of them like the wireless remote may seem frivolous but imagine having to go to the TV to change channels all the time ... painful to say the least.I came across a great article ranking the top 100 gadgets on the net hope you like it.

About me

2005-06-26T14:48:00.000+05:30

Me with my friends in the DCE hostel

Through this post I would like to introduce myself I am Arant Agrawal a recent graduate in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering (DCE), a premier engineering college of India. I am currently working with STMicroelectronics R&D/IP development centre,India.
My interests and hobbies include playing Cricket a popular indian sport and football "The beautful game". I also love to watch the "Tour de France" though I am not a great cyclist.
I am a hobby electroncs tinkerer creating circuits and stuff for fun. I love to read and am a great fan of J.R.Tolkein and my favourite literary character is Shelock Holmes.

My research interests include UWB(Ultra wide Band) Communications also referred to as IEEE 802.15.3 standard for PAN (Personal Area Networking) applications,Embedded system development specially inter-device communication for SOHO environments and Turbocodes ("The stuff that will revolutionize wireless communication and bring Bit Error Rates down to unheard of levels") more toward the VLSI design application side rather than the MAP,SOVA algorithm stuff.

Any like minded people intersted in the above few topics may contact me at arant.agrawal@gmail.com

Lance Armstrong Genius or a Farce ?

2005-06-26T14:19:00.000+05:30

Armstrong Genius or Farce ?

I think this post may ruffle quite a few feathers but does anyone believe like me that Lance Armstrong has won the Tour de France 6 times due to the fact that his entire year is focussed on this one event and his competitors have to earn their bread racing through the year in tough events like Giro Italia and othe one day classics.It has been suggeted in hushed tones that his performances are not entirely clean, and his Mr clean image is not entirely merited ...though on that point one can argue that the other racers aren't entirely dope free either as Greg Le Mond former tour winner once remarked "Do they expect us to climb the Alps on mineral water ?".

I agree that the tour is the toughest mainstream sporting event in the world and winning it six times overcoming cancer is a great achievement, but at the same time I think that he is not the gratest racer of all time that honour goes to Eddie Mercx the great belgian who might have won 10 tours if he had competed in all the tours during his career.Today,with lighter bikes,better nutrition,tactics,GPS etc riding the tour is not as tough as it once was.Though one point that I would like to clarify is that I think Lance is a great tactician and uses his team better than any other rider, but then he has a great team to begin with.Also today's riders can not match him in a head to head on the mountains except for brief periods one or two stages.The old fashined mano-a-mano(man against man) has almost become extinct.

In the end I would like to say that yes Lance is a great bike rider but his wins are not a result of Lance's riding alone and a combination of a great team,money power and technical advancements.To come back to my original question now, is Armstrong a farce no I don't think so to come back and win takes a great amount of focus,will and determination with no small amount of hardwork.But then is he a genius, sadly, the answer must remain no in my book.

Jack Kilby inventor of the IC passes away

2005-06-26T13:50:00.000+05:30

JACK KILBY RIP

This post is to commemorate the death of one the greatest technical geniuses of our times Mr Jack Kilby the inventor of the IC (Integarted Circuit) who passed away recently on the 21st of this month.He was 81. All the fellow Elctronics engineering community should feel proud and honoured that such a genius of man was a part of our fraternity.

His Legacy Shaped the Modern World

Mr. Kilby invented the first monolithic integrated circuit, which laid the foundation for the field of modern microelectronics, moving the industry into a world of miniaturization and integration that continues today. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his role in the invention of the integrated circuit.“In my opinion, there are only a handful of people whose works have truly transformed the world and the way we live in it – Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers and Jack Kilby,” said TI Chairman Tom Engibous. “If there was ever a seminal invention that transformed not only our industry but our world, it was Jack’s invention of the first integrated circuit.” A man of few words, Mr. Kilby is remembered fondly by friends and associates for being in every sense of the word a gentleman and a gentle man. At 6 foot 6 inches in height, he was occasionally called the “gentle giant” in the press.

The pic shows Kilby showing the original notebook scribble that led to the invention of the IC.To think that this one page of genius has ushered in a new revolution that no one could eve have imagined possibe.All the complex circuitry lying on the same substrate compressing the incomprehensible complexity into one tiny module truly.......this is Integartion that led to a revolution in the Electronics industry and our daily lives.
I sincerely hope that Mr Kilby lives on in our hearts and memories forever.

P.S:A detailed biography can be accessed at http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/kilby.shtml