Long time, no post...

Its been a long time since I last blogged on this blog. I think this is because of 2 main reasons:

 One, I find no spare time on weekdays. This is in turn because my workplace location has changed and I have to commute about 36 km one way (not an easy task using public transportation in Mumbai).

The other reason is that most of my browsing /  email reading at home happens on the iPad2. And to type anything on the iPad2 is a cumbersome task.

So no blogs, my friend. At least until I return to my PC. This post, by the way, is from the PC.

The death of the dead zone???

Even as I type this post, a mega-block (a non-availability of railway tracks in railway parlance) on the Western Railway suburban section draws to a close. This was due to the conversion of the electrification from DC to AC. While the lines north of Borivili were already AC-electrified, this work would mean that the lines would be converted to AC from north of Vile Parle instead. With that, in all probability, the neutral "dead zone" (which is currently at Borivili) would be shifted to Vile Parle. And, within a few months, the dead zone would be all gone as the entire suburban section would be AC-electrified.

Another Bengaluru trip

This evening I fly into Bengaluru for some work related conference. I am not carrying the heavy laptop, instead choosing to opt for my android mobile for emails / browsing. Since I do not have a SIM card in the device, I will have to rely on the WiFi connectivity instead. Usually, many conference venues, airports, and hotels have a WiFi connectivity. I hope this works out. Will post back the results here.

Update: This idea is working out quite well. WiFi access at Mumbai airport, accommodation, as well as at the venue. Good riddance to heavy laptops?

Update 2: I reached Mumbai late on Thursday evening (10th November). Like I mentioned in the earlier update, the idea of using the Android phone worked very well. Apart from the free WiFi access mentioned above, there was also free WiFi access available at Bangalore International Airport, except that the one at Bangalore restricted free access for 45 minutes. If more access was required, one was supposed  to buy additional access from online or some counter at the airport. I did not bother to buy additional time.

In hindsight, all one does is to check and reply to emails. All of this can be done easily today using a smart phone. Of course, typing long memos / documents is a pain, and obviously, one will also not have access to a development environment, but in a short trip such as this where a majority of the time is spent in attending the conference talks, this is hardly a priority.

In Dharwad, this Diwali...and back

This Diwali I am spending spent a quiet vacation in Dharwad. The weather is was cool and pleasant - perfect for a vacation. And, by the end of the week, we are back in Mumbai all charged up.

We had 3 weekdays off for the Diwali festival starting Wednesday, and adding the 2 weekend days meant a really long weekend vacation. The decision to visit Dharwad was taken late, and it was quite difficult to get train tickets at such a short notice, so we had to travel by bus. We went by a Volvo bus of VRL Travels, one that has lot of services on this route.

We left on Tuesday evening (after work) and  reached back on Sunday (today). The journey to Dharwad on Tuesday was quite tiring - the bus arrived about an hour late (traffic) at our boarding point, there was horrendous traffic (hordes were going away from Mumbai for Diwali), we had a flat tyre, I had dinner at 1:30 a.m., and until 6:30 a.m. in the morning we were still in Kolhapur.

Then, things changed for the better - a new expressway from Belgaum meant that we reached Dharwad in just 2 more hours at around 8:30 a.m.

The return journey was short and with no incidents - we reached in about 8 hours.

In Dharwad, we spent playing (badminton and other iPad games), praying (at various temples), and eating (Diwali!!!). The climate, as I mentioned, was very much pleasant - it was also cold at certain times due to sporadic rains. We spotted several types of birds, and a mongoose and squirrels. Oh! and by the way, although we did not visit the railway station this time, we could still hear the short powerful horns of the diesel locos - no doubt of the WDP4s / WDG4s of the UBL (Hubli) loco sheds.

All in all it was time spent well - a much needed  break from the polluted environs and hectic life of Mumbai. I can still feel the cool breeze and the fresh air of Dharwad. Need to stop dreaming and wake up - its back to the grind from tomorrow.

iPad2 bought

Just bought a new toy, the iPad2. I must say that I was inspired by my cousins (R from the USA, and R from Bengaluru). Indeed the whole wifi setup done at home recently was geared towards the ipad2 in mind. This post has been posted from the iPad.

Update on the fever

After a series of medical blood tests, it was concluded that I was suffering from the "dengue fever". By that time this conclusion was reached, my  fever had already subsided, but the general symptoms (drop in counts  of WBCs, RBCs, and platelletes) still remained.

In the latest blood test report, it was ascertained  that the counts were beginning to be within acceptable ranges. There was nothing to do except take rest as advised by the doctor. So, an unexpected off from work for the rest of the week.

Suffering from fever...

Yesterday, I suffered from what I think is a severe bout of dehydration. By the time I returned home, I was surprised  that I had not yet collapsed. I also had fever. After drinking Electral and several glasses of barley water, I was somewhat rejuvenated, but the fever remained, and giving it company was a severe headache.



Come to think of it, this was probably one of the worst bouts of fever I was suffering from in many years. In any case, I had to take the day off today, and I was confined to the bed for the larger part of the day.

I am feeling somewhat better now, and hope to be fit to resume work tomorrow.

WDP4 cranking up

Remember, I had blogged about my face-to-face (well, side-to-face) experience with the WDP4 (Dippy 4) at Thane station. Here's a YouTube video that has the same effect. Since this is a cold start, there is the customary bell to be sounded to shoo away workers / animals that may be below or around the loco.

Then, a couple of clicks of some switches, the beast comes alive, and starts almost like a plane about to take off. You will have to be patient since this does not happen until 1 min 49 seconds into the video.



There's another vid here, but there's a lot of background noise. Also, another startup at Panvel is here.

Lost my cellphone

I lost my Nokia cellphone last week. The phone was about 2 years old, and the screen cover was already cracked due to the slim phone falling off many times from my shirt pocket. The last time I had lost it, a good samaritan had returned it to me. This time, however, I was not lucky.

It did not take me much time to get the old SIM card blocked, and get a duplicate one. It cost me INR 25.

Instead of a buying a new phone immediately, I thought of using my Nexus S (which till now was being used as an email-checking and gaming device). Luckily, I also had a backup of my contacts / calendar entries which I could import into the Nexus S.

Its quite difficult to handle the Nexus S while commuting (especially in the rains). I plan to buy a plain (sub INR 2K) phone for regular use.

Fate and karma

One of the most confusing aspects about Vedic beliefs is the relation between fate and karma. The general idea is that karma is the reaction of the actions performed by individuals. It is also believed that what actions / decisions we take are the result of our past karma.

This puts people into a quandary: If all that we do is guided by what we have done in the past, then it means that we have no control over what we are doing, and hence no way to change our destiny.

Some guys had also asked me such questions during various spiritual discussions. A detailed and very good explanation of how this works is outlined in this article on the Krishna.com website.

Panchratna Ri Dal

Every once in a while you come across a recipe that you wonder why you did not try it out earlier. This recipe, in the Times Of India in October 2009, by Arvind Singh Mewar, is one such recipe. Since the time we first tried it out in 2009, we've made it at least once a month. The dish itself is prepared from 5 dals (hence the name "Panchratna"), and is quite wholesome. The spices are also not overpowering adding just enough hotness to the dish. The dish tastes wonderful if it is just about thick in consistency, and is best cooked over a slow fire once the dals are cooked.

All Wi Fi-red up

After years of deliberation, finally bought a DLink WiFi router and set it up at home. I was skeptical whether it would work with the ISP that I have, but after checking out the manuals, it did seem that it would work. It did not take much time to setup, though I had to perform some of the steps differently than as outlined in the manual. It worked on first attempt, but then I had some trouble (my folly) to get my Android work via the WiFi. In the process, I hosed the settings on the router, and was unable to do anything with it.

Finally, did a hard reset (pressing the Reset switch for 20 seconds), restored to factory settings, and then performed the setup again. Since then its working like a charm. Even the Android works well with it.

Now, consider this: 20 minutes into installing the new router, I had to go ahead and reset it. Wow! It might be the first time that I took down something new so quickly.

Hello Bengaluru, bye Bengaluru

Just  returned from an express trip to Bengaluru. Incidentally, though I  was born in Karnataka, it  was my first trip to the state capital. Landed there this Sunday, and returned the following day.

It was a good break from Mumbai, and I felt quite at home since it resembles my birth place of Dharwad. The same terrain, and trees, not to mention numerous anthills among the woods.

Aadhar: no support yet

Aadhar (meaning "support" or "base" in Hindi) is India's rather ambitious Unique Identification project (UID), where it is envisaged that every Indian will have a unique id system, which will then link up all the kinds of IDs in a single system. The other day, I went to get myself registered for this. I had read that there were several people who were against it because of privacy concerns.

Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. After getting the forms and filling it up, I went to a registration center. I had to stand in a queue with about 25 people ahead of me. The service time require per person is anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes, more so if the forms have not been filled up correctly.

When my turn arrived, I was quite impressed by the entire setup used for the registration. There were fingerprint scanners, retina scans, and the information was filled up in both English and Devnagiri. After verification by me, the person at the counter prints out a receipt in duplicate, and hands us one of the copies.

What really pissed me off is that at the bottom of the form on the screen is a checkbox called "Make information public" or something to that effect. The person did not even bother asking me, and simply went ahead and clicked it. Now, imagine all these personal details floating around on the Internet, and its a very good material for getting a fake user id or for misuse in changing personal details on important accounts.

No matter how secure they say the system is, this is one thing that Aadhar will not get my support for.

A lesson in mathematics for a rickshaw driver

I had earlier written about how to compute the regular fare for the Mumbai autorickshaws. At the end of a rickshaw trip, I try to pronounce the fare computed from the meter reading. This usually impresses the rickshaw drivers. On a couple of occasions, I even tried explaining the mathematics to some of them.

Very recently, I found a rickshaw driver who was keenly interested in knowing this computation. When I explained the simple mathematics behind it, he was quite amazed. In fact, he was so grateful that he waived off a couple of rupees of the fare. I did not accept the reduction in fare, however, and paid the fare in full to the exact rupee.

Unfortunately, unlike for the regular fare, I was unable to come up with a curve fitting simple equation for the late-night (post-midnight) fare. Maybe I should've tried using a more advanced software such as MATLAB or Scilab or some other curve fitting tools.

Time Management and the mobile phone

Many years ago when I had just gotten out of an individual role to a role of leading teams, I struggled to keep track of my activities on account of poor time management. I guess this is a common phase for most people as they rise in the hierarchy. You would have heard of managers telling about the importance of multitasking and thrusting loads of parallel work on you. Even if you are fortunate to not having faced this at work, it is inevitable to face multitasking on the personal / home front. Several things need your attention, and some things must be finished before a deadline.

Years ago I attended a "Time Management" talk (a small session that talked about the basics). As is the case with most such trainings, the learnings were quite common sense - such as planning out a day's work at the start of the day, prioritizing activities, and things like that. One thing that struck me was the use of a PDA (those were the days when mobiles had not yet caught on) for maintaining TODO lists.

Some years later I did buy a Linux PDA (Sharp Zaurus), but never got around  to using it on a daily basis. Some years after I bought my first mobile phone, I started using it for reminders. Every TODO activity (personal and work related) was maintained as a reminder. I continue using this approach even today. I find it to be extremely beneficial. Along with the convenient "Snooze" for the reminders, I feel I have never missed an important deadline.

I know that there are apps that allow one to synchronize one's desktop calendar (Outlook, etc.) with the cell phone calendar, but I haven't gotten around to that point yet. Looking back at these years, I find this simple solution has worked wonders for my problem.

On an ending note, for some time management tips (targeted for grad school, but can be of use to others as well), there's the Time Management talk by Randy Pausch. There's one equation in the presentation that sums it up:

Bad Time Management = Stress

Been a busy week and weekend

Had a busy week attending a few training sessions, as well as (trying to) study for some technical certifications. When most of India had probably just gone to sleep in the morning hours of Sunday after wild celebrations for India's cricket World Cup win, I reported for the certification exam, took the 4-hour exam, and passed it.

A good thing is that I have a holiday today (Monday). That gives me some time to catch up on some reading, writing (er, typing) and preparing for the other exams.

There was some stress as well when on the morning of the exam I discovered that I had lost my cell phone - not that it contained anything important, and I had a recent backup of my contacts, but then getting the SIM card blocked, getting a replacement, and lodging a police complaint using the IMEI number (important since the phone might be misused) were the activities I had lined up for after the exam. Fortunately, a call on the phone revealed that some good samaritan had not only found it, but also readily agreed to part with it. That saved me some headache.

What wheel?

A newspaper article (8th March, Times of India) specifies that the Deccan Queen would be piloted by Surekha Yadav, and for the first time "a woman would be behind the wheel". What wheel? Surely, this should not read as "behind the wheel", but "above the wheels". Surely, there is no "steering wheel" in a loco. Okay, I am trying to be picky here, and I get it that this is more of a commonly-used phrase, but hopefully the author also understands the same.

Coming back to Surekha Yadav, I have, of course, read about her earlier. She was also filmed in the National Geographic documentary on "Mumbai" in their "Megacities" serials. She is shown piloting a CR suburban local (probably shot between Dadar and Kurla) frantically blowing the horn to ward off trespassers.

Started a new tech blog

Started a new tech-related blog over at Wordpress. This is because Blogger does not support PDF attachments (remember the previous post about LaTeX). To all my computer-savvy readers, figure out where it is. Hint: There has to be a Unix connection for the name, and devices are an eternal favorite along with the fascination for 0.

Sorely missing Linux

I have been using my new desktop (bundled with Windows 7) for a while, but I am sorely missing my Linux (especially Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Debian). And with that, I am also missing all the wonderful utilities that GNU brings along. Not to mention LaTeX (not the material, but the software). Its a pleasure to read documents that are typeset with LaTeX and variants. With a lot of (non-work related) material to be put into document form, I finally installed ProTeXt for Windows. While it seems to be working fine, I still miss my Kile -that fine KDE-based software with which I had typed my entire master's thesis.

I am also looking at trying out writing some mini (or maybe pocket) books. Looking over my disk archives, I had found a wonderful way of combining LaTeX for A5 sized paper with some nifty Linux shell scripts (psnup  and what not). This would produce a booklet, but still be printed on a standard A4 paper, but the pages would be laid out such that when printed it could be stitched like a look. Really love the idea, as well as the output quality. Another point is that most of the cheat sheets that I had prepared while doing my academics were typeset in LaTeX.

Now, I know there are a lot of GNU utils available for Windows (GetGnuWin32, Cygwin, etc.). And I do not think any other software (at least the free ones) can match the quality of LaTeX. I think it is better to get Ubuntu installed (maybe using Microsoft Virtual PC or other virtual machine). So that's what's happening now - a download of the Ubuntu 10.10.

Update (2011-02-17): Yeah! just finished installing and firing up the Ubuntu 10.10 on a VirtualBox. This update is being posted from the VM running Ubuntu. Had some problems with the VM crashing while installing initially and later the display res, but things have been sorted out. Works like a charm!

"Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight" - a reminder to what we forgot

Just finished reading the book by Rujuta Diwekar (website not working when checked last). While most of it is common sense, it came across an important read because common sense is so uncommon. In any case, the rules stated by her are something inline with what I had gathered over the years. Of course, the most important thing is to know the signals offered by the body (I call this "debugging" the body). It becomes easy when you have a settled and more-or-less fixed routine. Just like it is easy to debug a program that broke due to changes made - you know where to look, it is easy to understand why you feel light or heavy, why you do not feel hungry, have a headache, etc. if there are some changes to the diet or routine.

The book seems to have preference for ayurveda and yoga and other desi things, but that is similar to my opinion too.

Another trip to LTT

Got an opportunity to go to LTT (Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) last evening. My parents were traveling to Ernakulam. I was lucky to get tickets for them on the newly inaugurated LTT-ERS Duronto Superfast Express. In fact, this service was introduced only on the 18th of January. As is the case with most other Durontos, there are hardly any stops - in fact, the train travels non-stop to Ernakulam (with only about 5 technical halts - maybe for crew change, etc., but not to pick up passengers).
 
The train's scheduled departure is at 20:50 from LTT,  and I reached there about an hour earlier. The rake (brand new LHB coaches, but with a "fractal" livery - printed plastic stuck over its original paint)  was spotlessly clean. I could see the inside of the luggage compartment - it was all shiny stainless steel. The service crew of the train (in uniforms) were busy loading bottles of water and other stuff onto the train coaches. There were 1st AC, 2-tier AC, and 3-tier AC coaches. And, of course, the pantry car and a hot buffet car as  well.

The loco was still not attached. After I  got my parents settled, I went off to the front of the rake to see what I am always keen to see - the coupling of the loco to the rake. There was no activity related to the coupling. I sat down patiently. When it was about 20 minutes to departure, I could hear a short horn - a typical WDM3 / WDP4 horn. A couple of khalasis turned up with a wireless radio and the work gloves. One of them asked the other whether it was an AlCo, and the other replied in the affirmative. Moments later, the Kalyan loco shed WDM3D #11254 had arrived on the same track as the rake. A couple of hand signals later the loco waited about a few hundred meters away. The khalasi jumped onto the tracks, adjusted the coupler of the rake, clambered back up onto the platform. Meanwhile, a handful of engineers arrived at the spot - making checks, giving comments, studying or whatever else they seemed to be doing. I got a feeling that this unusual visit by the engineers at the everyday event of coupling  could have been because of the presence of the LHB rake at LTT. (Usually, only Rajdhanis and Durontos have these coaches - and this might have been one of the first services with LHB coaches at LTT).

A few more hand signals later, the loco was moved very gently to be attached to the rake. The khalasi jumped back again, and coupled the rake - air brake pipe as well. Another one did the checks. With all final checks in place, the pilot started the compressor, and all was well.

A few minutes later the engineers were in the SLR coach checking out the diesel generator sets, the brake van, etc. Another 10 minutes later, the train revved up, and departed  - albeit a few minutes later than its scheduled departure time.

Nexus S : my first Android

Received by first Android phone (a Nexus S) a few days ago. I have been playing with it, and trying to get a hang of whether it is a good competitor to the iPhone. Though I love gadgets, I have been consciously trying to avoid adding to the e-waste. So, while I used my first mobile for about 8 years, the Nokia that I current use is just about a year old. I do not intend to make the Nexus S my daily phone, but more to use it as a developer's phone. It still does not have a SIM card - I use it via the WiFi setting up my Windows 7 as a virtual access point.

From whatever I have read, it has a 1GHz processor, and until now the phone and the apps seems to be quite a pleasure to use. There are few grouses regarding the placement of the home buttons / rocker buttons, but I'll reserve that for a later post.

Until now (like my brief iPad experience outlined in this post), Android seems to have a large number of games / entertainment apps available. So, off I go back to the phone to have some more leisurely Sunday fun.

WDM2 Interactive

One of the fun things to do is to play around with this Flash animation created by Sheeju Chandran available at IRFCA. Depending on your browser / Flash plugin  version, you may have  to right-click and choose "Play" and select the "Interactive Technical Diagram". Among other useful information, the parts of the WDM2 and its inner workings (obviously a simplification) can be viewed. Check it out, and don't forget to try out the short and long horns, and the air compressor and release.

A screenshot of the interactive WDM2