TED Ideas Worth Spreading

One of my colleagues at office pointed me to the site www.ted.com, a macro site for talks (essentially videos) by the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Do check it out. Seems extremely interesting

Cheers,
Yogesh

Technorati Tags: TED,Talks,Videos

Arjun turns 5

On the auspicious occasion  of Gudi Padwa, the Hindu New Year, on 27th March 2009, my son Arjun turned 5 years old. His growth has been nothing less than phenomenal for both Sawani and I and we have cherished every moment of it. It has been an absolute blessing and both of us thank the almighty profusely for giving us Arjun in our life.

This year on the 27th March, we celebrated Gudi Padwa in the morning hours by raising the traditional Gudi and praying to God for a happy and wonderful year ahead and thanking him for blessing us with the love and warmth of our parents, the joy and happiness of family and the amazing gift of raising a child. Arjun’s grandpa and grandmom (Vijay and Neela), my parents, came from Pune especially to celebrate and be an integral part of his birthday celebration. They actually undertook an uncomfortable 16+ hrs bus drive to be with us in Bangalore. Amazing. Arjun has been really enjoying their company and just loves it when they are here. Infact, in the night he needs to be tucked in with his grandmom every night.

In the evening, we celebrated Arjun’s birthday at our home in Brookefields in a nice homely fashion, with invitations specially made by Arjun to his little friends from the apartment complex. We got cake from a nice little cake shoppe at Indiranagar named CakeWalk, and other munchies (dhokla, gulab-jamun, sandwiches, chips, cold-drinks) and everyone had a blast. This year Arjun wanted a spiderman cake, so we got a spiderman mask cake made and I must say it was extremely well made. It was a fun filled evening, with music, cake, cold drinks flowing (literally) and the amazing kid banter.

For the night we had invited some of our next door neighbours for dinner. Sawani and my mom spent almost half of the afternoon preparing for dinner. It was a lavish spread of chicken, vegetables, shrikhand and a lot of other stuff. The chicken turned out especially well (I had some hand in it) and we partied till late in the night.

Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/27March09GpadwaArjunBday#

Some videos are embedded below…

Video 1: Arjun’s Ovalna

Video 2: Arjun’s Birthday Cake

Video 3: Happy Birthday To You

 

Cheers,
Yogesh

Cycling Updates

Oh boy, it’s been a while since I posted. My cycling though hasn’t been as intermittent as my blogging. So here are the cycling updates:-

March 16th through 20th: 20kms to and fro each day
March 23rd and 24th: 20kms each

Total Distance Covered on Merida: 584 Kms
Total Distance Covered on Cycle: 1154 Kms

My Merida is due for servicing. Oh and btw: March 22nd marked a month since I purchased my new joy.

Cheers,
YVR

Self Education Resource List

http://selfmadescholar.com/b/self-education-resource-list/

An excellent resource for self education. Great to review some of your basics as well.

Cheers,
YVR

To Bangalore International Airport and back in Rs 5/-

Embarked on my longest bicycle ride today. I decided to go from my house in Brookefields to Bangalore International Airport and back. I had no clue of the actual distance, but knew it would take 4 hrs minimum. I thought that I would keep going till I hit 2 hrs on my clock and head back. With this in mind, I woke up early at around 5:45 and was on the road by about 6:15am. Had a back pack in which I took 2 bottles of water and carried some cash with me. Decided to take the Brookefield-KR-Puram – Hebbal – NH 7 to BIAL. Was at the Hebbal junction at about 7:05 am. Decided to take some snaps around, gulped down some H20 and continued forward. The highway markers mentioned the BIAL was still 27 kms to go. The weather was nice and not very cold, visibility was clear, essentially perfect weather conditions for cycling (atleast in my mind). My mind was clear and fresh, decided to put on my radio. 91.9 Radio Indigo is an amazing aid with it belting out really nice numbers. From now on, my partner in crime was Radio Indigo. At 8:15 am, 2 hrs from start, I was about 4 kms away from the airport. As per the original plan, should have turned back, but the fact that the airport was just 4 kms away, I decided to go ahead (btw; this was my first visit to the International Airport). Reached the BIAL at about 8:30 am, to be welcomed by Army commandos at the airport. Chatted with them and asked if I could take a round of the airport, and they mentioned, I would have to ride along without stopping. My first impressions of the airport, atleast from the outside, it’s allright, nothing great though. Funnily the BIAL airport doesn’t even have a large billboard that states such (or did I miss it). Saw some Cafe’s on the sidewalks near the entrance, rode through, raising lot of heads, what in the world is a biker doing here ?

Stopped for another round of H20 and headed back. Journey back home was uneventful, V(R)ani Ganapati at Radio Indigo, giving me company. Heard numerous amazing numbers from the 70s,80s through the 90s. It was great. Rode nonstop till Hebbal junction (road is not that easy though, there all lot of climbs and downhills. It was fun. My legs felt fine and in general was feeling pretty good. The sun was not that harsh still, had a decent cloud cover so that made things a bit easier. Had another round of H20 and continued onwards on ORR. As I crossed the KR Puram bridge, stopped and had an ice-cream candy (orange flavour – 5 Rs) and reached home at 10:45. So overall time spent about 4:30 hrs for a distance of 86 kms (approx according to mapmyride). Here’s the map below…

For photos (none exceptional really) go on to http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/RideToBIAL#

Reached home and gorged on some watermelon slices and had a nice round of khichri, hit the sack for about an hour. Overall am feeling a bit tired now, but should be ok by tomorrow, I think.

Cheers,
YVR

Life summarized in 4 bottles

Extremely interesting…

Came across this @ http://static0.blip.pl/user_generated/update_pictures/198204.jpg?1232704996

Cheers,
YVR

3GPP Specification Groups

Want to know the various 3GPP specification groups (TSG)? Visit http://www.3gpp.org/Specification-Groups

Cheers,
YVR

Technorati Tags: 3GPP,TSG

How to be a program manager

That’s the heading of a recent excellent post by Joel Spolsky at his Joel on Software blog. Here’s the link, read it, assimilate it and apply it.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/09.html

Cheers,
YVR

Ride on

11th March: 20 kms. The weather in Bangalore turned much cooler  due to the low pressure in the south of India. Felt awesome cycling with the cool breeze. While going back, the going got tough since had a heavy breeze going against. But I felt refreshed.

12th March: 20 kms. Weather continued to stay cool. Had my first flat (puncture) on the rear wheel of my Merida. While going down from Marathahalli bridge, I sensed the rear wheel jumping…Got down to check and didn’t find anything wrong really, it was dark, there was air pressure so continued…but the rear wheel continued to bounce. Got down again, and this time slowly rotated the rear wheel to see if anything is amiss, and lo & behold, a huge screw had penetrated the tire. I removed it and “fuss”, within 10 seconds the entire air was released. Walked along from Marathahalli bridge to Kundalahalli gate, to a cycle store nearby. The cycle shop was closing (it was 8:30pm). The guy first mentioned that we are closing, and I said oh, and then he said he will do it, since tomorrow (Fri) was a holiday and the shop will be closed. I thanked him, had some doubts asto how the puncture will be repaired and while doing so will it damage my rim (it was a Merida for god’s sake). The young chap at the shop asked me “Isko stand nahi hai kya ?” meaning, doesn’t the bike have a stand ? And I said no. But he got down to business, removed the tire and the tube cleanly. Found the area of puncture, fixed it with a sticky gum and a round-shaped patch. I asked him will this hold up at 50psi pressure ? He said it hold pretty much car punctures at 35 psi …Ok..what choice did I have rather than to hope it holds up at 50 psi as well. He finished up in less than 5 mins, charged me Rs 10/- for the job and off I was. Reached home and sunk in my sofa in front of my LCD.

13th March: 20 kms (have covered 10 so far, in my office as I write this post.)

Cheers,
YVR

Excla.im

Trying to get my tweeter and gtalk setup using Excla.im Have followed all the steps successfully and have added tweet@excla.in in my gtalk friends list. Waiting for it to accept my connection and test this thing out..Hope it works..

Cheers,
YVR

Brain Buzzed

Recently setup my twitter account. Tried to setup such that I could update my tweets using my BSNL Cellone phone. Unfortunately, the activation code/number that tweeter provides, when I try to send a SMS to that number, it fails to reach. Looks like the BSNL SMSC doesn’t have a clue about the said number. That doesn’t help..since I would have loved to use Tweeter..

In any case, I tried plugging the “Twitter doesn't work with BSNL Cellone” on google and the first site that showed up was …www.techbangalore.com/tag/bsnl 

Visited the site and unfortunately it didn’t have any content related to the actual query. In any case, the search did bring me to an interesting site…and that too from Bangalore. It looks to be hosted by a techie from Bangalore named Prashant. Seems to be generating quite a bit of traffic. Went to the “Blogs I read” section http://www.techbangalore.com/blogs-i-read/ and followed 2 bloggers, more so since the name of the blogs caught my attention

http://worldthrumyeyes.wordpress.com/: A girl who blogs about the world as she sees it through her eyes. Blogs on varied topics and has a decent amount of traffic

http://thejeshgn.com/: A blog by an Infoscian techie/hacker. Talks about various items he works on.

http://eventsbengaluru.com/: A site dedicated to the events happening in Bangalore

http://jerrymannel.com/blog/: I like the way the blog is designed. Check out the header at the top and the disclaimer at the bottom. Pretty cool design.

http://fundubytes.blogspot.com/: Lot’s of stuff in here. While was at it came across here that there are twitter IM bots which can update your twitter status. While doing so also found out a neat widget that places twitter updates on your blog/website. Already installed that, see it on the right. Now trying to play with the IM bots and see if they work for me.

Also came across a very comprehensive site called Digital Inspiration. It’s maintained by a professional blogger named Amit Agarwal and is voted among the top 40 blogs in the entire world.

Phew, what’s happening around here …Google has really changed the landscape and I working in a telecom firm for the past 10 years have really had no idea…still working primarily on using C/C++…and look where the world has headed.

Brain buzzed…

YVR

Online Cycle Shops

Here are some of the online cycle shops from where folks on the BBC have bought stuff. It seems these ship to India…No hitches and no glitches

www.chainreactioncycles.com

http://www.evanscycles.com

Cheers,
YVR

Technorati Tags: Online Cycle Shops

Last Sunday Ride

Went out on a longish ride on my bicycle last Sunday. I biked from my home in Brookefields-Varthur-Sarjapur-Bellandur-ORR-Marathahalli-Brookefields. Was not sure how much distance it would be, hence logged on to mapmyride.com and tried to draw a map of the loop. It reports around 33 kms. I think it maybe off by 1 or 2 kms, but overall it does seem accurate. Here’s the map embedded below.

Number Crunching:-

6th March: 20 kms
7th March: Relax. Went to the BBMP office in Mahadevpura and paid the property tax for the year 2008-09 for my flat. The tax rates have increased this time around to almost 2x times to that of for the year 2007-08.
8th March: 33 kms ride (listed above)
9th March: 20 kms (office and back)
10th March: 20 kms (office & back)

Total Distance Covered on Merida: 298 Kms
Total Distance Covered on Cycle: 868 Kms

Cheers,
YVR

Arjun wins his first gold medal

6th March, 2009:-

My son Arjun, who will turn 5 years on 27th March, has won his first gold medal at his Annual Sports Meet for the academic year 2008-09 today. Hearty Congratulations my boy…we are all very very proud of you.

He studies at Gopalan National School in Brookefields and is in Nursery A…Today was their Annual Sports Meet…

More photos have been uploaded at http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/ArjunSportsDay200809#

Wow, amazing I can’t remember when I won (if ever) my first gold medal in school. He was so excited…I am so happy. From yesterday late in the evening he was pestering (in his own sweet little inimitable style) me about the different medals…what is gold, what is silver, what is bronze ? Is gold better than silver ? And what about bronze ? What if I don’t win a medal ? I will “focus”…remembering the Disney Pixar movie “Cars” …It was great..and I didn’t have the faintest clue that he was so focused (or atleast trying to be at his age)

Here’s a video of his race…

The event was called Merry Matching, it essentially comprised of a race with 2 partners in a team, a boy and a girl. Arjun’s “match” was a sweet little girl from his class called Debbie. So the race was essentially such that the girls run the first half of the race, while the boys are standing midway (dancing with a square frame on their heads); midway along then the girl tags the boy and then both of them run the remainder of the race together, hand-in-hand. It was a very good run by Debbie in the first half and then Arjun and Debbie both of them literally “Bolted” off for the remaining half…All-in-all a unique fun-filled racing event.

Here’s a video where Arjun is awarded the gold medal…

 

Here’s a snap at home, Arjun with his gold medal…

The event was very well organized and executed fantastically well. Kudos to all the management, the teacher’s, the support staff and all the little wonders of Gopalan National School, for putting up such an amazing show…

Arjun was so excited and happy and what made both of us amazingly happy is when Arjun was off to his mid-day nap, he quietly comes to us and in our ears says “I want to wear the gold medal and sleep”…and then he bursts out laughing…He’s really my wonder boy…

Heartiest Congrats Arjun.

Cheers,
YVR

Girish & Supriya celebrate their Birthday today

6th March 2009:-

My younger brother Girish and his wife Supriya both celebrate their birthday today. Yes both of them (husband and wife) actually share a birthday. Pretty neat eh..My younger brother holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in Melbourne Australia and is currently a resident of Melbourne Australia. Supriya his wife is with him there and works at a finance company down under. Both are having the time of their lives there. Tried reaching them on the phone to convey our best wishes (quite a many times actually) but couldn’t get through, there was no answer…probably both of them are busy partying out there.

Happy Birthday Girish & Supriya…hope you had a blast..

Cheers,
YVR

Early days on the Merida

27th Feb: 20 kms
28th Feb and 1st March : Relax, didn’t go for any cycle runs

2nd March through 5th March: 20kms each. Went to the Gym on Monday and Wednesday.

Total Distance Covered on Merida: 205 Kms
Total Distance Covered on Cycle: 775 Kms

My Merida TFS is holding up pretty well. Have noticed that 3(F) * 7(R) gear combination is resulting in chain slippage (doesn’t slip completely off). Either I have to learn how to adjust the derailleur myself or would have to take it up to Venky at Wheelsports. My first service of the cycle is due at about 400 kms which I think should be done by end of next week.

I hope to see serious cyclists on the way, but haven’t quite seen any, other than the regular cycle commuters, which btw: I now enjoy going past with ease. There are some guys who try to race me, but over a longer distance eventually give up ;)

I liked Mayank’s of BBC (Bangalore Biker’s Club) signature that he uses when he posts on the forum and have decided to rip it and use it for my own signature as well…ofcourse giving him the due credit. Here’s how it looks

o__
_> /__
(_) \(_)... Burn fat not fuel - Byke along to a healthier life and cleaner world! :) - Mayank @ BBC

Cheers,
YVR