Bad Stream, No Consciousness

You know the feeling? When...

2010-02-12T08:35:00.002+05:30

Its the last day of the work week, and you've been getting late for work almost every other day that week, getting stuck in bad traffic just because you did not start early enough. On this day, you manage you get up early, only to fall asleep again, and eventually end up getting delayed. You again start late, cursing under your breath about all the bad traffic you'd again have to face today, grimacing at the thought of not having anyone else to blame, but finding it hard not to shout out the choicest of expletives at random people on the road!

But...

Once you start, albeit a bit late, you find that the roads are unusually calm with very less traffic, you could breeze through the usually congested roads, be surprised at yourself behaving so gentlemanly, stopping in the middle of the road to allow pedestrians to cross over, hum a tune on the way, end up in the office parking lot with a smile on your face...

But...

It slooooooowllllyy dawns upon you that its a festival day which most people are having a holiday for and you, sir, have no such luxury!

The only luxury of such days is the calm roads...

Pristine Kemmangundi

2010-02-05T12:25:00.002+05:30

High on nature, low on fuel
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

This is a trip made in December 2009. I know its late. I've been trying to get back to updating my blog on a regular basis from last 3 weeks or so. To say that the last few weeks have been crazy hectic would be some sort of an understatement! Anyway, not digressing further...

December is the time the people in the IT industry herd like cattle and embark upon the great migration across the country-side. ( Okay, so that was me desperately trying to make up for the understatement earlier! Its just to show you the degree of "underness" in the earlier statement! :D ). In simple words, I had a 2 week vacation time pending, so I took it! Finding a time when a subset of my friends would be free led to me finding 3 others along with me being free to go somewhere on Dec 19 and Dec 20. By that time then, I had made up my mind to drag everyone to Kemmangundi. And for good reason - the weather at that time of the year is sublime! Perfect postcard landscapes, blue skies dotted with fluffy little white clouds - ah, just divine!

So, we started on Dec 19th morning at 6am in my car. The other participants being Sac, VV and SP. I took control of the wheels for the first part of the journey - made some amazing time, reaching CR Patna (Kamat hotel) for breakfast by 8:30am! We had a heavy breakfast, topped with some average tasting coffee and resumed the drive. This time, SP took over from me. Now, don't get me wrong here - SP is a very good driver... its just that he becomes a totally different person when behind a steering wheel - a person who thinks he's flying a plane or is driving a F1 car! Usual mid-range hatchbacks' engines, in India tend to dislike working at RPMs greater than 5000! Anyway - it was a breezy drive till Chikmagalur, after which things started to get more interesting!

Outlook traveller's magazine describes the Chikmagalur - Kemmangundi drive in an interesting sentence - "The exotic and scenic drive from Chikmagalur to Kemmangundi is like viewing beautiful panaromas on a violent shaky television" :D - well, that sums it up. Horrible pathetic roads! My poor car bore the brunt of both the roads and SP's driving... and to top it all, we forgot to fuel up in Chikmagalur! We were going to Kemmangundi in quarter tank of fuel. This really got me anxious! Let me leave out my anxiousness from this post - in the end, we made it alright with no problems :)

The drive itself was rocky, but very scenic - every now and then, we would see something that makes us stop, get down and click away! One such picture taken during one such stop is seen along with this post. We reached Kemmangundi by 12:30pm. We were somewhat travel-weary and hungry by then. Sac managed to get us accommodation in the horticulture guest house where we set aside our bags and had lunch. Then we rested for a while, before taking a jeep to Hebbe falls.

Hebbe falls is about 8KMs by walk, 12KMs by "road" from the place we were. We decided to take a jeep to the falls. It was a half hour or so, extremely rocky ride to the place where jeep could park and from there it was a 10 minute walk through small puddles of water, average length streams of water, etc. I could say I "got my feet wet" (hint: lookup military usage of the phrase :D). At the falls I tried some slow shutter photos from a distance. Could not get as near as I had hoped I could, because of the water droplets splashing out - did not want to risk taking out the camera there! We spent some half hour there before walking back to the jeep and headed back to our room. It got dark by the time we reached back. Just had some dinner and slept early. For, we had plans to get up at 5 and walk to Z-point to catch the sunrise! Sac was feeling feverish by that time and he took a crocin and slept off early. Me, SP and VV chatted for a while and then went to sleep. All of us set alarms for 5am!

A couple of things made this Z-point walk, at 5:30am somewhat interesting! The previous evening, when we came back from Hebbe falls, I told SP that we should ask about the route to Z-point. We got rough directions - drive about 2KMs in car and from there another 45 minutes walk to the summit. I was of the opinion that we should ask for a guide. SP rubbished my opinion saying there'll be lot of people going towards Z-point in the morning for the very same reason we would be! Come 5:30am, we started by car in pitch darkness - we could only see about 10 feet ahead of us at any point in time, thanks to the headlights. The only indication of where we had to park the car was when the 4 wheeler track abruptly ended! We parked the car to a side and stepped out - bitter cold, howling winds... trembling we all step out. VV switches on the torch... a powerful LED torch. I ask him to turn it off for a moment. We all look up - gosh! what a sight :) Millions of stars - all appearing so bright. That's the kind of sight that makes you forget your location, the time of the day, the bitter cold... everything. We started walking now... still pitch darkness, that was only disturbed by our bright torch. After walking some 2 minutes, we realize that we have hit a dead end. Up till there it was a plain land walk. Now, it was a steep ascent suddenly. As we ascended the cold got even more colder, the winds picked up speed! I initially started out with a jacket. As time went during the ascent, I had to put on the jacket hood to protect my ears, then use the hand kerchief to wrap around my mouth and nose! Huffing and puffing, climbing for some 40 minutes... still pretty dark, we had reached the summit. We just picked a plain, grassy spot, and sat down. I setup my tripod and camera. Waited for sunrise... In the bleak pre-dawn light, one can only see the outlines of the hills around... and that was all we could see any direction we looked. We were surrounded by hills in all directions! The powerful winds trying to knock us out is something to be experienced! Sunrise was a slight disappointment due to cloudy skies but the whole experience of getting up at 5, driving/walking/climbing in pitch darkness in a very chilly weather was memorable enough!

We returned back to our rooms by 8am, had bath and ate breakfast. The first thing we had to do was fuel up. Lingadahalli - nearest fuel station, 20KM away. On the way, we stopped at Kalhatti falls. I do not know why this is so famous - it just a 50 ft or so high water fall and people using the surroundings as their personal bathrooms makes it even more un-inviting! We did not spend much time there. We fueled up and then chose to return to Bangalore from there. We had plans to visit Mullayanagiri - but since that meant we had to go back the same way we had come till Lingadahalli and imagining the road conditions, we thought its prudent to just return back - we could get back to Bangalore before dark.

The return journey was mostly uneventful - tired people choosing to sleep in patches of the drive. Bringing back memories and some nice pictures too. A 2 day trip to that place is not justice enough! Cannot wait to get back there sometime soon!

Somanathapura - A Short Trip

2009-12-14T13:02:00.002+05:30

Geometry
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

I had made up my mind to get away from the city this weekend. I was thinking of Belur. But my mom suggested Somanahapura which has a similar temple like in Belur and is nearer to Bangalore.

Somanathapura is a small village situated 140KMs from Bangalore. (Route: Bangalore - Maddur - MalavaLLi - Bannur - Somanathapura). It houses a stone temple with exemplary carvings from the HoysaLa period. The temple is strikingly similar to the one at Belur. The main idol of Channakeshava, being the main deity at this temple. What more, its much less crowded than Belur (except that, I did not see a huge bus packed with kids on a school excursion coming there the very same day! What luck).

I scouted around the place for almost 90 minutes or so. There are so many things pleasant about ancient temples - the calmness, the cold feel of hard stone in the innards of the Garbhagudi. The intricacy of the carvings, the amount of craftwork going into the details of an ornament on a sculpted goddess. The sheer size of the monolithic nature of the gopura (the towers). Managed to get some decent pictures. The weather could have been better. In the december winter, I would bet for blue clear skies. But some darn depression in Bay of Bengal, near Chennai put paid to my hopes :(

The visit to Shivanasamudra after Somanathapura was disappointing, to say the least. Very less water and huge crowds, most of them already half naked coming out of their cars, ready to jump into water!

One of the photos taken at the Somanathapura temple, is seen along with this post.

Oh yeah, I also discovered that driving and caffeine have similar effects on me :D

Weekend shoot [06/12/2009]

2009-12-06T22:45:00.002+05:30

Splash

Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

Manchinbele reservoir was the destination. Naren, Sac, VV and myself started off towards the place at 4pm and reached by 5pm. The sky was not as clear as I hoped it would be. Nonetheless, we were in time to view the setting sun.

Apart from the usual sunset landscapes, I got an idea while shooting the reflection of the sun in the water. I was just thinking that it would be much more interesting if there was a subject in the water - like a boat moving across the water. Since there was no such naturally available subject, thought why not create one of our own - a splash of water. Naren volunteered to throw pebbles into the water. Got some 3 decent shots in 10 attempts. One of them is seen along with this post.

When I sat down to process the photos, I realized that the splash shots should have been taken at a higher ISO. Well, next time perhaps...

Waiting for sleep

2009-12-06T02:16:00.003+05:30

This is what I listen as I wait for sleep. The haunting keyboard notes do the job.

Standing by the window, eyes upon the moon

Hoping that the memory, will leave her spirit soon

She shuts the doors and lights

And lays her body on the bed

Where images and words are running deep

She has too much pride to pull the sheets above her head

So quietly she lays and waits for sleep

She stares at the ceiling and tries not to think

And pictures the chains she's been trying to link again

But the feeling is gone

And water can't cover her memories

Ashes can't answer her pain

God, give me the power to take breath from a breeze

And call life from a cold metal frame

In with the ashes

Or up with the smoke from the fire

With wings up in heaven

Or here, lying in bed

Palm of her hand to me head

Now and forever curled in my heart

And the heart of the world...

Weekend shoot [22/11/2009]

2009-11-22T19:35:00.002+05:30

Laalbagh Glass-house
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

I was out of ideas this week. Me and my friend Raghu, made last minute plans to visit the KR park in Basavanagudi and Lalbagh. It doubled up as a nice morning walk and a decent photoshoot. For once, I stopped shooting in manual mode all the time. Yet to get a good hang of the camera metering modes. Hope to get fluent with them soon.

Here's one photo of the glass house in Lalbagh.

Laksha Deepotsava

2009-11-17T11:59:00.002+05:30

Laksha Deepotsava
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

Yesterday was the last monday of the Kartika maasa. This is considered an auspicious day for the worship of lord Shiva. Temples usually arrange for people to bring as many oil lamps as possible and light them during the evening. This is called "Laksha Deepotsava".

I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some pictures in dark settings. I went to a temple fairly early - by 6:30pm. People were still gathering and I knew this was going to get busy here real soon, with lot more people pouring in. One disappointing thing was, the temple had bright halogen lamps everywhere! I had not expected this. I wanted to shoot with only the light from the hundreds of lamps around. This was a bit of a dampner. But, I managed to scout a couple of not-so-bright places and take some pictures. You can see one of those with the post here.

Also, this was the first photoshoot after I decided to shoot RAW instead of JPEGs. I had fun processing the RAW images and also learnt the flexibility that RAW photos have to offer. Once a JPEG is edited, the quality and valuable information is lost. Whereas with RAW images, you can apply any processing and export images to JPEG/TIFF. The original RAW image has not changed and can be processed differently again. Also, the camera always produces RAW format. If the camera is set to produce JPEGs, it has to process the RAW data into a JPEG image on the basis of settings like saturation, hue, white balance, etc. Usually, this processing is better done on a computer than what's done by the camera. All the more reasons to shoot in RAW mode. Only drawback is the large size of the RAW images - you'll need more card capacity to shoot the same number of images. Also, the rate of capture might be lesser than JPEGs when shooting in burst mode.

Now waiting for an opportunity to shoot in daylight to see more advantages of a RAW image.

Weekend shoot [07/11/2009]

2009-11-07T22:29:00.003+05:30

Chocolate Cake?
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

Went out to take some shots with friends from NCJ days, to Sankey tank. Plan was to catch sunrise and we did catch an oh-so-lovely sun that rose quietly behind a thick cloud cover :| Anyways, managed to take some shots and had to head back when it started to drizzle quite heavily.

Later in the evening, a rather unplanned drive along Kanakapura road took us to a really creepy location and also to the Art of Living ashram. This photo was taken there. I'm patting myself on my back here, for this, is a handheld shot @ ISO 800 :D Used Noiseware CE to get rid of some noise which, unfortunately, led to the loss of all EXIF data on the image.

Also, recovering from a bout of illness. All this roaming around surely wore me out rather quickly.

Hectic weekend

2009-11-01T22:07:00.003+05:30

What flower is this?
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

Saturday was a day full of hectic roaming around. Had to walk all of the 2.4 KMs to get hold of my new lens - btw, bought the Nikon 55-200mm lens :) Naren chose to drive me around, otherwise, it'd have been even more stress for me :D Anyway, tried a few shots around my home, and I love the lens. Sadly, I could not go any place to shoot. Seen in this post is one of the pictures I took from my neighbour's little garden. I've no idea what this flower is called - anybody knows?

Sunday was mostly spent driving parents around for some functions and a temple visit. Naren had a small accident in the evening - wishing him a speedy recovery.

PS: Till I get back to active writing, you'll mostly see pictures and mundane posts :)

Have a wonderful week

2009-10-26T09:35:00.003+05:30

Light Sieve
Originally uploaded by Srinivasa S

I know I've not been active here. I'll get back soon. Meanwhile, my pics would act like a filler :D

I've started this new thing recently - of going to various places in Bangalore very early in the morning and take some shots. Last week was the first week and the place was cubbon park and surroundings. Parked the vehicle at the cubbon park entrance near corporation circle and wandered inside the park, in front of Vidhana Soudha, then back, going towards Vittal Mallya road. Managed to get some decent pictures.

I play cricket too during weekends. So, this is going to be tough to make it to these photo shoots on the days we play cricket. Lets see how it goes. I'm yet to think of a destination for the next shoot.

2009-09-09T09:06:00.001+05:30

The plant that I had bought over a year ago has now grown bigger.

Education

2009-09-05T22:59:00.001+05:30

Forever holding dreams within my heart,

Through nature's inflexible grace,

I'm learning to live...

2009-07-27T22:07:00.002+05:30

Turn it on, turn it on...

Let the feelings flow

Close your eyes...

See the ones you used to know

Open up, open up...

Don't struggle to relate

Lure it out...

Help the memory escape

Like reflections on the page... the world's what you create

~ Wither (Black Clouds and Silver Linings, 2009)

Chikmagalur trip - Hunkal Woods

2009-07-15T15:20:00.004+05:30

Chikmagalur trip

This is going to be a full fledged trip log. Noticing how my recent trip posts have been rather short, this time, I want to let the floodgates open :D

One among our gang was heading off to Australia for an MBA and so we thought we should do a weekend trip someplace before he leaves the country. The destination was basically chosen over a cup of coffee at Barista, thanks to an enlightened soul called Murali. No sooner than the words "Hunkal Woods" came out of his mouth, Girish was on his phone talking to the owners of the Hunkal Woods estate in Chikmagalur and inquiring/negotiating about the tarrifs. This was 6 days before to the planned start of the trip. Over the next 3 days, 6 people had confirmed and we had a booking confirmed, thanks to Naren, who made the payment. We decided we'll rent a mazda so that none of us will have the headache of driving, considering that the destination is 280kms away, and also everyone gets to travel together and have fun along the journey as well.

2 days before the start of the trip, my boss offered me his Scorpio for the trip, which I gladly accepted! It took less than 4 hours to convince everyone that Scorpio would be enough to seat 6 of us + our luggage comfortably and it works out a lot cheaper than if we'd book a mazda. With everyone onboard and agreed on the plan, it was just a countdown to the weekend. Just the day before the start of the trip, Karan confirmed that he too would join us for the trip, taking the count of people to 7. This meant that the seating of everyone within the Scorpio was a difficult one. After some heated discussions, (Me and Girish wanted to drive, Sac wanted all people together in one place during the journey), we decided that we'd go in 2 vehicles - the Scorpio and Naren's Santro. I'll later come back to this decision and illustrate how good this decision turned out to be!

Plan was to start at 5:30am from my place. Everyone was to assemble at my place before 5:30am. Karan and Girish were the first to arrive right on time. Naren, Sac and Murali arrived 15 minutes late. VV was to be picked up on the way. So, it was 6:15am, by the time we put all the luggage into vehicles, distributed snack packs among the vehicles, etc, picked up VV and hit the NICE road. We thought we'd beat most of the heavy traffic on NH-4 by starting early - but, boy, we were so wrong. We were held up for a good 20 minutes on NH-4 thanks to some jackasses who had come off on the wrong side of the highway just because their side was jammed! Girish, who was riding shotgun (ah! new term learnt on this trip - riding shotgun amounts to riding in front passenger seat) skillfully guided me through the extreme left lane (to be read as gutter shoulders) and we were out of the muck sooner than we'd normally have.

Then it was a long stretch on NH-48, till we reached CR Patna to make a stop for breakfast. The road was patchy, with 4-laning work going on. But with low traffic and extreme power of the Scorpio, we could easily maintain speeds above 100 kmph. We reached the breakfast spot at 9am. I was warned by people from the Santro that I was driving rather rash, overtaking on blind curves, etc. Somehow, people in my car never complained about anything like that. Although Murali mentioned that, by now, he was "intimately familiar" with the ceiling of the Scorpio! That, I attribute to the patchy roads and hard suspensions on the vehicle :D We finished breakfast and continued, now with Girish on the wheels. Mr. Girish has an interesting driving style for handling curves. I don't know whether he does this usually or he was doing it specifically because I told him that Scorpio does not handle curves well at high speeds. He goes to the right lane and then cuts across to the left on a leftward curve (opposite on the rightward curve). As we proceeded, the weather slowly changed from being pleasant to cloudy and then it began drizzling. We reached Chikmagalur, after driving thru on and off rains. It was 11am. The destination was still 25 km away. Since this was the last big town, we bought some essentials and continued. This stretch of the drive was very scenic - we could already sight the lofty peaks around the Chikmagalur area - the top of the peaks kissed with dark grey clouds - quite a sight. Finally, after 24 km of so, we saw a board indicating to take a left for Hunkal Woods. This road was 3km long and was the worst possible road to drive on. The road was estate maintained and the rains had basically turned the road into a mud slush. Poor Santro got could not continue at some point - it was not getting any traction and the wheels would just spin furiously in the mud. It took some out-of-box thinking and extreme driving from Sac to get the Santro past this point. (This was why I mentioned that it was a good decision not to get a mazda. I'm sure the mazda would have got stuck here till winter!) The moment we landed in front of the estate bungalow, where we were to stay, it started raining - a beautiful welcome. Top of that, we were served the best coffee there was! It was 12:15pm. We spent some time to shake off the travel weariness, sipping coffee and onlooking the gentle rains. We got our bags and set bases in the rooms of the bungalow. We chatted with the caretaker there for a while, discussing about the options we have of things to do there. We chose to go on a trek to a view point after lunch. The lunch itself was simple, tasty and sumptuous.

We started off on this rain-trek, (without Sac, who had a bad stomach ache) with jackets on, carrying umbrellas. I was particularly worried about 2 things - taking my DSLR in the rains and LEECHES. Camera was in a good quality bag, and I carried an extra plastic cover to protect the bag. I borrowed gum boots from the caretaker there to "protect" me from the leeches. Till then, I had not seen any leeches and was feeling ok. About some 15 minutes into the ascent, they started appearing. There were everywhere. Climbing up our legs with dogged determination of finding some skin! Like those black alien things in Spiderman-3. It was at this moment, I realized this phobia of mine - leeches! Most of the trek was spent in checking for leeches rather than clicking photos! It took us almost 2 hours to reach the view point. Such pristine splendour of mother nature on display, we had our mouths wide open when we first saw the sights from the view point. We could see all of the peaks around the area, covered with a thick green blanket and crowned by clouds! We spent some 15 minutes there, clicking photos, looking at various peaks with binoculars, etc. The descent was less eventful and we reached the bungalow by 5:30pm. Each of us checked ourselves for any leeches stuck on us, a few of us did have one or two of them. And then had a bath. We had another round of the scintillating coffee and started playing dumb charades. From 6pm to 9pm, time just flew by, playing dumb charades, feasting on some hot snacks. After another simple yet tasty dinner, we played indoor cricket and then retired to sleep.

Next morning, I was the first to wake up by 6:30am. VV and Murali were awake by 7am. Time for another coffee - we never got tired of drinking coffee on this trip! I ventured out for a walk with my camera for some photos. Wandered around the bungalow for about half hour, clicked some snaps. It started drizzling, so I had to run back to the bungalow. By now, most people were up and some were thinking of another small trek. We had a heavy breakfast after which Murali, Girish and Naren started for another small trek. I decided to give this a skip and stayed back with Karan, VV and Sac - we played some cards, table tennis and had bath. It was almost noon by the time the trekking trio returned back.

The trip was coming to an end and none of us wanted to go back. Yet, we unwillingly packed our bags, had a nice simple lunch, wandered around the bungalow on our own for a while and then started back at 2:30pm. The drive back was unusually sombre with everyone keeping to themselves - listening to music on ipods, sleeping, etc. We reached back home by 9pm .

This place was absolutely fantastic. I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone going to Chikmagalur. I cannot wait to go back there this winter - yes, I've already decided - I need to get back there, at a time, when there would be no leeches so that I can get some nice snaps :)

Dream...

2009-07-06T11:33:00.003+05:30

Theater! DT, Prog Metal, Experimentation, Chaos, Melody, Extreme talent, Guitar/Keyboard harmonics

Well, that previous paragraph came out more like a tag cloud! Phew. So, I've begun a rediscovery of sorts, of this amazingly talented bunch of people that form what is popularly called Dream Theater. The things John Petrucci can do with a guitar, that Jordan Rudess can do on a keyboard are simply mind blowing, to say the least.

Even though its most unfair to judge a band with just one song, I think I can make an exception in this case. "Take the time" - this one song should encompass all that Dream Theater is and probably more. From a bird's eye overview, this song just sounds like a garbled mess with the music score distributed among 'n' different eccentric fellows, each of who wanted the song to go in an entirely different direction! I'm sure a lot of people turn themselves off to DT at this and move onto "greener" (?) pastures of pop (??).

But some brave people do dive in - there's chaos yet some semblance of order (I'm still talking about that one song). The rhythm does not stay the same for more than 30 seconds or so. No sooner than you become accustomed to a head banging pattern, you've got to stop and change gears (oh - beware of neck sprains!). Do let the competing guitar and keyboard solos completely sink in - calmness amidst chaos! For most part of the 8 minutes and 21 seconds, you'll feel like you're on a roller coaster ride that's running on a crazily varying electricity supply. Its an experience of life - so many things happening at once that its very easy to feel overwhelmed. But it does land you in a soft cushion of assuredness of a steady chapter at the end.

The timing could not have been better for their new album to come out - Black Clouds and Silver Linings. Cannot wait to explore that.

# One of their albums is aptly named Systematic Chaos

Shivagange Trek

2009-06-16T18:24:00.004+05:30

This is a stony hill near Dobbaspet, Tumkur and is about 60KM from Bangalore. Its an ideal place for a day's trek.

We started at 4:45am from Bangalore. After wading through the really hopeless stretch of NH-4 till Nelamangala, it was a breeze driving on the toll stretch of the highway. We reached the small village at the foot hills at 6am and started climbing at 6:15am. This was a really good time to start climbing, as the sun was still mild and it was cool. We reached hill top by 8am, in spite of taking a lot of breaks for photos, water, refreshments, etc. The last 20% of the climb is the steepest and there are railings for support. Beware, though, as the steps are very narrow and of uneven heights.

We were lucky, as the hilltop was covered with clouds! We were walking around in the midst of clouds. Even though this is summer, it was darn cold up there! We went into the Giri Gangadhareshwara temple and chatted with the priest there for a while. We ate some snack bars and biscuits. We went to see "Shantala drop" where some queen Shantala had jumped down from. We could not see how steep it was, due to the thick cloud cover. We just lied down on the rocks, in absolute silence, gazing at the skies, with clouds moving all over us, and the winds eerily howloing away. Perfect settings to forget everything, clear the clutter in your mind and get refreshed.

We started back at 9am. And it was to be an eventful descent! The monkeys had all woken up by this time and we had learnt a lot from others' experiences to be wary of rather aggressive monkeys. We spotted one or twon monkeys, but they seemed rather mild and did not bother us. Mind you, all of us had bags of snacks and water with us. Our only defence against them was my tripod! Half way into the descent, having not seen any trouble from monkeys, we thought that the monkey trouble here was hyped up. We clibmed atop a big boulder and sat down for a break. We never thought that the monkeys would try to pull off a covert operation! One monkey stealthily crept up behind us and wanted to snatch one of our bags away. We spotted it in the nick of time and managed to scare it away. Turned out that it was one of the foot soldiers and it called for more backup. Then came one of the commando monkeys - unnerved by our presence, unflinched by our weapon, it singlehandedly started to corner us! We had to jump off the boulder one by one. The last man to jump was always going to be in trouble, for there should always be one of us trying to keep the monkey at bay while the others jumped - Murali did a brave job!

After that encounter, we decided not to take any more breaks and got back among human civilization by 10:15am. We started back, taking a different route through Magadi and reached Bangalore by 12:15pm.

Tips

1. Start early! This definitely saved us from monkey trouble during the ascent

2. Having a big group helps

3. Carry minimum amount of food/water - take only one bag. You can protect it better

4. Do not forget to enjoy :)

HuthriDurga trek

2009-06-01T10:24:00.003+05:30

Huthri Durga
Originally uploaded by thisismetallica

HuthriDurga is a hillock near Magadi. It is about 80km from Bangalore.

Route: Bangalore -> Magadi -> Continue towards Kunigal (some distance after Magadi, there's a Y fork where you should keep towards right) -> After this right fork, proceed 5 km and then start asking the villagers for HosapaLya at which you have to take a left (this left turn is VERY easy to miss!) -> After the lest, continue for 5 more km to reach a village -> Another left here (this is easy to spot if you remember to look for a really small road that goes in the direction of the visible hillock) -> After the left turn, its 2 km of winding uphill drive to another village/settlement. Park your car someplace and start walking!

We started at 5:20am. Hit the NICE road from the Mysore Road and exit at Magadi road. Magadi road is now beautifully made 2 lane road. It was a pleasure to drive on that road. After Magadi, we got lost a bit and had to ask around and drive up and down the same road twice before we finally got on track and reached the foothills at 7:00AM. Its a small trek - takes about an hour to reach the top. Its steep in bursts and you get a spacious, vegetation less barren stone with a very relaxing breeze that should take away all the tiredness. The view from the top is excellent. There's a temple of Lord Shiva where pooja happens only on Mondays and Fridays. You can still catch a glimpse of the sanctum though. (NOTE - beware of some aggressive monkeys!) Some 50 meters away from the temple is an "Echo point". Its facing the direction opposite to the place where you started the trek. We shouted quite a lot to "test" the echoes. Shouting apart, do make it a point to sit there in total silence. We then sat down in shade to have some cereal bars and plain cake. Started back and reached our parked car by 10:15AM. Reached Bangalore by 1PM.

There goes - another day, another trek. Many more to follow :)

Psycho

2009-05-26T20:58:00.004+05:30

That's the name of a 2008 Kannada movie. The songs are excellent. A welcome change from the usual stuff being doled out nowadays. Film debut for Raghu Dixit as a music director and the freshness is there to see. The movie itself is also commendable.

"Mahadeshwara" and "Ee tanavu ninnade" are best numbers on the album!

Math or Common Sense?

2009-05-07T22:27:00.004+05:30

This is an offshoot of an interesting debate (albeit one that ended without conclusion). We've been encountering quite a few out-of-memory conditions leading to crashes. We had not seen them before, but from last one week, we've seen it at least half-a-dozen times. I'd always been surprised that most places in code just assumed that a dynamic allocation works... all the time. I was always told that the system has been sized so that it would never run into out of memory conditions. I thought it would just be a matter of time. I guess I may have been right. I say that I may have been right because there may always be memory leaks that is leading to this situation. Fixing ALL leaks may just ensure that we do not run out of memory... not ever, but perhaps for now.

Now, onto the topic of debate. Math or Common Sense... Its about how to go about designing a model for memory usage in your application.

Math

You know what your application is supposed to do and you know the algorithm that does the job. You work up numbers using the algorithm's complexity and fix up a peak memory usage. Then you ensure that you are not above the architecture specified maximum memory. Simple? Well, hardly I'd say! Lets list out the pros and cons of this approach:

Pros

Simplifies coding - no ugly allocation failure handling anywhere in the code base!
Some people like reading the above line, so this makes point 2!

Cons

Freezes design and makes extensibility a complicated affair - every major release of your product, one has to revisit the memory sizing to make sure that its still enough for the new code that's going to be put in. If the existing sizing falls short, then back to the drawing board!
Memory leaks can wreck havoc - while its a cardinal sin to leave in memory leaks in code, this approach gives no leeway whatsoever for leaks! This means more pressure to fix these leaks, fast!
The end-user's application suffers due to a erraneous sizing or limitation of underlying hardware

Common Sense

You design and write code knowing that out of memory conditions are a fact of life and be prepared to gracefully handle such conditions. At the worst, a sub task in your application may fail - at least it does not bring the whole application down! You still may need to do some sizing - but this would just be to ensure that you do not hit out of memory conditions very frequently and nothing more than that. This overcomes the cons listed above but may make coding more complicated. Well, I'm a firm believer that its the design that should be simple and not the code!

There is one way to make the math design work. Your model should ensure that memory allocation ALWAYS succeeds. Either make allocations a blocking call or implement some sort of a resource wait that suspends the task until enough memory becomes available. Crashing/Aborting an application just because an allocation fails is plain cruelty!

Feel free to speak out your mind in case you have an opinion on this.

Trek - biLikal beTTa

2009-05-02T00:02:00.007+05:30

Well, aren't we a crazy bunch of people to try trekking in summer?! We, most certainly, are! The destination was just about 50km from Bangalore. Plan was made such that we would not have to bear the brunt of the harsh sun - leave at 5AM, reach at around 6:30AM (buffer time to enquire around, if we get lost, etc). 5 people - me, Naren, Girish, Vinay (aka Dumma) and Praveen (Girish's friend) set out in 2 cars (to avoid having 5 sweaty people stuffed in one single car on the return leg!).

The route seemed simple enough on paper - take Kanakapura road (NH-209) till HarohaLLi and then take left towards MaraLawadi, then right towards OonaaladoDDi. We started at 5:30AM (a bit late) but were able to reach the destination by 6:30AM. We parked the cars near a village home and asked the house people about the car parked there and they said it was ok. Next, we had to get to the foothills - 2 kids were more than eager to help us find the route. From the place where we parked, it was a 1.5km walk to the place where the trek would actually start. We gave 60 rupees to the kids for helping us. They let their dog come with us - they said it would be helpful to find routes in the rough terrain. And helped it did! It stayed with us the entire trek, up and down! We named it "Byra".

We started trekking at 7AM. Naren stopped, sweating profusely and feeling giddy, 15 minutes into the trek. We stopped for a while and rested with him. He had a fruit bar and some glucose which helped him regain some strength to carry on. From then on, we trekked and reached the hill top after 2 hours, at 9AM. We took a lot of breaks in between as the steep climb and the heat was taking its toll. Having glucose helped a lot! At one point, something like 60% into the ascent, we felt that we would not be able to make it to the top and thought of returning back. But thank god, we continued on!

There's a small Rangaswamy temple atop the hill. But it was closed. We just found some place under a tree to sit, rest and have breakfast - cereal bars, fruit bars, cake and biscuits. Then we found an excellent viewpoint overlooking the vast rugged terrain. We sat there, enjoying the absolute silence, only disrupted by the howling winds and bird chirps - now that's a relaxing experience after a hard trek!

One strange thing atop the hill was, even though we were well within Karnataka border, our cell phones were getting signals from TN! We were on roaming within our own state! Now, that's something to complain about!

We started descent at 10:30AM. The descent was definitely more easier than the ascent. We took far lesser breaks than we did during ascent. But the harsh sun nearing noon was sapping our energy very rapidly. Thankfully we carried plenty of water. We reached the foot of the hill at 11:30AM and started back, reaching home by 1PM.

That was a neat small trek - positives being the short distance from Bangalore, the not-so-difficult ascent (well, we did find it hard at times, but I am sure it was the weather!). It would have helped it we had started an hour earlier - we may have caught the sunrise from the hill top :)

TBD: Photos link

Unity in diversity

2009-04-26T00:05:00.003+05:30

I just realized that I'm kinda singled out among my friends in certain fields of mutual interest:

1. Soccer clubs - I root for Liverpool FC whereas most of my friends support Manchester United (Thankfully no one likes Chelsea!)

2. Music bands - Iron Maiden for me (Up the irons!) whereas most of of friends prefer Metallica over Maiden as first choice (Thankfully no one likes crapass boy/girl bands... anymore!)

3. Ahem! Let me not get into "political" differences - especially during election time :D

Catalog

2009-04-15T14:25:00.004+05:30

These are the ones which I have original CD/DVDs for. I have a lot of others on my computer :D

Hosa padaarthagaLu (New stuff)

2009-03-31T11:21:00.003+05:30

GaNapati vandane - II

After my south India trip, my interest in photography was renewed and since then I'd been thinking about buying a good camera - no, not the ones which have insane megapixel number and an atrocious optical zoom number - what was on my mind was a DSLR.

After consulting with photo-geek friends, doing quite an amount of research myself, I went ahead and bought a Nikon D40. I'm sure there will be some photography buffs out there who would not think that this was the best camera - but I like it and I love the pictures it produces! There's still a lot to learn, lot to experiment and lot of photos to click.

Wishing for an enjoyable time doing all of the above :)

Walk through the garden...

2009-03-17T16:13:00.005+05:30

A weekend when parents are out of town leads to me diving head on into over indulgence, which in turn leads to me getting a fever on the morning of monday. On arrival of parents, I try to receive the "I told you so!" narrations as gracefully as I can and start working from home. It turns out to be a calm day at office and I manage to finish up by 5 in the evening. Feeling much better than in the morning, I set out for a walk. I could call this walk a peek into the past, almost like a time travel.

The walk through the very street where we used to play cricket with a foldable metal chair acting as the stumps, with those quite unique rules of the game - beaten and the batsman is out and a genuine out (bowled, caught, stumped, etc) and the whole team is out, play as long as you can - I can probably still pin point the exact place where the chair used to stand, the 12th main stone sign(which is no longer there) where we used to sit and gaze at the crowd at the bus stop (read girls!)...

Walking on, there's the SLV - eating chats and sipping coffee, while discussing matters of utmost importance - local cricket tournament strategies, fighting on who goes ahead in the batting line-up. There's a fancier eatery that has come up just beside the SLV now - I go there as my more liked chai is not available at the SLV. Further on there's Hobo fancy and stationery store - our source of Pacer tennis balls, Joice bagery (Choice bakery) where we negotiated and bought 1kg chogolate gage (chocolate cake). Then comes the Lakshmikantha temple - our favorite somaari kaTTe, the evening 8:30 meeting place - sit there chatting away absolute nonsense, observe people and have fun at their expense, in some more serious times, discuss about teenage issues - tips on how to progress on teen crushes, dealing with heart breaks, dreaming about life ahead, what we're going to be as grown-ups - Will we still meet often? Will we still have these 8:30pm meetings at our kaTTe?

Finally I come to the 12B bus stop field - those innumerable cricket matches, tournaments, wins and losses, place where I got the nickname of golfer Srini. Now half that field is gobbled up by a school and the other half is (luckily) still intact as a field though its shared with a government school.

The time travel abruptly ended as I walked beyond the field. Not much of similar good memories beyond this point in the near vicinity of my home. I return home after what seemed like years - but in reality was the best 15 minutes of yesterday!

And if you're taking a walk through the garden of life

What do you think you'd expect you would see?

Trip Log

2009-03-07T19:23:00.002+05:30

Clarification - this is not a log!

Ah the trip - a week long vacation - covering Alleppey, Kovalam, Kanyakumari and Pondicherry. The whole trip can be summarized in one line - "Living on India's edge" (courtesy Murali).

The warm sand, the vast stretches of bluish green waters, the dripping heat, beach football sessions, experiments with my old DSC-P73 4MP camera, pebbles of wisdom from swami PerumaLaananda, walking long stretches on a really hot day in Pondicherry on empty stomach only to find the most wonderful Poori Masala and Pongal I've ever eaten, experiencing the greatest relief on a Chennai footpath, debates with Mr. Counter Strike - this trip had it all. In one word it was "paramaananda" :D

Here are some experiments with Girish's camera and my old camera