My Scrap Book

The Trial Version of Subway

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:21:00 +0000

They are saying "Subway Opened for Trial" .. What exactly do they mean by that statement ?? ;)

This is a subway located near Bommanahalli Bus stop, Bangalore.

PS: Thanks to my colleague Mr. Rajiv who captured this image :)

My Bike's First Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:52:00 +0000

Yes. It is the first anniversary for my bike today. I traveled around 5000 Kilometers in this one year's duration and the ride was smooth. There are no complaints and I am completely satisfied with its performance. But ofcourse there were few minor damages to my bike such as

I lost the original set of keys in the month of April.
I had to replace the right mirror of my bike when an autowallah banged that in the month of May

I am wishing happy birthday to my bike on this eve :)

A ride with "Drunken Auto Walla"

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:30:00 +0000

I happened to visit Tirchy recently on an official work. After the work was done, I went to srirangam kovil and had a good darshan. I hired an Auto to go to busstand from srirangam. The auto guy asked me 150 rs and I bargained him for 100 rs and with out any arguments he accepted. I felt proud of my self :) for that deal. The auto driver appeared as a middle age man . After getting inside, I told him to go to the destination as soon as possible. It was fine until then.

After few minutes, I noticed the auto was going in zig-zag fashion. But I didn't pay much attention to that as I was in conversation with one my friends on phone. Suddenly the zig-zag pattern became too much annoying as the driver started trying to bang the vehicles coming in the opposite direction. I asked him to drive carefully and for that he replied "Don worry Sir, I am super man". I was shocked as I didn't expect that kind of English resposne from him. He used the same wordings as such and that is when i realized that he was drunken. I asked him to stop the auto . He didn't care that and continued his blabbering. He said, "you said go fast. we going fast. no worry". I had no other option other than listening to his stupid blabbering. Below are few excerpts from his blabbering

"We are going to bus stand safely. I drive like this always. Boost is the secret of my energy"
"You know, 35 years back I am a player. Don think cricket player. i am a football player. I am an umpire and kick the players"
"Why u fear? No fear"... etc etc

He used the exact English as above. After some time, by gods grace he some how took me to the destination and luckily he stopped me there with out any dilemma. I got down and gave him the money. He refused to take the money and asked me to wait there and listen to his football story. This is what I call as the heights of nuisance created by a drunken person. I kept the money on the back seat and escaped from that place. Thank God, the traffic was really low that time. Otherwise, I couldn't imagine the after effects of his zig-zag driving...

IPL 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Its IPL saga every where. The war is on again. 8 Teams and unlimited amount of T20 fun. for a period of two months. Also there is lot of anxiety to see the concept of Kolkata Knight Riders multiple captains in action. If I am asked to pick the favourites of the tournament I would say it is Chennai Super Kings. They were really excellent in the last edition itself. It is just that the luck did n't favour them. With Flintoff being in the team, CSK looks stronger.

Another team to watch is Bangalore Royal challengers. Kevin Petersien being the captain, BRC looks really challenging. Delhi Dare Devils appear to live up to their name with Sehwag and Gambhir being in great from. But except these two, there are no stronger batsmen in their team. Deccan chargers still looks strong on the paper. But we have to see how they are going to perform this season. On the other hand, Rajasthan Royals being the defending champions may continue their success just like the last season. The Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab might give some unexpected surprises.

I am more eager to watch out the performances of following players who made their mark in the last season.

Yusuf Pathan [Rajasthan royals]
Ravindra Jadeja [Rajasthan royals]
Asnodkar [Rajasthan royals]
D Ravi Teja [Deccan Chargers]
Venugopal Rao [Deccan Chargers]
Rohit Sharma [Deccan Chargers]
Robin Uthappa[BRC]
Virat Kohli [BRC]

On the whole, it is going to be a great summer... :)

A Painful journey

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:53:00 +0000

I went to home during last week's long weekend. I some how managed to get a ticket in a super luxury bus though I decided my travel at a very last minute and fortunately I reached majestic bus stand much earlier though it is a Friday. The bus also started just as scheduled. Till then it is very fine and I slowly went into sleep.

After two hours, the person sitting next to me woke me up and asked for my good old 1100 mobile. I wondered why does he need my mobile in the middle of the night. Then I realized that the bus was stopped due to some problem and the conductor was asking for a torch light. Alas, my mobile has finally got the recognition as a torch light. With out actually realizing the problem, I gave my mobile to that person and I went into the sleep again. After some time, the announcement from conductor has come that the passengers who are in hurry can leave the bus and take another bus of same depot which was standing near by. He said that it will some time to get the repair done.

I was highly reluctant to move from the bus as

I was in the middle of my deep sleep
I have no hurry as I dont have any great work to do at home in the next morning
The conductor assured that the repair will take some time to get corrected

I got my mobile from the conductor. Due to the said reasons, I myself felt comfortable about the situation and started sleeping again. That is the first mistake I made during the journey.

After some time, another announcement came for the conductor. This one is horrible. he said that the bus can not be moved until next afternoon and requested all other remaining passengers to take the other bus standing outside.

As I left with no other option, I made a move towards the other bus. This one is an ordinary APSRTC red bus which can not exceed 40 KMPH in its life time. By the time I reached there, the bus was fully crowded and foot board was the only option left for me. But due to some good help from the responsible passengers inside, I was able to move inside and occupied some place. It was so congested The conductor said that once the bus reaches Anantapur, half of the bus becomes empty and he assured me a seat after that. When asked for the duration it takes to reach that place he said it as one and half hours.

It was around 1 AM and the red bus finally started with more than 80 people in it. You can now imagine how congested it was. Two things which will give a good company in situations like these are

A friend
An Ipod/MP3 player

Unfortunately, I don't have both at that time. Though the surroundings were in such a bad state, my sleep never let me down. I started sleeping again. In the middle I noticed some thing shiny under my feet. But due to the sleep factor I didn't spend time to investigate it. Thats the second mistake I did. After some half an hour or so, the person standing next to me woke me up and warned me to watch my step. That is when I realized that I was standing on a glass slab all that time and due to my weight it broke into pieces. Fortunately nothing went inside. After that I was not able to sleep. The time was 2:45 AM by then. According to conductor the bus was supposed to reach Anantapur by 2:30 itself. But it was no where near to that. the time passed very slowly. 3, 3:30, 4, 4:30, 4:45 and 5 finally it reached Ananatapur and I managed to grab a seat. The good old red bus took almost four hours to reach the place as it was heavily crowded. I finally reached home at around 8 AM [four hours late from the actual departure time]. When I reached home, I saw my mother eagerly waiting for me. It seems my parents were trying to reach me over phone since 5 AM. But my good old 1100 was switched off due to low battery. I forgot to charge my mobile the previous night. That is the third mistake i did.

In the end, these three mistakes made my journey even more horrible.

Fortunately, nothing happened like this during my return travel from Adoni to Bangalore

Happy New Year 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:49:00 +0000

My Shine

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:53:00 +0000

Last Thursday [23rd October 2008] I became the proud owner of my new Honda Shine bike. My Initial plan was to buy the recently released Honda stunner, a sports bike in 125 CC segment. But I skipped it as it is very new to market and I finally zeroed up on Honda shine. The black variant of shine looks kewl. But reconsidering the fact that I often move on Hosur road, I have choosen the Gray variant. The riding comfort is really great on Shine. But I am check the mailage factor. The show room guy said it gives around 60 KMPL. And BTW, my bike got a fancy registartion number. It is KA 01 EK 5551. Looks fancy, huh??

Below are few pics of my bike. The images are of low quality. Will post the high resolution pics soon

Namma 'VOLVO'

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Every one in Banaglore city must know how comfort it is to travel in BMTC's Volvo, popularly known as Vajra. Until now, the Volvo ride in banaglore is limited only to particular section of people and most of them will be software engineers. Hence it used to be Swalpa 'VOLVO' [Volvo for a few].

But now this has become Namma VOLVO [Volvo for every one] because of the new resoultion passed by karnataka's transport minister Mr.R. Ashok. According to this new rule, volvo ride from any where to any where in the city costs only 1 rupee. This is mainly to provide an opportunity to the common man to commute in the luxury of air-conditioned Volvo buses at a low and affordable fare of Re 1 and also to encourage office-goers in IT/BT establishments and executives to use BMTC buses and thereby reduce the use of personalised transport. How ever this rupee 1 scheme is not applicable for Vajra volvo which run from various parts of the city connecting to BIAL.

So now from majestic to electronics city, you can travel for rupee 1 in a fully air conditioned volvo bus. Today I had a chance to come from madiwala to bommanahalli for Rupee 1. The normal fare in this route in volvo is 10 rupee. This sounds well isn't it? But don't get into a conclusion that this is going to be a permenant offer as such. This is just a limited period offer for only four days[ 11th Sep 2008 - 14th Sep 2008]. Indeed it is a nice initiative.

Update:

A new resolution came from Transport minster yesterday[29/09/08]. According to this, the Volvo fare will be a minimum of 5 rupee and a maximum of 20 rupee on all the Sundays and Government Holidays.

The 3 mistakes of my life

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:09:00 +0000

“The 3 mistakes of my life” is the new novel from Chetan Bhagat, the author of "Five Point Someone" & "One Night @ Call Center".

The story starts when Chetan Bhagat who resides at Singapore receives a suicide note in his mail box from Govind Patel (Govind). The author stuns after reading the email and desperately wants to meet the boy or at least his relatives if he is dead already. With the help of his professor @ IIM, Chetan tracks down Govind at a local hospital at Ahmadabad after the unsuccessful suicide attempt. Chetan flies down to Ahmadabad and meets Govind at hospital. Chetan asks Govind about his story and the reason behind sending the suicide note to him. At first Govind hesitates to talk to author but later he tells his life story and a series of incidents which made him to take his life.

Govind Patel is a young business man from the old city of Ahmadabad. He has two best friends- Ishan (Ish) & Omi. Govind has desire of becoming a successful business man. Ish is a cricket freak and ruins his career for the sake of cricket. Omi is a priest’s son and has a strong belief in Hindutva. At some point of time, omi gets attracted towards the communal politics of Gujarat and he even tries to drag Ish and Govind into it. But Ish and Govind remain to maintain a safe distance with politics. Knowingly or unknowingly Govind commits three mistakes which totally changes his life. You have to read the novel to know his mistakes.

The lead characters perfectly portray the mentality of today’s youth. This novel covers various incidents that occurred in India in the recent past such as the Earth quake at Gujarat, the Godhra train incident etc., and also explains how these incidents have ruined Govind’s dreams. There are also other important characters like Vidhya – Ish’s sister and Govind’s love, Ali – A blessed cricketing talent, Bitto Mama – Omi’s maternal uncle and a Hindu Activist. The story provides a perfect mix of friendship, cricket, politics, love, business & religion. This novel is as good as Chetan Bhagat’s earlier two novels and provides good amount of excitement.

One final note:

You can’t resist comparing characterization of lead characters here with those from “Five Point Someone”. This novel has got enough masala to make it a commercial movie.

Here is the link to the first chapter of the novel.

Grad Day'08

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:18:00 +0000

The Graduation day was held on May 29, 2008 @ Q-Angle, PSG Tech, Coimbatore. Almost all of my classmates attended the event. We finished the registration process at our department in the morning and we were asked to occupy our pre-allotted seats by 4:30 PM. The top three toppers from all the branches occupied the front rows. The remaining rows were allotted to the students according to their branches. Ours' is one of the few rows from the last. Parents occupied their seats after the students.

Every year the responsibility of handling the grad day is allotted to a particular department. This time it is our department which organized the event. The meeting co-ordination was handled by Ms. N. Geetha and Ms. Shina Sheen, the faculty from our department.

The event was started at 5 PM. Sri K Ananthakrishnan, the CTO of TCS was the chief guest for the event. The function started with a prayer song by C.K. Sowmya (My Classmate). Then our Managing Trustee Mr. G. Rangaswamy gave the welcome address. Next, our prinicpal Dr.R. Rudramoorthy gave a brief speech. After him, the chief guest of the event addressed the students for about twenty minutes. He spoke about various things.

The award distribution started after his speech. The chief guest gave medals and certificates to the top thre rank holders from all the classes. Apart from these awards, he also gave a few special awards to the students. Varun was one among them and he was awarded with the "CTS Best outgoing student of the College". After these awards, the students from each branch were called according to their roll number to get the certificates from their department's HOD. We were called on the stage at around 7:30 PM and we got the certicates from our HOD Dr.R. Nadarajan.

The presentation of certificates was ended at 7:45 PM and we took a pledge after that. After that, our principal declared us as graduations. All the students were extremely excited and shouted in joy. The event finally ended with National Anthem.

A grand dinner was arranged after the event for students and parents at Hostel.

Totally it was a memorable and a great evening in my life. I can proudly say that I am a gradaute now. Oops Post graduate :)

An encounter with "Great Dane"

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:49:00 +0000

It was around 10'o Clock in the night. I and my cousin Praveen were on the way to my PG from "Juice junction" near koramangla sony world signal. When we were just opposite to "Baskin Robins", we saw a big goat sized dog passing next to us with its owner for a night walk. It was very dark that time. I first wondered whether it is a dog or something else. After a few seconds my doubt was clear. It is a dog. I can say it as a giant dog which belongs to Great Dane species. To be frank, I have very less knowledge about dogs and dog species though I like dogs very much. That is the first time that have I seen such a big dog.

We went to that dog's owner and requested him to have few snaps with it. He gracefully accepted our request and suggested us to move into a brighter place for taking photos. In the mean time we had a little chat with him. When I asked about its cost, he said the eight month old baby Dane costs around 15-20K. Though it looks gigantic and furious, it is pretty harmless, the owner said. He also said that the dog is 2 years old. Finally we took few snaps in front of "Hotel Gangothri" with praveen's N72 Mobile camera. Praveen was a bit uncomfortable [guess he was scared :) ] when posing with the dog.

Details about great dane can be found here

A few snaps,

Great Dane with its owner

Praveen with Great Dane

It is me (head missing) with Great Dane

BSNL's Wireless broadband

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:34:00 +0000

BSNL has launched its wireless version of broadband using EVDO technology. As of now it is available in very limited cities. The EVDO device costs about 3500 INR, installation charge is about 500 INR.Unlike other mobile broadband providers, the BSNL's EVDO is unique in the sense the monthly traiff is fixed. I guess it is about 550 INR per month. The internet usage is unlimited here with its download speed is upto 2Mbps and upload speed is upto 50Kbps. I myself used it once and it is really cool. The EVDO USB modem is a plug and play device. Though the internet gets diconnected at times but you can still enjoy the wireless broadband at higher speed. As far as I know, this is the one scheme where you can enjoy wireless broadband at a very good speed for lower price. I guess even in bangalore, its service is very limited as of now.

The following are some of the EVDO enabled cities in India

Cochin
Bhubaneswar
Trivandrum
Kanchipuram
Erode
Coimbatore
Kerala (Most Towns)
Jaipur
Calicut
Kurnool
Kottayam
Anantapur
Malapuram
Ranchi
Ernakulam
Pathanamthitta
Jamshedpur
Trichur
Bokaro
Dhanbad
Alleppy
Bangalore (Only few areas at the moment)

This can be used under Windows/Mac/Linux.

EVDO

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:25:00 +0000

A small article on EVDO

EVDO, also known as EV-DO, 1xEvDO and 1xEV-DO, is a standard for high speed wireless broadband. The acronym is short for "Evolution, Data Only" or "Evolution, Data Optimized". The official name, defined by the Telecommunication Industry Association, is "CDMA2000, High Rate Packet Data Air Interface". It is one of two major Third Generation, or 3G, wireless standards. The competing standard is known as W-CDMA.

3G is designed to provide voice and high-speed mobile data using the cellular approach already proven to work in mobile phone networks. The biggest obstacle to implementing high speed wireless networks is the lack of bandwidth, or range of usable frequencies. Just as only so many radio stations can be squeezed onto the FM dial, only so much data can be transmitted across the available bandwidth. EVDO is an advanced CDMA technology developed by Qualcomm to deal with this limitation.

CDMA, Code Division Multiple Access, uses advanced mathematical techniques to allow multiple wireless devices to transmit simultaneously on the same frequency. Every device, such as a cell phone, is assigned a unique mathematical signature. It applies this signature to the original signal and transmits the modified signal. A receiver applies the inverse of the mathematical operation to recover the original signal.

Traditional wireless networks create a physical path between receiving and sending devices, much like traditional telephone networks. EVDO instead adopts the same approach used for the internet. IP, the Internet Protocol, breaks data into small pieces called packets. Each packet is sent independently of all the other packets. This saves bandwidth for use by other devices; when neither party on a phone call is speaking, the connection consumes no bandwidth because there are no packets to send. Or, when an internet web site is accessed, no bandwidth is used until the site starts sending the web page.

EVDO has a theoretical throughput of 2.4 megabits per second. This is as fast as many residential DSL and cable broadband connections currently available in the United States. Qualcomm has produced impressive demonstrations of EVDO's capabilities; in one, a video conference was conducted with a participant traveling in a car at 60 miles per hour (96 km/hour). In another demonstration, a phone call was placed from a bullet train moving in excess of 150 miles per hour (240 km/hour).

A significant advantage of EVDO over competing technologies is that it uses the same broadcasting frequencies as existing CDMA networks. As purchasing spectrum from regulatory agencies is extremely expensive, this brings down the cost of building and using the new networks. The major EVDO deployments in the US are by Verizon and Sprint, and there is also a large network in Korea. At present, EVDO has not made significant impact in Europe or other major Asian markets; W-CDMA is the 3G standard of choice in those regions.

Cricket Gloves or Baseball Gloves ?

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:59:00 +0000

This is yet another controversy which raised during the CB series. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was asked to change his wicket keeping gloves during India's CB Series match against Australia in Sydney after it was found that the webbing between the thumb and the forefinger didn't meet the specifications laid out in the playing conditions. According to ICC rules, the webbing needs to be flat whereas in this case the webbing was a curved one and also it had a vertical strap running across it like a base ball gloves. But the interesting fact is that almost all the International wicket keepers of all the countries are using these kind of gloves. Even Gilchrist was using the similar kind gloves in the beginning of his career. But it is only Dhoni who caught in to the eye's of ICC. Luckily ICC didn't take any disciplinary action against dhoni regarding this. Ian healy, the former Australian wicket keeper and now one of the commentators for Channel 9 was also using the similar gloves. Interestingly it is Ian healy who raised this issue against Dhoni.

(PS: Click the image for a clear view)

India @ Animation

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:47:00 +0000

Animation movies has got a very good craze in India. Hollywood flicks like Shrek, The Incredibles, Finding nemo etc., ran successfully in the past. But Indian film industry is lagging behind in producing animation movies when compared to many other film industries.

Our film industry too produced some of the animation movies like hanuman, Krishna, The Legend of Buddha, MyFriend Ganesha etc., But these movies are no way comparable with the Hollywood flicks. Most of these movies are based on 2D animation.

In India we don't have any dedicated animation studios like pixar, walt disney etc., But, we too have some software industries which does the graphics work. The chennai based Prasad's EFX is the front runner in this. It did graphics work for many south Indian movies. TATA Elxsi also has a dedicated multi media team called Visual Computing Labs. It has got great appreciation recently for rendering unique visual effects for Aamir Khan's home production 'Taare Zameen Par'. In the past it did graphics for the films like Rang De Basanthi, Lagaan, etc. Penta Soft is another graphics production house in India. It did the graphics work for the movie Buddha.

The movie, “Return of Hanuman” released in the last week of December 2007. Worth to mention here is that this is the first sequel of an Indian animation movie. This marked the begging to the new era of Animation movies just like our normal commercial movies. Though the movie failed at box office, it has got good marks for its visuals and graphics work.

Earlier most of the animations were from Bollywood. Now a days, the regional film industries also started producing the animation flicks. Telugu film industry produced its first animation flick, “Kittu” in the year 2007. Tamil film industry is producing an animation flick, “Sultan - the warrior” in the year 2008. It is a much expected movie as it is going to be the first Indian animation movie which features the super star of Tamil Film industry , “Rajnikanth” in the title role as an animated character. This movie will be dubbed in Telugu also.

So all this indicate that we are moving in the right direction towards producing our own animation movies.

Bengaluru International Airport

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:08:00 +0000

This is the name given to the new International airport at Devanahalli, Bangalore. Earlier there were protests from various organisations who wanted it to be named after prominent personalities like founder of Bangalore "Kempe Gowda"; former Mysore Diwan "Sir M Visvesvaraya," matinee idol "Rajkumar" and "Tipu Sultan" who was born in Devanahalli. But "The Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL)", the main promoters of the country's first greenfield airport thought it is fit to go by the practice world over and name it after the City. Their rationale is clear. They say that it is more apt for an international airport to be named after its city as is the case with several airports round the world. Of course that is true. The first flight is set to take off from the new airport in about 60 days.
BIAL has also unveiled a new logo for the airport. The logo that was being sported till now was representative of the BIAL company and its shareholders, Siemens Projects Ventures, Larsen & Toubro, Unique Zurich Airport, Karnataka State Investment and Industrial Development Corporation and Airports’ Authority of India.

Old Logo	New Logo

But the new logo gives focus on the destination (the City of Bangalore) and not on the operator. The new Bangalore airport now has a new identity inspired by the flowers of Bangalore City. It reflects the reputation of Bangalore as the Garden City. once this new airport starts its operation, it is expected that the traffic may significantly come down in some of the prominent places in Bangalore like Airport Road, Koramangla etc. One more thing to note here is that this new Airport lies 25 km away from the city. This gives the scope for the further expansion of the city.

Greenfield Airport

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Greenfield means a new airport which is built from scratch in a new location because the existing airport is unable to meet the projected requirements of traffic. The word greenfield originates from software engineering, meaning a project which lacks any constraints imposed by prior work. Those projects which are modified or upgraded from existing facilities are called brownfield projects. Almost all the major cities in India are aiming at greenfield airports. Below are the links of two such projects:

Google Image Labeler

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:39:00 +0000

This is yet another innovation from Google. It is a two player Online game between yourself and a partner which google assigns you randomly. It helps to improve the quality of Google's image search results. Here you will be given with a set of images. You can view only one image at a time . Your task is to give as many relevant labels as possible to the current image shown to you in a two minute duration. During this time your partner on the other end also does the same task. If there is a match with any of the labels with your partner then you will be rewarded with points. The number of points given for a particular match depends up on how specific the label is. During this two minute duartion you can pass as many images as you want.

Visit Google Image Labeler for more details

Some facts about Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:28:00 +0000

Bangalore has the impeccable record of highest growth within a span of 20 Years
Bangalore has highest number of pubs in Asia.
Bangalore has the highest number of software companies in India-212, followed by Hyderabad - 108, Pune - 97. Hence called the Silicon Valley of India
Bangalore has 21 engineering colleges, which is highest in the world in a given city. Bangalore University has 57 Engineering colleges affiliated to it, which is highest in the world.
Bangalore is the only city in the world to have commercial and defense Airport operating from the same strip.
Bangalore has highest number of public sectors and government Organizations in India.
Bangalore university has highest number of students going abroad for higher studies taking the first place from IIT-Kanpur.
Bangalore has only 48% of local population ( i.e.Kannadigas) .Hence a true cosmopolitan with around 25% Tamilians, 14% Telugites, 10% Keralites, 8% Europeans, and 6% a mixture of all races.
Bangalore police has the reputation of being second best in India after Delhi.
Bangalore has the highest density of traffic in India.
Bangalore has the highest number of 2-wheelers in the world.
Bangalore is considered the fashion capital of east comparable to Paris.
Bangalore has produced the maximum international sportsmen in India for all sports ahead of even Mumbai & Delhi.
Bangalore has produced the maximum number of scientists considered for Nobel Prize nominations.
Bangalore has produced the highest number of professionals in USA almost 60% of the Indian population abroad is from Bangalore (except Gulf).
Bangalore is famous for THREE: Software Professionals, Girls and Dogs.
Bangalore is famous for its dog bites, an average of 12 people are bitten by stray dogs per MINUTE somewhere in Bangalore!!

Very Very Special

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:18:00 +0000

VVS Laxman - The hero of the India's historic win against Australia in kolkata in 2001. The title suits well for this ace hyderabadi batsman, who is known for his technique and timely shot selection. He is one of the few or perhaps the only batsman in this world who always perform aggressively against australia. Among the 12 centuries he scored in his test carrer, five are against australia and in ODIs too he scored 4 out of his total 6 centuries against the world's greatest cricket team. He is continuing his excellent form against Australia in the current tour also. His score in the first and second tests' are evident for this. He is the one and only player who always made australia to rethink their bowling & fielding setup.

Just like other players, he was out of form at times. He is the only prominent Indian player who never appeared in world cup. During 2003 world cup, he was literally axed away from the team in favor of dinesh mongia. At times he was in stands in test matches as 12th man in favor of India's five bowler strategy. He played in almost all the batting positions. He was also the vice captain for one of the tournaments.

Laxman has the potential to raise just like Rahul Dravid. He is a team player. We have to wait and see how our selectors are going to consider his position in the ODI team for the forth coming triangular series. Already Indian ODI team is too congested with too many talented players. But one thing to note here is, most of the current ODI players played very few matches abroad and especially against australia. If selectors really consider the experience factor also apart from the current from, then laxman surely reserves a place in the ODI side. Let us hope for the best.

It is new year Today .. :)

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:12:00 +0000

Wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

OpenMOKO

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:38:00 +0000

Open Moko is the world's first Integrated Open source mobile platform. Jus like linux, you can get OpenMoko for free of cost (Ofcourse not the device ;) ).This is still in its Alpha stage. Because this is open just like Linux, it can become a major competator in the mobile market. It comes with the tag line - The iphone killer.

The Neo1973 from FIC is the first of possibly many phones that OpenMoko may be used on. This has internal GPS with it. But urfortunately it has no camera. You can find the traditional Linux boot screen when you swicth on this phone. The screen can be oreinted in both the horizontal and the vertical directions. It has many applications & games.

Some images of Neo 1973, the first OpenMoko based Mobile

You can find more details @ www.openmoko.org

Blackle

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:28:00 +0000

Blackle is basically a search engine powered by google. But what makes it different from other search engines' is its interface. It provides its interface in black color. There is a stong reason behind this. The color black requires very less power to display on a monitor than the color white. when you visit blackle's home page, you can notice a statement saying "375,570.773 Watt hours

saved" indicating the amount of power it saved. It also reduces the eye strain. It is really useful for those who spent many hours in search engines. Blackel is a product of Heap media, an Australia based company.

Linuxtopia

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:26:00 +0000

Well if you wonder what this linuxtopia is, here is the answer. Linuxtopia is an online library which has a good collection of e-books related to Linux, Programming languages, Web Technologies etc., This portal is very useful for those who are looking for free ebooks on linux related technologies. The books are well organized according to the domain of interest.

Users can register to linuxtopia to get to know the latest happenings. This registration is a free of cost process.

For more details, visit linuxtopia.org

Hosur Road

noreply@blogger.com (Sree) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:02:00 +0000

Lots of vehicles-Lots of dust-Lots of noise from vehicles-High Traffic jams-Accident prone road- jam-packed roadway etc., are some of the analogies which can be used in the context of Hosur road.

Well, my past three plus weeks experience with hosur road drew me to write this post. The Hosur road is one of the busiest roads or probably the busiest road in bangalore with tonnes of vehicles moving every day. Our office is located very next to the side of hosur road in bommanahalli.

I believe that there are two reasons for this road being busy always.

It is the national highway connecting Bangalore with Hosur in TamilNadu and
This road leads to the Electronics city, the IT hub of Bangalore. This reason contributes to a greater extent for traffic jams etc on this road.

I have heard about this road many times before I have actually experiencing it.

Apart from traffic, one thing worth mentioning here is “The cost of living”. The cost of living here is pretty cheap when compared to the other interiors in the Bangalore city. Probably this trend may change in near feature with many companies lining up to set their offices in this area.

A 10 KM flyover is under construction over this road connecting Madivala and Electronics City. Once this flyover starts functioning, the traffic on the hosur may come down and this toll road is expected to make travel to Electronics City a lot easier. But unfortunately this project takes at least one and half years to get over. So till then this duty noisy road remains as such.