Dânesh Zaki

TrueRoots Ad - Very true!

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:15:34 +0530

TrueRoots Ad - Very true!

Amazing Evian ad!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:34:10 +0530

Amazing Evian ad!

The Making of Nokia N97

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:01:26 +0530

The Making of Nokia N97

"I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each..."

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:56:31 +0530

““I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!””

- German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung, 1933

The Swine Flu Scare

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:15:58 +0530

I always look forward to my journey back home as it usually brings me thoughts about good food, relaxed life and of course family! This time however, I started from Vernon Hills less enthusiastically, with a fear of Swine flu - the disease with symptoms as common as the common flu yet deadly enough to cause death (or so the media would have us believe).

I tried buying a mask to wear on my journey back home but could not get one so stuffed myself with several paper tissues (its a different thing that I never got to use them as much). Two long flights and 24 hours later, I reached home dead tired due to lack of sleep and harassed by the airline over missing baggage. I was checked at the airport for fever and was let go as I did not have any temperature. But after a day, I had mild fever which came and went a couple of times. According to the pamphlets given to me on swine flu, I could develop symptoms within 7 days of arrival, so I decided to do a medical checkup. I called up the Center of Communicable Diseases Hospital to check on where the test needed to be done. The lady attendant answering the phone just asked me when and where I had returned from, what symptoms I had and immediately thought that I had swine flu. She said that I would have to get myself tested at King Institute in Guindy and get admitted in a special ward in the General Hospital. What?! I was not even tested yet and I was already a patient?

I grudgingly started for King Institute mentally picturizing myself in the GH ward along with other patients. On my way, I received a call from my office stating that they had a tie-up with Ranbaxy labs where I could do the test. I felt much better and headed there. My medical test was done and the doctor did a general medical check and advised me not to get carried away with the media hype on swine flu. He said that in most cases with good precautions and nutrition, the patients recovered fairly quickly. By evening, the results of my blood test were out and I was greatly relieved to find out that everything was normal and said out aloud “Poda panni! Jaare Suvvar!” (Tamil & Urdu phrases meaning “Get lost pig!”).

Cool ad by Intel on the “geek rock stars”. Ajay...

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:58:56 +0530

Cool ad by Intel on the “geek rock stars”. Ajay Bhatt shown in the ad is not the real guy. The real one is here

Toyota Qualis by DC Chabria

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:04:00 +0530

Never thought that a Toyota Qualis could look this good. DC Chabria does wonders.

Set your expectations right. Drawing by Hugh Macleod

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:31:00 +0530

Set your expectations right. Drawing by Hugh Macleod

Limo in Vernon Hills

Mon, 25 May 2009 02:24:00 +0530

I haven’t seen a limousine from this close. This one was parked just outside the hotel where I was staying. It is a Lincoln.

In Vernon Hills near Chicago

Mon, 18 May 2009 10:07:00 +0530

Reached Vernon Hills, a suburb about 34 miles away from Chicago, yesterday. The weather is pleasant here as summer has seemingly started. The taxi driver who drove me to the hotel from the Chicago O’ Hare airport was an Indian who had studied for his masters degree here. His job contract with AT&T was terminated early this year and he had to start driving taxis to make ends meet. I had found it difficult to believe stories on recession in the US but this one was true and was in front of me.

RAM on USB

Tue, 12 May 2009 22:45:44 +0530

I was trying to install a software on my ageing laptop and had issues due to lack of disk space. Ruthlessly, I cleaned my hard disk - deleting some files and moving many to a portable hard disk. This made things good enough to install the software.

When trying to run the software, I had a problem as it needed 2-4 GB RAM while I had only 1 GB. Increasing virtual memory, swap size etc did not help much. That is when I thought that it would have been great had a USB-based portable RAM chip/drive existed. One could plug it in just like a portable hard disk/flash memory drive and the laptop would take whatever additional RAM needed from it.

This idea generated quite a bit of interest when I discussed it with colleagues. And I do hope that Seagate, SanDisk, Kingston and others feel excited to hear this and design it for us.

My trips in the past few years. Africa, South America and...

Sat, 09 May 2009 15:54:09 +0530

My trips in the past few years.

Africa, South America and Australia are yet to host me

Chennai Rail Accident

Fri, 01 May 2009 22:12:00 +0530

Having been a commuter on the suburban trains myself, I was greatly saddened to know about the rail accident that happened yesterday at Vyasarpadi Jiva. These trains are known to be safe with accidents being caused only due to people crossing the tracks inadvertently or due to passengers hanging outside the coaches and getting hit by external objects. But I do not recall any accident involving Chennai suburban commuter trains of this magnitude in the past 15 years.

There were several theories doing the rounds yesterday including one that likened this to the 9/11 attacks where pilots hijacked planes. Security in railway stations in Chennai as with other cities is virtually non-existent. In the Chennai Central Station, it is limited to a few areas and not very seriously taken. It is time we started treating security in railway stations on par with that of airports, as this is the second major incident after the Mumbai terror attacks involving a railway station. Some of the steps the authorities could take are:

Installing a camera in the driver’s compartment of the train and in every station to record entry of visitors
Easier means of turning power off in the suburban train
Training the railway staff on acting in emergencies
Controlling access to the driver’s compartment through electronic access

Hope the railway authorities take cue from this incident and take adequate measures to provide passengers a safe environment for travel.

Bamboo phones - Simon Enever

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:08:00 +0530

Bamboo phones - Simon Enever

Taxi Ride Across Saudi Arabia

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:34:23 +0530

After performing the Umrah, a friend and I started around 9 PM from Makkah to Jeddah.We had planned to start at 8.30 PM but things got delayed. The flight was at 10.30 PM and we thought that it would be tight but we would make it around 10 PM. Also, since we had boarding passes issued from our onward journey itself, we thought that we could go straight to the gate. The heavy traffic meant that we could reach the airport around 10.15 PM and rushed to the gate only to find that the flight had left! We checked the Saudi Airlines counters for alternative flights, only to find none as it was the weekend. We then decided to try the bus stand which was half way across the city.

We reached the bus stand around midnight and were tempted by a taxi driver who said that he would drop us in Dammam in 8 hours. As the bus takes 14 hours to Dammam, we got tempted and got in. The distance between Jeddah and Dammam is around 1200 km.

The taxi driver had told us that he would charge SR 220 for two persons till Dammam but after a while 3 more guys got in and we could barely sit. At 220 KM/hr with blaring Saudi music and lots of cigarettes, we reached Riyadh in 6 hours. On the way, at a petrol bunk the filling guy (Indian) warned me not to travel in a taxi driven by a Saudi as his friend was missing since he got into one. Too late, I thought. And the thought only helped ruin whatever little sleep I could have got. We changed taxis at Riyadh and got to Dammam and eventually to Jubail crossing miles and miles of desert. We reached Jubail at around 10.45 AM, 10 hours late and poorer by SR 370 but way richer in experience.

Umrah

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:46:46 +0530

I performed Umrah the minor pilgrimage (Haj being the major one) to Makkah last month. Unlike Haj, Umrah can be performed at any time of the year. I wore Ihram, the attire for the pilgrimage and started from Dammam (the city with an airport closest to Jubail). To reach Makkah, one has to fly in to Jeddah and take a taxi.

On arrival at Makkah and reaching the Kaaba - the black cube-like structure, I performed the Tawaf, circambulation of the Kaaba. Then I proceeded to perform Saee - going back and forth on the hillocks of Safa and Marwa. After this, I cut a little of my hair as required by the ritual.

It felt very peaceful sitting near the Kaaba in the evening and the feeling was so overwhelming that I missed the return flight back to Dammam!

*First and third photos courtesy Mostafa Mohammed

Site Theme Updated

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:28:50 +0530

After months of deliberation, I decided it was time to update the site’s theme. I picked this theme as it looks neat and clean. It also seems popular on the tumblr theme garden. Credit goes to Prashanth Kamalakanthan, for designing a professional looking theme.

An issue that I faced during the theme update was that the Disqus comments system did not inherit the theme elements correctly. It needed tweaking of the CSS to display fonts correctly. The hyperlinks too did not seem to take the new colors even after the tweak, but overall the comments are readable so I have left it at that.

The site should look fine on IE 8, Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3.0.8. Hope you like the theme and find it easier to read and navigate.

Gulf Air's Deceits

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:10:25 +0530

I had traveled to Dammam, Saudi Arabia enroute to Jubail, a couple of months back on Gulf Air. My flight was booked from Chennai to Dammam via Bahrain; what followed was a harrowing experience.

Boarding Pass but no Flight
I was booked a ticket in Gulf Air flight GF 69 from Chennai to Bahrain and on flight GF 101 from Bahrain to Dammam. But on arrival in Bahrain, I was put on a bus to Dammam instead of being allowed to board the flight despite having the boarding pass for it. No officials from Gulf Air gave any reason.

Bus Journey
The SABTCO (a company that provides buses for Gulf Air) bus was actually a mid-size van with a trailer on the back for the luggage. The air travel time between Bahrain and Dammam is 45 minutes. The bus took over 4 hours as there was a major rush at the highway immigration and customs. The buses proceed from immigration/customs only when all its members are cleared; in contrast to an airport where it is only a single passenger at a time. As most of the bus passengers are from the worker/labour class, the treatment meted out is highly deplorable. The bus driver was regularly yelling and abusing the passengers and at one point trying to physically assault them. Through out the 4 hour ordeal, even water was not offered to the passengers. Nor was there any stop for using rest rooms.

Al Khobar = Dammam?
Finally, I was dropped in a different city called Al Khobar and not Dammam as mentioned in the ticket and had to struggle to get transportation to get to my final destination Jubail, as my transportation was arranged from Dammam airport and I had no idea on the city or the language. Several passengers who accompanied me in the bus mentioned that this was not an isolated case and Gulf Air did this regularly by not informing passengers about the bus service and promising full air journey during the time of booking.

What can be done?
I strongly recommend not booking tickets in this airline for any trips to Dammam as it is likely to ruin all your plans and will be a nightmare for first time travelers to the country.

Site in Internet Explorer

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:13:00 +0530

Update

I have updated the theme of this site and moved the icons in the sidebar to the bottom of the page.

—

I just realized that in some versions of Internet Explorer, the images in the sidebar of this site show with a light blue background. Seemingly, it is a ~~CSS~~ PNG issue with versions of IE older than 8. IE8 displays the sidebar correctly as do Firefox and Opera. So, if you are looking at this site from IE 6 or older versions, I recommend that you upgrade to Firefox (or at least upgrade to IE 8).

And you thought that I’d optimize this site for Internet Explorer? No, way!

The impressive Chennai Suburban Rail & Bus Network!

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:50:47 +0530

The impressive Chennai Suburban Rail & Bus Network!