Hmm........

Himalyan (mis)Adventure

2007-05-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

This blog has mostly become my travel blog... anyways at last i made it to himalyas (couple of years ago my ladakh trip got cancelled).
First lets get down to mis-adventure part of the trek.
One of my friends (i cant remember who) sent me this link about the treks YHAI organizes during may. I checked out the site picked the one that covers covers maximum distance (during the trek i found, that should not be a criteria for a himalyan trek. what matters is the latitude - what altitude you start @ and how much you go upto and how much of snow hiking is involved). Couple of my collegue showed interest and we picked the trek to kedarkantha peak (12600 feet).

We had to fight with management to get offs (i didnt want to cancel my Himalayan trip for 2nd time because of delivery dates). Anyway on the big day when we were to take off from pune to delhi, we reached pune airport @ 1.30pm. The security wouldnt allow us in, since there were no flights on a Saturday afternoon that took off from pune. They saw our tickets and pointed out that we were 12 hours late!. The plane was supposed to take off @ 1.30 mid night. My collegue has pointed this out when we were booking the tickets. The travel website used 24 hours timing. but I insisted that there were no domestic flights after mid-night and it was just a bug in the stupid indian website. I was suppose to be the SME (Subject Matter Expert) on domestic planes since i fly almost every weekend and the other guy (dont want to name him), was foolish enough to get convinced. So here we were 12 late and the security guys and the airline (spicejet) staff thought we were idiots and were amused. But the good news was the plane had been cancelled and we got full refund. We did some research over phone with a friend, who looked up planes from pune/mumbai to delhi on the net. We had a good deal with spicejet from mumbai the next day and we bought tickets from "delhi to mumbai" and it cost us just 400 bucks extra.

An hour later the while showing our new itinerary to one the guys in office we realized i had booked the tickets from delhi to mumbai. I have this problem - i mix up left-right, i am yet to figure out if 1 to 10 is "ascending"/"descending", so it was only natural, that i asked for delhi-mumbai. The booking guy even repeated my itinerary for me, but im so used to these guys repeating your movie ticket order in multiplexes i wouldnt listen. We rushed back to airport, i blamed the guy at counter for getting the source-destination wrong (im still not sure if it was my mistake or his, but as i said its most likely my fault coz i mix things up). So anyway he changed our tickets without any cancellation charges. But the whole things cost us close to 5K extra and travelled to mumbai for next day's flight.

So in couple of hours everything that could go wrong went wrong. It smelt like it was going to be a bad trip. If this was not enough we got conned by a travels guy in Delhi. We paid 1400 bucks for ticket from delhi to Dehradun. It should not have been more than 300 bucks per ticket in most luxurious bus!. The worst part was i knew he was cheating me and i told him so but bought the ticket anyways. I felt like a moron as i walked out of that place. I had been making stupid decisions and getting better at it.

After this things got better, well atleast for a while. We roamed around in delhi metro for the rest of the day, went to gatewat of india or india gate - whatever it is called. Delhi Metro rocks! looking forward to bangalore metro. Next day we reached massourie did some paragliding, walked some 20kms to a waterfall. I sat on cowdung on the way, accidentally ofcourse. My back was covered in holyshit infested with maggots. I was so disgusted that i rubbed myself in grass, mud and finally got into the waterfall, but not without my mobile phone and wallet. It cost me over 17K. i loved that phone. Now the phone's motherboard is totally corroded - the service center guys dont even want to touch it. Anyway now i have a cheap Motorola phone. I have consistently lost or soaked phones in water every 3 months for last couple of years now. i must have spent around 50k on phone - what a moron indeed!

Anyway, without the phone, i had no sense of time, date, day for next few days. The trek itself was pretty monotonous:
5.50/6am - wake up
7am - breakfast
7:30 - pack lunch
8:00 - start of day
8:45 - me and the boys (nikhil,deepak) are million miles ahead of others (we had a bunch of slackers/kids for trek mates). So wait for next 1 hour for others to catch up. Read books, take photos.
Continue this till late afternoon with lunch, tea break in between
arround 4:00 - reach next camp. This is the time when rain/hail storm starts. welcome drink (non alcoholic ofcourse. no smoking/drinking on treks)
5:00 - the rain has stopped and its freaking cold. Come of tents, dressed like pigmies and hang arround, read some more, take some more pictures of mountains, sunset. Some Tea, Soup.
6:30 - Dinner.
7:30 - Sleep in tent with 16 other men. All of us were smelling like pigs after day 2. Most of them brushed their teeth in the morning, but i didnt even want to touch the water. i was sort of enjoying being filthy and smelly ( after the cowdung incident i had to wear same clothes for next 2 days - i had carried only 2 pairs of clothes).
So it was monotonous - walking on snow at 10000+ feet, walking across these huge golf course like meadows, walking across valley of flowers (this was not "The valley of flowers"), jumping from boulder to boulder in the streams that used almost irritatingly come in my way every 10 steps, walking through forest, walking across those monstrous sky scraper sized pine trees. It was monotonous in the sense that i couldnt have lived like that for the rest of my life, although i sometimes i wish i could. It was fun coz it was better than driving on bangalore roads.
Finally, I take this opportunity to thank all the slow walkers that were with me. It was because of them that i could take my time and capture some great desktop wallpaper quality photos (many of them are still lousy, but im working on becoming a better photographer). Here's the link http://flickr.com/photos/65055518@N00/tags/kedarkantha/show.
I almost forgot to mention how much Flickr sucks. I have almost 400 pics on flickr now. It wouldnt let anyone (including me) view more than 200 pics. So unless i pay up 25$ per year i cannot view/ download my older pictures!

Enemy of Knowledge is not error, but inertness

2007-02-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

My nephew Thushar and my recruit in office with same name remind me of this sloka that i was taught as a kid. It knew the first line Ya Kundendu Tushara Hara Dhavala and looked up the rest on net (im glad that the sloka was mainstream enough to be out there on web and the fact the google was indexing it).

yA kundEndu tushAra hAra dhavaLA yA Subhra vastrAnvitA
yA vINA vara danDa maNDita karA yA svEta padmasthitA
yA brahmAchyuta Sankara prabRtibhir dEvaissadA pUjitA
sA mAmpAtu sarasvatI bhagavatI nissEsha jADyApahA

So all the bytecode like text has 2 parts to it the boring part and the interesting part.
boring part: praises goddess saraswati(chief executive, knowledge department)'s necklace, clothes, guitar and stuff like that
intersing part:says "save us from the passivity and inertness"

So effectively it is a request to save oneself from passivity and inertness. Most mantras/slokas follow similar pattern - they have a lot of text (mostly praising one of the million god's beauty, valor etc) but the meaning is simple(one might argue that there are hidden/multiple meanings. but i am clearly not an authority on this topic) and powerful. Take the much hyped gayathri manthra for example is a prays the supreme power to inspire, illuminate and guide.

links:bhagvad-gita

what have i been upto

2007-01-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

Its been 10+ flights between pune-bangalore and 2 treks* since i blogged. yes now i work off of thoughtworks pune office.
# ThoughtWorks pune office is rocks!
# IBM next to the office(call center) has some good looking women.
# My blue shirt had turned gray, laptop keyboard has collected 2 inches of dust (dont think ill ever be able to clean it) at the end of my first day in office. The floor/furniture work was still going on. But not anymore we have civilized work environ except for occasional showers from A/Cs (that should change soon too).
# Most women on roads/bikes cover their faces with shawl in pune - damn!.
# I move around in rickshaw, its a welcome break from blr traffic. The traffic here is almost non-existent. And @ the end of rickshaw ride some work for my brain to calculate the rickshaw fare. The rickshaw here run on KMs. So to calculate fare:
(no of kms * 6) + 2
note: the parentheses in formula are redundant * has more precedence.
So for 3 km its 20 bucks.

*Treks:
Bramahagiri - awesome car drive (in my new swift) and trek.
Trek on tracks - i had big expectations from this one (lots of hype) turned out to be a no-strainer.

Do we learn by making mistakes?

2006-12-21T05:38:00.000-08:00

Bought a new car last month. It has 1 big dent and broken head lamp, broken tail lamp and couple of scraches already thanks to small incedents while turning/parking/reverse driving. But im a better driver than i was a month ago. This is how i learnt riding a bike too. This is my learning process - learning what not to do. But i know of people who are more careful and learn without making mistakes. You cant (I CANT) afford to make mistakes when you are dealing with stuff that costs over 5 lacs. So here i am wondering if one should learn from doing the wrong things or is it just me being myself (careless and foolish).

If you thought STYX rocks...

2006-10-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

check out this palce called "fuel" on raheja archade road (opp mosque) near Forum. The DJ here is amazing and plays kick-ass (and non-mainstream) metal music. And what more you wont find juvenile, wannabe headbangers here.

From Z600 to Z610

2006-10-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Its been a long journey from z600 to z610 with many cheap phones in between. Im bugged of cheap phones with there monochrome display and bad GUI and no USB charging - its not my style!. What suits me is a neat sony clamshell phone. I mean i dont care much about camera, wallpaper and stuff but i really like copy-paste, 3D context menus, bluetooth, contants sync and waking up to "Every time i die" as my alarm song.

Bad evening

2006-08-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

The world is full of people who have big problem like hunger, poverty, floods, wars... but here im cribbing about my insignificant ones....
Rickshaws and one ways:
This evening i got out of office to pick up my bike from service station - turned out to be a adventure trip. None of the rick' guys would give me a ride because of the one ways on way to service station.
Why cant i get ever get a rickshaw to goto whereever i want to goto without a lot of hassle/negotiation?
Why the heck are there so many one ways in bangalore?
BMTC:
So i took a bus ride. The bus didnt go all the way to my destination. But i reckoned a short walk from nearest stop was good for me. After all these years i expected it to be less crowded. But nothing has changed. The bus was so crowded that people were sticking out of it. The bus was stinking of human sweat. After paying for the ticket i has to ask the conductor 3 times for ticket. He gave it to me but not without a pissed-off expression on his face. I was taking the ticket money away from him which would otherwise have gone into his pocket.
The service centre:
was about to close down. I had just made it. Got my bike! - but wait someone had taken the liberty to get rid of my parking sticker (without which i cannot park in my office paking lot). In its place was ad-sticker of the service centre. The service station person had warned me he can only give me the bike but if i had any questions i had to come back the next day because most of the people who could answer had left for the day. So i no one to complaint to :(
No fuel:
The servicing guys had used up all the fuel in my tank and had not bothered to refuel (which they sometimes do and charge extra for). There was just a few drops left not enough to get me to nearest fuel station. So i parked my bike took another, not so short walk towards nearest gas station. On the way i got a empty water bottle from a roadside chaat stall guy after a small negotiation. And guess what i actually got 2 litres of pertol in a 2 litre bottle from the gas station. For the first time i walked away knowing i got a good deal from a pertol station...

Do it yourself gas station dream

2006-07-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

While fuelling in a gas station here in US, i thought about how much money i could have saved if there were self-service gas station in B'lore too - probably a big fortune. I think most people living in cities like bangalore are skilled enough to handle self-service pump. But mainly, a self-service station will be free of gas station guys who (pardon my understatements) are,
# by far the most cunning first order bastards that you can come across on this planet
# they can even beat rickshaw guys in the art of swindling

Most people know how they try to get your attention away from the guy fuelling your tank, by talking to you ('sooper bike saar...', 'cash-a?card-da?'). You cant afford to even blink - they can cheat you even when you are all eyes. They can fill 15ltr of pertol in a 13ltr tank, they can keep the meter running even when nothing is being pumped.... And when you do catch them red handed surround you like hyenas and settle the matter with sweet talk/bullying. I wonder how many people go out of these places not knowing why these guys were exchanging secret smiles...

Look who's cooking

2006-07-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

Last week i cooked "daal chaval" for first time. It didnt taste bad. It wasnt like I was first time lucky - the next day able reproduce the same taste!

Hard rock? cafe

2006-06-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

With bands like crystal method, beastie boys and maroon 5 being featured on saturday night..... what can i say about hard rock cafe?. Maybe my expectations were high. The best they can give is linkin park!.... i mean i have seen people boo in styx every time a linkin park song starts. Anyway i was crazy enough to spend a small fortune on hard rock cafe t-shirts, their outrageous menu and HARD ROCK music.

<Conslusion>STYX* can kick hard rock cafe's ass at any given time, including monday afternoon.</Conslusion>

*for ignorant low lives: Styx is head-bangers haven located in bangalore.
+Kick ass metal music
-juvenile crowd

Thanks to our censor board...

2006-05-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

we get to some hilarious stuff indicative of man/woman coupling. The way it happens is the man gets dangerously close to the lady - the just when you are beginning to think 'interesting!'... screen switches to these. Here is a list -
Boring ones:
-2. Fire place
-1. Lights going out.
0. Shadows of the couple on the wall.
1. Two love birds/parrots (yes birds) kissing.
2. Two flowers get blown towards each other in breeze.
3. Boiling milk spilling out of kettle
4. Fan above the bed.

More Innovate ones:
1. Train entering a tunnel.
2. Thorn cutting a tender plantain leaf (yes!)

Feel free to add to the list

Misty Mountain Humps

2006-05-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

After the last trek from "masanagudi to ooty" which turned out to be more of a pleasure trip, my expectations were low. Little did i know of the (mis)adventure that laid ahead.
Day1:
# Car ride to chikamagalur + a small accident in which 2 villagers had a narrow espace from fatal collision + small amount damage to nili's new car/repair and we make it to chikmagalur
# Bus ride from chikmagalur to mulliangiri base
# Hike - end of day1
Day2:
# Descent from mulliangiri
# bus ride to bababudanagiri
# (exploratory) trek to kemmangundi
# pit stop @ old fort - end of day2
Day3:
# Continue finding a way to kemmangundi
# Short trek in the woods in the valley
# In Kemmangundi by 10.30am
# Drive back to blore (no accidents this time and @ 7pm food after 30+ hours)

Details:
So this was one of the best treks (the trek from baba to kemman i mean. Nothing exicing about mulliangiri trek, it was the 2nd time we did it. It was kind of a warm before the real stuff began) i have done. why?

Wide open spaces: The only place where any kind of vegetation, other than grass can be found here is in the valleys, nothing grows on these mountains. So you could look arround for miles and miles and all you see is miles and miles of F***in mountains - nothing to block your view. Forest and wooded mountains can sometime be confining too. If the whole idea of get aways is to escapce the confines chikmagalur, with its vast grass covered mountains is the place to be. It is the kind of place an ameteur like me can do exploratory trek, coz its very difficult to get lost here, as long as the valleys are avoided and easy to find your way arround even if you do.

Easy on your feet: The terrain, though mountainous was almost flat. We were in the mountains at an altitude of 4500+ feet. We did not have to much of climbing/getting down to move from one mountain to another. These mountain ranges join at their peak. So how easy was it? well i could still use the stairs (and not elevators) to reach my office ,the day after the trek - given that it takes a lot of effort to even walk for couple of days after one of our typical trek.

Away from civilization: This was probably the best part. We did not expect these mountains to be totally isolated and we set out on day two with 6 packs of biscuits, chikkis and some choclates and the four of us ended up managing with just that for over a day in these mountains. We could see some light in the distance in the nights but it looked like the nearest village was atleast 15KM away. It felt good to be away from humans (they seem to be there everywhere you go, all arround you. its a scary thing that i have learned to deal with), littering, pollution, man-made sound/noises (even the voices), man-made structures. We even spotted deers here. It was the first time i was wild animals in wild (Well considering bandipur is a sanctuary...)

others:
# The weather was good - the cool breeze nullified the effect of summer sun. It was very cold during nights. No rains.
# Even the slackers in the group maintained good pace (but then that was because there was no climbing to do)
# reminded me of munnar to kodai trek
# On kalahatgiri to kemmangundi trek we lost our way in the valleys covered with thick forest. The fact us its not fun to get lost in forest, even though i have forced myself to look at it that way numerous times we lost our way in forest. You can end up spending a few days finding your way arround in forest before realizing you have been going arround same set of trees again and agian. Well on this trek we ended up on the same path (thats not a coincidence because the destination of both treks was same) and we avoided the valley and stayed on mountains as much as possible and found the correct route to kemmangundi. It was fun to apply the lessons learned and correct the mistakes.

Well hoping to do this one again probably after rains when everything is green and the streams are not dry.
Photos

Frustration

2006-05-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

<DISCLAIMER>
I dont take responsibility for any statements made in this blog. Nothing written here can be held against me. Im going bitch/crib....
</DISCLAIMER>

Some people (mostly my family and friend) think im irresposible and careless, my parents feel i should not carry anything worth more than 10 bucks - ill either end up losing it or get mugged and guess what - I keep providing more data points for them to quote from.

Accidents:
you fall, you getup - dust off and off you go on your way. Well i thought thats the way it is, but it turned out to be - You fall donate lots of blood to pot holes on bangalore road - it will be weeks before you can ride again and optionally get some metal to replace your bones and celebrate the spirit of being a METAL HEAD. All this was two years ago - no accidents for two years thanks to Yamaha for making enticer - its very forgiving. Im done with accidents or thats what I thought till my friend dropped me off from his bike.

U have no choice but to brace yourself for the impact when you are pellian rider on one of those tall city bikes with their raised back seat and o! if you are short you have no chance. Anyways, i want hurt bad. But i was frustrated. I cursed mallu for dropping me, cursed vivek for not letting me sit in nita's car, cursed vasu and his bike's flat tyres actually because of which i has to sit with malhar but mostly i cursed myself for getting into another accident. For a couple of days, i was depressed, my mind was screwed and average speed of my bike dropped.

Misplacing/losing stuff:
How i wish i had some king of GPS device that i could attach to things. I lose my bike keys twice every day and end up spending atleast a couple of minutes searching for it at home and office (Mostly i end up finding it in my hands or in the bike :-( Yes i forget to lock my bike). Now mobile phones are easier to trace,
with a ping provided i lose them at office/room. So its all cool till i end up losing it outside office/home. I have lost 2 phones in last 6 months (the second one, which i lost a week ago triggered this blog). Both times i got strange looks from sales person in mobile shop when i asked for the cheapest fone available and responded with "i dont care" when they asked me to pick the phone's color and also these transactions happened in record time and i was out of the store in 2 minutes. With nokia fone i thought i had seen the worst - this is as bad as the usability gets (alright! im a big sony-eric fan!) and didnt bother to even bother to see what im buying (I thought it cant be worse than the other phone. Actually i was so angry with myself i wasnt thinking anything other than i need THE CHEAPEST PHONE) and so now i have this Motorola fone - It took me a week to figure out how to lock the keypad! (yes, i could have read the manual. But i didnt the fone deserved that kind of respect)

<RelatedJokes>
<Joke Id="1" type="accident"> Hey raghu lets get a life insurance for you. Ill pay for it if you make me the nominee - i think ill end up making lot of money in a couple of months.
</Joke>

<Joke id="2" type="mobile"> Lets bet on how many days before raghu loses this new mobile
</Joke>
</RelatedJokes>

TOI article

2006-05-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a article from TOI (dated 6/5/2006). Ideally i would have linked it up on delicious. But the times site is dodgy - the link's broken (I cant believe website of a leading newspaper still uses ASP!)

So here im breaking the DRY priciple and doing what Aam-Janatha programmers do best CTRL+C > CTRL+V

Note: The article is as-is except for my comments...

Lagging behind
By ARNOLD ZEITLIN

When the conversation around the dinner table turned to India, one of the most popular television anchormen in Guangzhou, the

southern Chinese metropolis of more than 10 million people, said, “We Chinese regard Indians as our little brothers”. “Your

little brothers”, I said, “are quite concerned about their big brothers”. The anchorman smiled slyly and said quietly, “I

know”.
India had come up as a subject around the table because one of the anchorman’s TV colleagues had received an offer of a job

as a local vice-president of an Indian satellite TV network that was opening an office in Guangzhou. The colleague had

hesitated about the offer. “I don’t want to work for a poor country”, said the TV executive.
While these are anecdotes, they were typical of Chinese. They have yet to recognise India as an economic and political

rival in Asia and are unimpressed with the economic gains of their neighbour because they are smaller than the widely

publicised gains of their own state. They are unimpressed with India’s elected, popular government and its centuries of rich

cultural tradition. They see India as poverty-stricken, unclean, backward and powerless.
“While we were fascinated by its incredible cultural heritage”, David Li Shuai, a graduate student in Beijing who visited

five Indian cities in two weeks earlier this year, wrote on the Internet, “we were equally shocked by its incredible poverty,

dirtiness, and laxity. As a Chinese tourist from a still better economy, it’s natural for me to take a critical view on India,

and given the fact that India is such a vast nation, my personal observation is by no means complete, objective, and

bias-free”.
A young Kolkata journalist studying Chinese and serving as a copy editor for the English language daily newspaper in

Shenzhen, quotes a Chinese friend who returned recently from a trip to Bangalore as comparing the two cities. He said that his

own Shenzhen was a city laid out with a ruler. “Bangalore”, he said, “looks like a bowl of noodles was spilled on its map and

its roads were outlined in pencil around them”. <Comment>Indeed!. This is quote of the decade!</Comment>
I find myself making the same comparisons after five years of living in China and after 35 years of living in and often

visiting South Asia. I recently drove leisurely 1,500 miles from Guangzhou in the south to Chengdu in the north-west, stopping

for the first night after 500 miles in Nanning <Comment>Considering he drove for 10 hours - he will have to drive at 80KMPH to do some 800KM(=500miles). Imagine doing that on Indian roads!</Comment>, a provincial capital that is also China’s gateway to Vietnam. We rolled into

Nanning along a neat four-lane boulevard lined with tall palm trees and bordered with side access roads, through a city of tall

buildings softly lit in the evening and bright shops.
My thoughts immediately sped to a memory of my first visit to Bangalore when I was most curious about this city that was

the core of India’s information technology and outsourcing revolution. I was disappointed, perhaps, by my own unfounded

expectations. Instead of IT glamour, I found potholed roads and dust and the amiable shambles that resembled other Indian

towns.
This experience has repeated itself time and again during my travels in China. Driving south the 80 or so miles from my

home in Guangzhou to the semi-autonomous enclave of Macau, a former Portuguese colony, I travel for two hours along eight- and

six-lane highways over scores of bridges across the Pearl river delta. Then I remember that frantic road from Delhi to Agra

that has always made me grateful for the early morning train along the same route.
On the trip to Chengdu, all but about 150 miles of the trip was on four-lane express highways, through tunnels in the

mountainous regions that are burrowed in the hills two- and three-kilometres long and over trestle-like bridges 1,500 feet

high. The road from Chongqing to Chengdu, the final 150 miles of the journey, was only three-month old. Of course, my friends

in India tell me the road from Delhi to Agra is now better.
If totalitarian China, where tall construction cranes are so common they should be emblazoned on the national flag, can

build roads, bridges, tunnels and grand cities that are reaching for world-class recognition, why can’t free India do the same

with its increasingly enlightened citizenry and growing wealth?

The writer teaches journalism at a university in Guangzhou.

Animal instinct

2006-04-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

# Yesterday my 6 year nephew pokes his new born baby brother's head with a pencil.
# My elder sister, when we were young hits me with a sickle (i wasnt injured coz it was blunt one).
# I push my younger sister down from an attic when i was 12.

No we are not a family of retards - thats not the point im trying to make.

# when i was in nursery school, a classmate of mine cuts the scalp of guy sitting next to him.
# when the teacher enquiring him about what just happened (the stupid teacher didnt take the blade away from this guy) he demo's it on the girl sitting on the other side!!

So you see its not just my family... the point is kids hurt themselves/other arround them because they dont know what they are doing or they are dumb? well, thats partly the reason. Mallu and myself came up, sometime ago with this theory that kids are evil by nature and have animal instincts that go away with proper training and environment. So bringing up children is more like taming wild animals (not that i have much experience in this domian). For example, the whole family sat with my nephew and made him understand how it hurts the baby when he pokes a pencil in its head and how it would hurt if someone else did it to him - all part of domesticating him.

It takes a lot of brainwashing in forms of education, religion, social setup, moral fear, proper upbrining to domesticate a kid. Domestication teaches you to supress your animal instincts, it keeps (almost) every horny man from jumping on the first women he finds (thats what my dog would do. actually its a natural thing to do. every animal's mission on earth is to reproduce).

Is is this whole domestication stuff good? Utilitarianism (= Max good * Max no of people * Max amount of time) says yes. i think its nice to have a controlled wild side (which we all have anyways).

incident

2006-04-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

# People should not be forced to mourn. Why were the friggin TV channels turned off
?(i dont watch TV these days anyway... but i feel strongly about it)

# Why should bussinesses be forced to close down? My company incurred a loss of 8 hours * 40$ * 150 people = 48000USD and we have to make up for it by working on a saturday. Did i mention i hate working on saturdays. Think of all the money bangalore has lost by sutting down (even though other companies have billing rate less than half of mine. ya but then they've got numbers)

# BMTC is one company thats sure to be under loss whenever there is unrest in bangalore. Why were are the buses burnt - it was a natural death for gods sake. Do these brutes deserve METRO!!? - they'll burn it down!

# The only good thing that came out of it was there were no vehicles on road (yes i was in office all day, even thou it was an off). It was the smoothest ride to office i had in years (and will have) in years - O! and that was becoz i did not encounter a mob. Everyday after that ride i wish someone important dies (not that there will another guy with such huge fan following - oops! what an irresponsible thought)

i havent any mentioned names here, but i couldnt have been more obvious. Im brave(afterall somebody's got to do it) ,actually - im scared. Of being a target of hatemails or even worse have my house burnt down (Not that i expect one of those rick drivers to be reading this, <ThinkingOutLoud>but... does my profile on blog give out my office/residence address....</ThinkingOutLoud> ).
.
.

<ThinkingOutLoud>Im glad my profile photo doesnt give out much..</ThinkingOutLoud>
.
.
Did i put a disclaimer that these opinions are my own and that i dont represent my company/family members blah blah blah
.
.
<ThinkingOutLoud>have i given out my email address anywhere.....</ThinkingOutLoud>

Enticer Vs Avenger

2006-04-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

After riding both the bikes for 300+KM here's what i found (Disclaimer: This is not a professional review of bikes):
# maneuvering - Avenger wins (better because of straight handle bars).
# power/pickup/performance - Well no prizes for guessing - Avenger
# seating comfort - Enticer
# looks/design - Enticer (with all its smooth curves)
# fuel efficiency - Enticer
# Riding comfort - Enticer (i never had to stretch my arms when riding enticer, this i think is because of straight handle bar. On enticer i never feel the weight of the bike on my elbows)

Overall i like my Enticer better (ya... i kinda biased). All it lacks it is power (infact its a sheep in wolf's skin).

Anyways, the long ride was to ranganatittu and somnathpur. It was a 14 hour trip with 10 hours of riding. I hate bragging 'bout it but, all this after a sleepless (sleepless because our ever-so-helpful friend, who was hoping we wouldnt do it if we didnt sleep, wouldnt let us take even a short nap till it was time to leave in the morning.) night of drinking ofcourse - we never do it the easy way.

iPod

2006-04-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

cronology:
1. This is one thing i fell in love with when i saw it for the first time about 3 years ago. I was amazed by the idea of small harddisk that has mp3 codec - a replacement for ur CD-walkman (who uses them these days anyways?). I had to have it.
2. A year later i saw the 2G iPod ones in apple store - with a heavy price tag of 27K for 40Gigs.
3. Then everyone arround me seems to be buying one. Its no big deal anymore... iPod goes mainstream.
4. But when i had to buy one i didnt even consider alternatives like Creative Zen - It had to be iPod.

Well im definitely not regretting it. It has made office-home commute more bareable - shuts me off from the noisy traffic.
As some wiseman said "make sure your day is good till 10am - the rest of your day will turn out to be good" (well, something like that). Thats what iPod is doing for me. A great way to start your day on bike - all you get to hear is music (well if you like deathmetal that is) no vrooom, vroooom no keeeeck, keeeck. Not just that you wont hear the old man in battered rickshaw/supra cussing you when you overtake him. You smile back at people who scream at you and you forgive drivers who just tried to kill - you have better things to do than get into a fight. Sounds like perfect solution for roadrage isnt it? except - my mum thinks the load music on my walkman will get me into trouble

Goods acquired from US

2006-04-13T02:53:00.000-07:00

#canon S2 IS + 2gig memory

# 30gig video iPod

#1gig flash memory + tent + headlight and other small gadgets/tools ( :) + clothes +shoes)

Flight of beer

2006-02-13T20:07:00.000-08:00

I dont like people who brag about their drinking habits. But i couldnt resist this:
Here, in Arbor brewing company my colleagues and i went had 10 different kinds(1 ounce each of red ale, brown ale, german, english, wheat and many others that i had not heard of in india. here is a comprehensive list) of beer. It is a gr8 pub and they serve great beer. i also saw snow fall for the first time and did some ice skating (hanging on to the walls of stadium ofcourse).
Ann arbor is a great place to be (if youve got good crowd to hang out with and your employer pays for all the beer) ha ha ha

Whats Music?

2006-01-17T09:08:00.000-08:00

My definition - If your brain can find patterns/rhythm/peace and can get hooked onto a certain sound - thats music! - rest is noise
I guess i was oversimplifying when i was arguing with a friend about "death metal" - my argument was my brain operates at different (higher) frequency and i enjoy heavy metal.
Alternate definition - If you can say "i know exactly what this guy is talking bout" when you hear a song - thats music. What i had not thought about is songwriting/lyrics. I have to accept i can write better songs than some of metal bands. I guess you cant have best of both music & lyrics

Maybe i should do more of coldplay, james blunt & indian classical...

Sheryl Crow needs physics lessons

2006-01-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

Lines from Sheryl Crow's latest song "Good is good"...

And everytime you hear the rolling thunder
You turn around before the lightening strikes

!!!!!!! now is that possible?
Apparently she doesnt seem to know that speed of sound (Approx. = 330 m/s) is less than that of light (= 2299792458 m/s - yup i googled for it...) by a order of 10^6.

Hmmm... the only way this can happen is if the the lightning strikes is the same place more that once (but i bet like most people, she believes that "Lightning never strikes twice in the same place")

Happy New Year

2006-01-02T07:42:00.000-08:00

Well for new year's eve we (the trio - mallu, vivek and me) did that same thing that we have been doing for over a decade (exceptions: year 2000 and 2004) now. Getting drunk @ mallu's place and bitch about the whole world. bangalore infrastructure, politics, women, s/w industry, india vs china, movies, music - you name it!. I know what a bunch a losers!, but it seems thats what we njoy doing most - enjoy each others company, talk about what we have (and the world has) been upto since we last met.

Abu Ghraib

2005-12-22T05:40:00.000-08:00

These were the only 2 pics taken from my Sony Eric phone that i could download to my comp before i lost my phone.

Note:
1. This pic was taken in the morning after one of our pygama parties. The pics were inspired by Abu ghraib scandal that made news paper headlines, @ the time when they were taken.
2. NO PUN INTENDED
3. YES! its me in pic.

More Trek action...

2005-12-21T06:27:00.000-08:00

We now have a name for our trekking group - Benki (fire brand) trekkers. Over the last couple of weeks we did,
Kodachadri and Arishina Gundi (relatively unexplored falls near kodachadri)
Kumara purvatha (at last!) - o! man it was a tough one to conquer.
What else? i will I defer from bragging about leeches, mosquitoes, the forest, adventure, how fast we were.... blah blah blah.

Subconscious

2005-11-19T01:31:00.000-08:00

One of my old friends got married recently. This happened in his bachelor's party. This dude got drunk and was sleeping with his conscious disabled by alcohol. I was (unfortunately) lying beside him when it happened (It was amazing to watch it happen). This guy was sleeping on his back but when was ready to throw up, he tured arround. He would have chocked in his puke had he not turned arround - thanks to 'Subconscious'.

Losing my mobile...

2005-11-16T04:50:00.000-08:00

I have been asking for it since the day i bought it. Whenever i lost it, it found its way back to me. looks like i finally ran out of luck. So here im using a teammate's old 3310... how does it feel like using low end nokia after using a (once-upon-a-time) high-end sony-ericsson? - like using dos after using XP.

My teams feedback

2005-09-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Recently we had a feedback session, This is what my team members had to say about me:
Strenghts:
Raghu is very good team player and blends in the team very well. He has very good sense of development practices and brings up issues in open. He is also fast learner and displayed good learning skills. He is technically good (For eg ASP.NET,OO skills). He is very conscious of agile TDD development methodology. His problem solving approach is good. He is patient and answers questions while pairing. He explains project details to the team members.
Area(s) of improvement:
Raghu must be more involved in Technical discussions and must speak-up in tele-confs with client. He must be attentive to people while they are talking to him. He must be more responsive in updating story progress with IM. Raghu must share knowledge with the team members and mentor the team members. He must follow the rules set the team (Cap rule). Since the project is small Raghu must know all parts of the projects. He must strive to apply his ASP.NET knowledge. Should do more TDD. Raghu sometimes uses anti-patterns which he must try to avoid and must learn to use patterns effectively.

I(think)'Am back

2005-09-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

Its been 187 days ((DateTime.Today - new DateTime(2005,3,9)).Days; thats how figured that out.i know! what a loser) and a thousand mangoes since i blogged. Been busy (well not exactly - been procrastinating)

Things we do for kicks (contd...)

2005-03-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

# trek to chembra, a peak higher than the highest in karnataka. we did the impossible - finished it in one day (up & down)

# mark knopfler's concert was very instrumental, worth every buck we paid. I think b'lore's ready (has been for decades now, its just that aam-jantha can offord to pay big buck for big concerts) for big metal bands.

# more shopping - the bills for this month is over 7k. Well all that shopping is for a marriage in my family.

A circular reference

credit card tips:

This will work if u have have big cards with big offers thats given to employee's of big companies, like The best employer in India - Sasken (my fun days @ sasken come to an end tommorow). here's the algoritm

1. shop with any card. make sure its u have enuf dues (atleast 5k).
2. do a balance transfer to a card that has "0% transfer" offer.
3. You can repay the money in 3/6 months, depending on the card. You dont pay a buck extra.
4. if u are unable to pay back during this time goto step 2

The net effect is a intrest free loan for umlimited period (but you have to keep paying minimum dues - this is not interest, but priciple). most cards are making such offers these days to expand their customer base. So make the most out of if!

Things we do for kicks

2005-02-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

No this is not about Disneyland stuff. We guys (Adrenjunky,Another junky and me) are have busy doing lot of things for past few weeks.

# Went parasailing
# Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's mohan veena was a psychedelic experience.
# Head banged to some local rock bands & went to sting concert
# Watched a play @ rangashankara
# Watched 2 movies continously in same theatre - Page 3 (A must watch) and another movie not worth mentioning.
# Enrolled for MBA-IT, for no perticular reason at all.
# Got myself new job.

One thing i didnt mention in the list* is shopping. I shop once a month. The other day my friend pointed out that she never thought i as shopping crazy guy. As a matter of fact, once-a-month shopping is minimal these days. The norm is once-a-week shopping thnx to all the life-time-free-credit cards, gift/discount coupons, discount sales, mutiplexes, outsourcing/BPO jobs, economic boom here in bangalore. Indian consumer is spending more than ever... well so am i.

* One thing i have noticed is most of my blogs have bulleted points. maybe its becoz im a s\w guy / i like presenting information (That reminds of a mail on data vs information. data = 362436; information = 36-24-36) that way / im no good at writing lengthy paragraphs / helps me put lot of unrelated things under a single list in any order - i dont have to worry about the flow.

My blogs also have a lot of
1. star (*) thing (foot notes....)
2. pointers/links - this maybe because im lazy.

Movie scripts

2005-01-25T03:39:00.000-08:00

Movie quotes can be found (infact whole darn movie script is) here:
some of my favs:
Matrix
Forrest gump
Apocalypse Now

....Good for FTP-ing

Road Rage

2005-01-19T22:22:00.000-08:00

My friend's father was giving us gyan, the other day on defensive driving. He talked about about how we should halt at every intersection, look arround before proceeding (proceed if you dont get hit by a vehicle behind you when you halt?). I know a guy(name withheld. being cautious is away of life for him) who believes in defensive driving. He also believes in defensive coding, something like this:

if(array.Length>0)
{
for(int i=0;i<array.Length;i++)

{
//....
}
}

Thats not defensive thats offensive. I wrote all that to prove the way we drive can be seen in other thing we do like the code we write...

for(;;);

how would guy who writes code like this drive?

Anyways, 3 things that offend me, make my blood boil on road are:
1. Vehicle that make you blind with their high beams. You can neither stop driving (the guy behind you who is also blinded may crash into you) nor proceed you cant see whats ahead
2. Traffic jams.
3. All other vehicles on road.
It seems the blood boiling part is not normal. Its a psychological disorder called Road Rage. A bad morning drive to your office can screw up your whole day! I go thru it almost everyday. Here is an article that talks about Road Rage in bangalore.

So what can anyone do about it? we can either
A. Bitch about it like this friend of mine (half his blogs are about bad roads/infrastructure. Hope he comes out and identifies himself)
B. Stop bitching and do something about it.

So what did i do about it?. well i volunteered for an organisation called Janaagraha as a PHP programmer (they wanted some). But they offered me data entry work and i didnt take it up (ofcourse i cant imagine myself spending my weekends filling excel sheets). But Janaagraha is the place to be if anyone wants to do something (other than cribbing) about b'lore's infrastructure. Participatory democracy is the word. It was started by Ramesh Ramanathan. He is a product of reverse brain drain thats happening these days. He quit his job as MD of citibank,NY to come back and do development work, in midst of all the chaos, bureaucracy here, in bangalore. Sounds like a movie story? well it isnt. But it did inspire movies like Swades, which is loosely based on his life.

Munnar to kodai - on foot.

2005-01-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

What a way to end the year! The trek was professional stuff (tents, gas stove, food, toilet papers, sleeping bags, camp fire...)! it takes 4 days on foot (59km of hilly terrain) from munnar(kerala) to kodai(Tamilnadu) on an abandoned road, built by british. No humans for miles - it was just (12 of) us and the forest. Came across wild monkeys, fresh elephant & bison dung (couldnt see them), porkupine quills(in plenty). Heard barking deers (couldnt see them either).
I have lot to say about this trek,but someone has already done it(It seems these guys got lost like we did. But unlike them we didnt end the trek, we took villagers help to get back on track). So i'll just finish by saying it was THE best so far.

here's another link to a place called Berijam, where we spent out last night of the trek.

Info:
This trek was organized by an adventure club called Teamers
25/3, II Floor, 3rd Cross,near Shanti Sagar Hotel,KG Road
22264923/ 9844406351
Cost: 2000/-

That reminds me of another adventure club Adventurers. It seems both these clubs were started by national college guys at the same time.
Adventurer's contact info:
142, 69th Cross, 5th Block, Rajajinagar, Bangalore 560 010
pH: 23305508 or 23409712
email: honnemardu@satyam.net.in

Adveturers manage this place (leased from govt.) called honne marudu, ideal place for water sports and camping. cost 500/- per day per head.

Omerta

2004-12-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

I was listening to this radio station, when a song started off with this quote

Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without that law is both.
For a wounded man shall say to his assalent,"If I live I will kill you, if I die you are forgiven".
Such is the Rule of Honor.

That sure sounds like a Rule of honour. I cant imagine what will happen to this world if everyone followed this rule. The song was Omerta from Lamb of God*. Now Omerta sounded familiar... I was about to google when it hit me. I have come accross this word very many times in Mario Puzo's** novels. He even has a novel by the name Omerta(Im sure i'v read this book but what was the story... ?).Omerta is a Sicilian law (underworld's law) of silence.

* Lamb of god seems to be a great death metal band. Need to get their songs....
** Mario Puzo is the best when it comes to underworld novels like God Father,Sicilian, Fool's Dies. In each of his novels he displays gr8 knowledge of Sicilian underworld.

Being on bench...

2004-12-21T23:02:00.000-08:00

I had never been on bench in my 2+ yrs career. Its been almost a month now... all i do these days is attend some training programs. Its unsettling coz 12+ hrs in office(irrespective of how many hours i effectively work),to me (and to most IT guys) spells Job Security.

Nyways now that i have not much work to do, i read all newpapers (TOI,hindu,express,herald....) and magazines(india today,outlook...) in office. I go home early even after being delayed by rush hour traffic. The other day it was very frustrating - there was this huge jam in old madras Rd,after 15 min wait i took alternate route through ulsoor only to find there is another jam in frazer town so i had to go thru good-old nostalgic Tannery Rd (Aaah! where have my carefree college days gone?) to reach home 1 hour 45 mins after i started from office.

Back home, first thing i play with Neo (my boxer dog) for sometime (he demands for immediate attention). After that i have nothing else to do. Bored to death i turn on the Idiot Box. Nothing other than hindi movie songs or steamy, pulse-raising remixes on Channel V or MTV these days - pathetic. How i long for a music channel (@ least a radio channel? even FM91 sold out and started playing crap for money) that can play decent music... I handover the remote and go to book shelf. There are unopened tech books worth atleast 7k and a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged when will i ever read them? Its overwhelming so i decide against reading and go back and watch sas-bahu serials with my mom (what a loser i'am!).

Its different but i hope it doesnt last, coz i like Living on the edge! (whatever's that suppose to mean...)

Impersonation

2004-12-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

ASP.NET runs by default as ASPNET user. This can be changed using identity element in web.config - <identity impersonate="true/false" [userName="uid"] [password="pwd"]/>. Most ASP.NET developers will be familiar with this.
ex: <identity impersonate="true"/> & <authentication mode="Forms"/> = IUser
here is a comprehensive list for different combinations.

Web config settings wont be of much help if the user has to be impersonated dynamically or if a block of code has to be executed as a different user. To do this WindowsIdentity.Impersonate method has to be used.

WindowsIdentity id = new WindowsIdentity(token);
WindowsImpersonationContext impersonatedUser = id.Impersonate();
//execute code as impersonated user
//...
impersonatedUser.Undo();//WindowsImpersonationContext.Undo reverts the impersonation.

Its as simple as that. The tricky part is getting the token which involves calls to unmanaged code (kernel32.dll,advapi32.dll). This link has the sample code.

Employee Satisfation

2004-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

Good pay package doesnt keep an employee happy anymore. So what does? Maslow's Need Hierarchy gives the answer.
we learnt about Maslow's need hierarchy in one of our Engg subjects (i think Management in Engg or was it Computer profession and Society?)

Da vinci code

2004-12-06T03:38:00.000-08:00

This is probably one of the most controversial book of the decade. I wont do a review of the book here (thats there on Amazon), but just recommend it as a good read. It looks like Dan Browne wanted to give his views about 2000 year old history and hence wrote this book. It has a very ordinary plot that revolves arround a murder mystery. The book should be read for the facts and theories that Dan Browne has put into it. Here is a list some of the interesting Facts and Theories that i came accross in the book (Since i cant distinguish [i'm no good in history] between Fact and Theory i wont categorize):
1. Jesus was married.
2. His wife (Mary Magdalene) was portrayed as a prostitute in Bible.
3. Bible was written 400 years after the death of jesus.
4. A meeting was held in 400 AD and it was decided that Jesus was son of god (there was debate on whether he should be son of god or messenger of god).
5. All documents that were written to that date (400 BC) was destroyed and church came into existence.
6. Leonardo Da Vinci was a Gay.
7. And a member of Prory of Sion.
9. Prory of Sion is an organisation that protects the holy grail.
10. Holy grail is nothing but documents that contain details of Jesus's life, Mary magdalene.
11. Da Vinci's paintings have hidden meanings (Esp. The last Supper where Mary Magdalene is sitting next to Jesus)
12. Jesus even had a kid! and his desendants and still there somewhere in France.

I could go on... there is lot more in the book. It is a thought provoking book. A must read.

Top 3 Fiction books i'v read:
1. The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand
2. The Redemption ( & Mitla pass) by Leon Uris
3. The Class by Erich Segal

Currently reading: Refactoring by the Martin Fowler. One of the best books on programming practices. A must read for all developers. Its so basic that i wonder why it was not included as a part of out Engg Cirriculum.

Switch statement

2004-11-17T21:18:00.000-08:00

The advantage of switch over ladder if other than readability/clarity in code is the optimazations that compiler/runtime can make because,
1. LHS of the boolean expression is always the same
2. The only kind of boolean expression involved is equality check

This is true for any programming language in any platform. But .net compilers make other optimizations. The best part about these optimizations is i can see it happening in the resultant IL.

3.consider this switch statement,

switch(x)
{
case 54:
y =7;
break;
case 55:
y =90;
break;
case 5:
y =90;
break;
case 53:
y =90;
break;
default:
y = 0;
break;
}
Console.WriteLine(y);

here the RHS has a series(c# compiler is smart enough to fish out the series even though they are in random order) 53,54,55.... the il generated for this is optimized with a switch* insruction like this

IL_0035: ldloc.2
IL_0036: ldc.i4.s 53
IL_0038: sub
IL_0039: switch (
IL_005a,
IL_004c,
IL_0050)

other case's like case 5,default will work like if-else statement

IL_0031: ldloc.2
IL_0032: ldc.i4.5
IL_0033: beq.s IL_0055

5. In case swich cases involving string and a simple assignment in each case
ex:

case "1":
i = 1;
break;
case "2":
i = 2;
break;

a hash table is created with name-value as
"1" - 1
"2" - 2
and so on
then
i = hashTable[name];//no conditional statements involved
....now its too much of an effort to write down an example for this compile it put C# and IL code here. somebody has already done it.

* switch instruction is a address table. if the top value of stack is 0 it jumps to 0th address ans so on.
In the above example 53 is substracted from the numbers (53,54,55...) which results in i (0,1,2...) and a jump is made to the address given by i-th entry in the table

In serenity, away from the toxicity of our city

2004-11-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

"Nature has her many moods. Before relaxing in the plains of Bayaluseeme, she indulges in an exuberant dance in the Western Ghats, creating through her rhythm and postures hills,valleys, rivers and myriad life forms. Hence the Western Ghats is an explorer’s delight.Here, there is no end to the variety and grandeur that nature holds and unfolds."
-- Anon

Lots of trek happening from past few weeks,My trek mates and i covered,
Chikmaglur (bababudangiri and mullainagiri)

Then it was Kosalli falls(locally known as abbe falls). This was relatively unexplored territory. The trek was along the stream that leads to 6 waterfall one above the other. We did not complete the trek. Managed only to reach the last waterfall. This was because,
a. Before starting our trek the localites discouraged us from climbing all the way up. It seems a guy has slipped from the waterfall and died a couple of days before we went.
b. This article talks about russle vipers and i'm shit scared of snakes (we had close encounter with 2 snakes on our way back)
c. Ok, mainly because it was a tough trek, which involved lots of rock (or rather boulder) climbing
lesson learned from this trek: never start a trek with prejudices about the place - you will never complete it.

I missed the trek to kodachadri, where the guys spent a sleepless night in an old temple with a venomous viper.

....... and my pal has started a foto blog where he puts up fotos of our adventure trips

A publicity stunt...

2004-11-15T21:43:00.000-08:00


	Transcript id: 669975 Access code: RAGSMCAD

FTP* stuff

2004-09-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

When i was preparing for aptitude tests, as a fresher (I even got thru Infy puzzle round as a fresher. Didnt get thru the next round. But now i thank heavens i'm not in Infy) i realized, i enjoyed those brainteasers. Few days later i gave my IQ test on one of those IQ test sites. After that i take IQ tests regularly just to check if my IQ has improved. I usually do miserably in these tests. I'v got scores as low as 80 and as high as 150 - its never consistent. but my IQ i believe is somewhere between 124-126.

Advantages of taking IQ test:
1. Improves reasoning/analytical skills.
2. Improves lateral thinking.
3. IQ can increase by, upto 10, by regularly taking IQ tests (but that never happened to me).
4. Improves problem solving skills and helps in coming up with innovative solutions to problems in life/work.
5. It is good time pass and can be even addictive.
6. Good results in IQ tests makes you more confident.

Anyways, a lot of IQ test can be found here including this. The latter has a link to sample test from the famous Mensa society,which has Sharon Stone** as its Member.

* FTP stands for Full Time Pass (Full to be pronounced in kannda accent)
** Yes, its the same Basic Instinct babe. She's got more brains than most of her male fans, including me!. I was shocked when i heard,with an IQ of 154 she's among the top 2% in the world. She is a Nobel prize material........ and PlayBoy material, Oscar nominee. She could have been anything she wanted to be a - rocket scientist, a techie anything. I wonder why she was gifted with such a genius mind and exquisite beauty - she cant make use of both at a time can she?. But then life is not always fair.

Regular expression adventure

2004-09-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

I never thought, something as trivial as date validation (fool proof) with regexp would turn out to be challenging (and fun-filled) task. here's how i went about it:
Aim: to validate date in mm/dd/yyyy format. leap years and 30/31 days months have to be validated with a single regular expresion.
1. \d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4} - matched 2 digits + / + 2 digits + / + 4 digits
No good.

2.
0?[1-9]|1[012] - matches 1,2, .... 9 or 01,02... 09 or 10,11,12 - mm lets call it A
0?[1-9]|[012][1-9]|3[01] - matches 01 or 1,02 or 2............. 31 - dd - B
\d{4} - matches yyyy - C
This was the my first regex: A/B/C
i.e: (0?[1-9]|1[012])/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])/d[4]

Not good enough doesnt validate 30 days month,feb,lep year feb and a bug too....
B doesnt match the dates 10,20 this 0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01] is the correct exprn for dd

3. validating leap year? almost impossible!. i could give 30 days months a try....
0?[13578]|1[02] - matches 31 days month jan,mar.... dec - A
0?[469]|11 - matches 30 days month - B
0?2 - matches feb - C
0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01] - D, 0?[1-9]|[12]\d|30 - E, 0?[1-9]|[12]\d - F matches 1 (or 01) .... 31 ,1 (or 01) .... 30 and 1 (or 01) .... 29 respectively
combing all the pieces:
((A/D)|(B/E)|(C/F))/d{4}
i.e,
(((0?[13578]|1[02])/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))|((0?[469]|11)/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|30))|(0?2/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d)))/\d{4}
Looks almost complete except it accepts 29th of feb in any given year.

4. Now the leap year matching doesnt look impossible. does it?
Logic: 1000's,100's are mutiples of 4 so ina 4 digit number if the last 2 digits are mutiple of 4 then
the number is a multiple of 4. between 00-99 there are 25 numbers that are multiple of 4 i.e
00,04,08,12,16,20...... 96
\d{2}(00|04|08|12|16|20.... 96) - matches leap years. now can you beat that?
i did - since i was in a pattern matching thinking pattern
Alternate logic: consider the last 2 digits of leap year
00,04,08
12,16
20,24,28
32,36
40,44,48 .....
see the pattern? every alternate row looks similar
[02468][048] matches even rows - 00,04,02,20,24,28,40,44,48,..... call it A
odd rows - [13579][26] - 12,26,32,36,52,56, ..... call it B
\d{2}(A|B)
i.e,
\d{2}([02468][048]|[13579][26]) - is regexp to match leap years
To match feb of any given year:
0?2/(0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])/\d{4} - 0-28 of feb in any year
0?2/29/\d{2}([02468][048]|[13579][26]) - 29th of feb in leap years

5. 4 main pieces of regex:
1. 0-30 - in 30 days month, in any year
A: 0?[13578]|1[02]
B: 0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]
2. 0-31 - in 31 days month, in any year
C: 0?[469]|11
D: 0?[1-9]|[12]\d|30
3.0-28 - of feb in any year
E: 0?2/(0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])
4. 29th - of feb in leap year
F: 0?2/29/\d{2}([02468][048]|[13579][26])
combining these gives the complete regex,
((((A/B)|(C/D)|(E))/\d{4})|(F))
(((((0?[13578]|1[02])/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))|((0?[469]|11)/(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|30))|(0?2/(0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])))/\d{4})|(0?2/29/\d{2}([02468][048]|[13579][26])))

Performance: There are arround 10 (i suspect much) sub expressions that will be capured. we need to use ?: to indicate that we are only interested in matching and not capturing
^(?:(?:(?:(?:(?:0?[13578]|1[02])/(?:0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))|(?:(?:0?[469]|11)/(?:0?[1-9]|[12]\d|30))|(?:0?2/(?:0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])))/\d{4})|0?2/29/\d{2}(?:[02468][048]|[13579][26]))$

note:
1. ^ and $ in the beginning and end of inout stirng respectively. It is used to indicate the that date as a whole is the input for the pattern matching. it should not be part of another string or in should not have anything extra (not even spaces just mm/dd/yyyy)
2. Sub expression in anthing that cimes inside round brackets ["(" and ")"]. subexperssion are captured and retunred in a array along with the string that matches the complete regex.
3. yyyy/mm/dd is th emost regex friendly date format. Now, that a useless observation.
4. i wrote all this down because a week later i may not remember what that cryptic regex does and what those magic numbers are.

Optimizing JavaScript for Execution Speed

2004-08-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

This is a neeeat article. learnt 2 new tricks
1. for(var i = 0;p = doc.getElementsByNames("..")[i];i++)
"How come I! didnt think of it?" (my ego speaking)
2. car = {
model: "something",
height: 20,
....
}
instead of creating an object. (Now no way i could have thought of that. I didnt know something like that existed. ego shattered...)

Mamavatu Shree Saraswati

2004-08-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

try
{
One of my friends gave me some fusion music, the kind Talivin Singh, Karunesh play (what do u call this genre? alternate indian music?). I dont mind listening to some good non-rock music once in a while.When i was checking-out my new song-list i heard this voice it sounded like MS Subbalakshmi singing with a pinch of english accent (it was hardly noticable). It was a authentic Carnatic voice and it belonged to Susheela Raman. The was music from Tabla (or some latin/african hand percussion instrument) , Gutiar and voilin - it sounded different. The song was Mamavatu.
}
catch(ExceptionalMusicException e)
{
Few seconds into the song and i knew this was music at its very best! I'm good (actaully too good) at sniffing out good music and when i do sniff some i put it on repeat and listen to it, till every note, every word had penetrates and becomes a part of me. The craziest thing i've done is playing Metallica's Low Man's Lyric, which is a 7+ mins song for 20+ times continously.
But this one broke all records; for next 2 days (its been almost a week now and i cant seem to have enough of it), my ears heard nothing but this lady's voice and whenever i opened mouth the only words that came out were Mamavatu shree saraswati and then found Nagumomu,
a heart breaking song, from Susheela. Both Mamavatu and Nagumomu (my sources say) are centuries old compositions from south india. Mamavatu is a sansrkit song from karnataka (i did some research later) and Nagumomu, i believe is in Telugu (not sure). In Nagumomu, Susheela's angrez accent was bit more prominent (she seemed like someone who's not very comfortable with indian languages), but the voice was that of a authentic (i mean AUTHENTIC) Carnatic singer, which made me wonder who the is this Susheela Raman. I had this picture of modern-looking, middle aged, tamil-brahmin female with fair complexion, clad in a rich silk saree, someone like Vani Ganapati. But when i googled what i saw was a was a female, in jeans with curly hair,dark complexion. She looked like Alicia Keys. Her biography was very impressive. I've heard 2 songs songs from this prodigy-babe and i'm already a fan. The album's called Salt Rain, this was her first album.
}
finally
{
If i can get music like this in india, i will never look outside for anything (which means saying goodbye to linkin park,pearl jam.... - i'm not so sure). Not that there arent better Carnatic musicians in india, what i want is old wine in packaged in new bottle. Thats what Susheela's all about.
}
Important notes:
1. I hate fusion music that mixes disco beats with classical music.
2. I (passionately) hate indian songs sung in english accent (Eg: "Govinda" by Kula Shaker)
3. I'll never be a carnatic singer,even thought i could pick up the words easily (like rajadhiraja phoojitha cheraney, rajeeva nayaney,ramaneeya vadhaney) i could never sing it.
4. I think i can manage to sing rock thou, can be found singing away to glory in one of these stupid places: a)Styx b) B-11 c)Purple haze on weekends.
5. The try..catch block is not inspired by Devdays/Teched ads. It is an original idea (or thats what i'd like to believe).

C# to IL

2004-07-28T03:08:00.000-07:00

This it the first .net book i read. this is also the first book i read after i started working. I took this it up for reading because it was the only book availible in company's library with c# written on it (i didnt know what was IL back then). I hadnt written a line of .net code before i began reading it. But i felt at home from page 1 thanks to 8086 lessons in engg. and my high comfort level with semi-colon languages. How did it helped me? that will be another blog. But it is a must read for every .NETter.
This book has an unattractive cover, stupid font, low quality print/paper. But the content is top quality, in that it tells no stories and it contains a lot of code - my kind of book. Its dirt cheap (costs 200+) compared to microsoft books (which uses 5+ pages in each chapter to show screen shots of how to create new project in VS.net) and wrox books (which explains 2 line concepts in 2 pages)
This is the online version of it. Vijay mukhi has hosted all his books on his site

Raghu Romeo

2004-07-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

A love struck romeo sings the streets a serenade... thats the song that was playing in my mind, moments before i met with an accident. I'v had other,relatively small accidents after that, but the first one was like first love - It caused maximum damage, it left ugly scars, i'm still recovering from it (its been over a year now).

Huhmm... after that incident, i renamed romeo & juliet to The accident song... before i get lost here (& here) is a real life romeo (and one of my bestest friend, for over a decade) romancing with words....

Tolerance for what?

2004-07-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

Do we go out of our way for the fear of being called Narrow minded / Fundamentalist? Ananth (Anthroponym) a HKBKCE friend of mind puts down his view on this.

Note: With al due respect my gr8 college let me clarify that HKBKCE does not stand for Hakka Bukka college of Engg but Hazrat Kwaja Kutubuddin Bhaktiar Kaki College Of Engg" (Hope i spelt it right. Especially afer forcing the freshers to write it down for 100 times if they spelt it wrong, which they invariably did. ya! this was part of out fresher induction program)

SAX-DOM marraige

2004-07-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

with the release of .net2.0, we now have a parser that works like sax and provides SXPath(sequential XPath, which is a variation of XPath where only foward only querying is allowed) querying. This parser will be called XPathReader. it will give a big performance boost to applications which read bulky xml.
The catch here is even though it allows XPath querying it is diferent from XPathNavigator (which is a less costlier than playing with dom document), in that it doesnt construct a dom tree but works with xml stream sequentially, like most sax parsers do.

And now some nonsense: I wonder why Sequential XPath has been name SXPath and not SeXPath, maybe because it is a controversial abbreviation. But then that wont stop anybody from pronouncing it as sex path. I can give the example of SQL which is spelt as sequel....

Internals of OO features - C++ under the hood

2004-07-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is by far the best article i have read on internals of a compiler implementation (now i havent read many of them. have i?)

Another threat to my MANHOOD!

2004-06-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

Smoking causes impotence

Drinking causes impotence

Then they said software jobs cause impotence!!!

........... and now a new addition to that list (it was in yesterdays news). Keeping mobile phones in pant pockets may make men impotent (ofcouse keeping it in breast pocket may cause heart problems). The list keeps getting more creative. Can i live without having some fun on weekends (which basically means smoke/drink), without a job and without communicating? i dont think so.
I wonder who are those jobless people who keep doing such research.

2004-06-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

Mail to a friend

Subject: RE: Info on XPATH
ok lets see
scene 1:

<root>
<level1>
  <level2>
   <level3>
.......

2 ways to retrive level1
a. /root/level1 (my way)
b. //level1 (or the highway)

a says goto level1 under root and the search stops there.
b says get all level1's in the document it finds level1 under root but doesnt stop searching till the it has searched all nodes

scene 2:
<root>

<level1>
   <level11/>
   <level12> <level121/> </level12>
   <level13/>
</level1>

<level2>
   <level21/>
   <level22> <level121/>...... there could be some more </level12>
   <level23><level231></level23>
</level2>

</root>

search for level231:
a. /root/level2/level23/level231 (my way)
b. //level231 (or the highway again)

as u know by now "a" has no probs
whats wrong with b?
1. as u can c there are r sub trees in the main tree level1 and level2. level231 comes under level2, but this dumb xpath search all the nodes in 1st subtree.
2. when it finally comes to level2 it goes thru level22 and all its children which is not required.

scene 3:
I'll relate this to the OSHO's session that i sent u.

<language>
<verbs>
   <fuck/>
   <eat/>
   <drink/>
</verbs>
<adjectives>
   <very/>
   <highly/>
   <fuck/>
</adjectives>
</language>

search: verb fuck (notice that the element fuck appears in different places and they have different meaning)
a. /language/verbs/fuck (my way)
b. //fuck (or no way)

i wont even talk abt "a".
b retrives 2 fucks and u dont wont know what the fuck u r suppose to do with them.
u have find out their ancestors
or
do this //verbs/fuck

//fuck is less clear than //verbs/fuck which is less clear than /language/verbs/fuck

u can relate // to "SELECT * " in SQL. BAD practice

i can quote few other scenes but what the hell the mail has become too long.

-----Original Message-----
From: A friend
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 8:26 PM
To: Raghunandan R
Subject: Info on XPATH

Rags if u remember u said avoid using //RootElement/etc..

U suggested to use RootElemet/eleme. Etc….

U said it is a big performance hit.

What diff does it make

chris brumme

2004-06-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

this is some freak from MS giving me more .net than i can probably digest.

I love western ghats

2004-06-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

got back yesterday from here. It was all about pelting rain, heavy wind, visiblity of 5 mts , lots of leeches waiting to suck you dry, guts, glory, but mainly it was all about releasing the the bad energy that i had been stacking up since our previous adventure trip. It was 7 hours of hard trek (up and down).

The sad part was when we did reach the peak (or what we thought was the peak) i couldnt look down (or look arround - the visiblity here was almost zero here), scream and celebrate what i had acheived in the most inhuman trekking conditions(i'm sort of exaggerating but i like it that way). Althou my male ego was dissatisfied it was good excercise for my legs, back and i got my lungs cleaned - for free!.

Our next target should be this.

lessons learned:
1. take off your shoes when u come accross a stream
2. if u keep coming across a stream every 500 meters or if there are lots of leaches arround or if its raining done bother to take off your shoes.
3. carry plastic bags (but dont throw them arroung - its against trekkers etiqutte)
4. carry salt or a thin steel wire (this is just a reminder) to get rid of leeches.
5. 2 socks is not enough
6. carry 2 pair of shoes if u can
7. carry glucon-d "gaan mein gaan dalde peete hi"
8. dont pack too many thing, if u cant carry them arround
9. trek regularly so that you dont become desperate to trek in rainy season

2004-06-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

Mike Woodring's .NET Sample Page - contains cool code snippets

2004-06-04T08:06:00.000-07:00

The man, The voice - Jim Morrison
......... and his Poetry

2004-06-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Murphy's laws. Timepass stuff (highly philosophical too)
This is the site
and this is one page that has it all

2004-06-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

iunknown.com: Multi-module assemblies: "I'm admitting it. I've got a confession to make too: I've never written a multi-module assembly."

2004-06-04T03:29:00.000-07:00

The Code Project - URL Rewriting with ASP.NET - ASP.NET

2004-06-03T03:55:00.000-07:00

how cm i havent played arround(been postponing it...) with this one?
IanG on Tap: URL Dogma

2004-06-02T00:18:00.000-07:00

Accessing private members:
obj.GetType().InvokeMember("PrivateMethod",BindingFlags.NonPublic|BindingFlags.Instance|BindingFlags.InvokeMethod,null,objPrint,argsArray);
As simple as that.......

2004-05-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

i see some else had already done this(but not as good as mine). i thought i was the first one(shoulda known better)
Exploring the System.Reflection.Emit Namespace

2004-04-29T02:19:00.000-07:00

15 Seconds : HTTP Handlers and HTTP Modules in ASP.NET

2004-04-23T08:31:00.001-07:00

ASPAlliance.com : The #1 ASP.NET Community : Recycling AppDomains

2004-04-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Xefteri - Configuring the ASP.NET Worker Process through the machine.config file