Prashant's Weblog

Invictus

Posted by Prashant - 20/01/10 at 02:01:11 pm

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Beautiful lines from poem titled Invictus by William Ernest Henley.  Clint Eastwood has recently directed a movie with the same name. It is said that this poem was a inspiration for Nelson Mandela as he was incarcerated in a tiny cell for 27 years.

Sandhak Phu Trek – Photo Slideshow

Posted by Prashant - 18/01/10 at 02:01:29 pm

It was a mesmerizing feeling as you stand and stare at the kanchanjunga in all her glory. No amount of megapixal cramming will do justice to her resplendent glory. Only way to experience is get out, stand in front of her and just watch.

Slideshow of photos from recent Kolkatta-Sandhakphu trek.

Avatar Movie- Breathtaking 3D Experience

Posted by Prashant - 18/01/10 at 01:01:15 pm

Don’t let email forwards like this stop you;

Don’t fret about the costly tickets nor let the not so satisfactory review comments about the movie stop you from watching the 3D version of Avatar. Just go and watch it. What a breathtaking experience it was. Simply awesome.

Damn with not-all-that-great story line. The movie is worth the weight in unobtainium just because of the absolutely brilliant action sequences,  the Great Leonopteryx, mesmerizing banshee ride, the thanator, the viperwolfs, the direhorses, attack of the Hammerhead Titanothere,the magnificent floating Hallelujah Mountains, the destruction of gaint hometree, the holograms, stunning beauty of the Pandora planet, especially after dark and the list goes on. These could have been passed off as another set hollywood stunts, but that third dimension makes all the difference and what a difference it has made. Absolutely love it. I almost jumped off my seat with the joy when it had scenes of people flying these cool looking flying machines. It was like I was in it..experience was really cool. Other scenes which are worth their weight in gold are when people operate those futuristic touch based hologram. You feel as though you are right there in the thick of the action. Fantastic.

So don’t miss this one and for heaven sake watch the 3D version, if not you for sure are missing something.

Back from Orissa and SandhakPhu trip

Posted by Prashant - 08/01/10 at 12:01:58 pm

As the train, Prashanthi Express, to Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, chugged out of Bangalooru’s central railway station on 19th December 2009, I was still not very sure as to what beckoned me to this great land of Kalinga. Was it the unique history/culture, splendid architecture, bountiful beaches, the amazing Chilka lake or was it just that it was “on the way” to Kolkatta? I was not sure.

But the journey had begun and as I traveled through Bhubaneshwar, Puri, Konark, Chilka, Nalaband and Balgaon, it was aroma of a different world, flavor of a different cuisine, savoriness of a splendid heritage and a tang of rich natural beauty all rolled in to one. I savored, relished and smacked all of it and thoroughly enjoyed what it had to offer.

After ambling through part of Orissa, I moved to Kolkatta. It was a different place altogether when compared to Orissa. Fact that the whole of the trek group(almost) was with me added to the fun. I wonder why none of the travel guides make the following the must do activities for all tourists at Kolkata;
- Munching yummy rolls after rolls
- Gulping down golgappa after golgappa
- Hogging packet after packet of Jalmurdi
oh take our word for it, fun in travel multiplies several fold when you get into an infinite loop with above there tasks .

When we were not busy with above three activities we found enough time to travel on machines that fall on two completely opposite sides of the speed spectrum, Metro rail and Kolkata trams. We also were able to, not in any order, visit the Birla temple, Victoria memorial, shop for our trek gear near S-Planet, add lot more calories at one of the yummiest sweet shop K.C. Das, enjoyed the ferry service at Howra.

After a wonderful day in Kolkata, it was time to move on to NJP. We undertook an overnight train journey to NJP. Then a sumo and an indica transported us from NJP to Manebanjan which was the start point of our trek.

Fighting the freezing cold which we were not used to at Manebanjan, we started the most exciting journey of year 2009, trek to Sandakphu-phalut. Generally people either trek or most of the times take land rovers from Manebanjan to Sandakphu and then climb down from Sandakphu in to West Bengal.But we had planned a different route.

Day 1:

We would start at Manebanjan and trekking through Chitrey, Lamaydhura, Megma, Tumbling where we halt for night.

Day 2:

The next morning from Tumbling throught the Singalila forest reach Garibus and then passing through Kaiyakatta reach Kalipokri which would be the stopover place for the night.

Day3:

Trek from Kalipokri through Bhikey Banjan to reach Sandakphu.

Day 4:

Trek 21 km from Sandakphu to reach Phalut. This is a slight deviation from the usual trekking route. Most of them come to Sandhakphu and then take the Gurdum, Srikola Rimbik route to complete the trek.

Day 5,6 and 7:

These three day idea was to trek to Uttarey in Sikkim by passing through Sabnam valley, Shinglila Pass,Achelley Dara, Phoktey Dara with night halts (in tents) at Achelle Dara and Kalizar

Uttarey would be the end of the trek from where group would disperse off to their respective destinations.

The plan looked impressive. The view of Himalayas you get to see  from Sandhakphu and Phalut are unparalleled. But hey we all know the universal law “If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong” and our trip had to abide by it. Things went on as per the plan until we reached Sandakphu. The night we halted at Sandakphu was greeted by sever cold and blizzards. By the time we woke up and opened the door of our loghut, the entire landscape had magically transformed. It was completely covered with snow almost half a feet in thickness. Though we thoroughly enjoyed, it also ment that we were struck in this place until the snow recedes by melting. Day one went waiting for the skies to clear and so did the day two. With the cold taking heavy toll on all of us and with the loss of precious time we had our back against the wall. We all knew there was no way we could go ahead with our plans in these circumstances. Plan “B” was imminent. Considering the time we had on our hand, we decided to chuck the plan of going to Phalut, instead we decided to take the regular trek route and climb down from Sandakphu through Gurdum, Srikola and then to Rimbik. We also arranged for vehicals to pick us up at Rimbik from where we dispersed. One group went to Siliguri, a big town around 6KM from NJP and rest went back to Manebanjan.

As I had to take a train from NJP to Howra, I decided to go to Siliguri. The day we landed in Siliguri, on one had it was the nostalgic feeling that marked the end of a superb trek, but dusk of that day also marked a brand new year for a fellow trekker who became a year wiser. Celebrations started early and went on late into the night. We all had a wonderful time.  The next day three from the group in Siliguri started off on yet another awesome adventure to Butan. Rest of the group spent time surfing the hongkong market in Siliguri. After shopping we headed towards the NJP station to catchup with the penultimate leg of our journey. We took the train from NJP to Kolkata and the the next day flight back from Kolkata to Bangalore, thus ending a trip that had lots and lots of “WOW” and “Ah ha” moments.

Though I would rate Leh trip higher than this one, this trip has given me more moments than the Leh trek that I would cherish and remember my entire life. The first glimpse of the majestic Kanchenjunga, exhilarating view of the Himalaya range from Sandhaphu, First glimpse of the mount Everest, View of Sikkim dotted in electric lights and basking in the full moon light, first sight of the amazing snow filled landscape that hit my eyes when I stepped out the log hut in the morning at Sandakphu and many many more…

This was just the bird’s eye view of the amazing trip I had. A much longer post with lots of pictures depicting more incidents, pranks, “What the forest!!” moments, moments of exhaustion, relief, triumph, exhilaration, pain and fun is on the way.

yepeee…at last proud owner(going to be) of photoshop CS4

Posted by Prashant - 16/12/09 at 01:12:10 pm

Photoshop CS4 is downright one of the best software for image editing and in some days I will be a proud owner of a licensed copy of not just the Photoshop CS4 but the entire web premium suite and that too at a throw away

All this thanks to a fellow trekker who works in Adobe. They get employee discounts and was kind enough to purchase one license for me. Like the saying “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” goes this throwaway price comes with a caveat and that is I cannot use any of the web premium suite products for commercial use. But then its not that much of a handicap because I don’t think I have the necessary skills to make serious money with photography and Photoshop. So it will always be for personal use.

So the next obvious question is why the hell would I want to pay a non zero price when you have Gimp? Make no mistake about it Gimp is one hell of a image editor and if that is not good enough its FREE. Well I myself dont have convincing answer for that, but I guess its because;

• Its GNU
• Its slow compared to photoshop
• I can afford photoshop (the discounted one)

I don’t know how the upgrades system would work for the personal license. Next version sounds really interesting.

Death of relationships

Posted by Prashant - 14/12/09 at 03:12:17 pm

What started as a simple jungle civilization around 300 AD in the backdrop of rain forests in the Mexico region, Mayan civilization lasted until close of 900 AD. In between these 5 centuries, also referred to as the classical age, Mayan civilization rose to improbable heights marked by architectural brilliance, unparalleled splendor and magnificent display of art and culture. But as everything that has a beginning has an end and as we read on, the history book of Mayan, one page after another  reveals this gut wrenching story of how that  splendor turning to dust. But like every other civilization, long before history composed the elegy for the Mayans, there were clear harbingers of  approaching doom and as in every other civilization people either did not read them at all or were late to react.

Its amazing as to how striking similar the patterns of this beginning-glory-doom-dust life-cycle of civilizations are with that of human relationships. Both display telltale signs long before they start going downhill. Most often then not, by the time one correctly interprets them, its late, very late. The fine fabric of relationship would have been strained beyond repair. From then on it downhill all the way culminating in the death of that relationship.

Some of the telltale signs that mark the impending doom of a relationship are;

Communication:
An ongoing communication is one of the healthiest sign of a good relationship. Put the other way, when its not going too well, its like magically some one has pumped in vacuum between the two.

“NO” option:
Another sign of a healthy relationship is being comfortable in saying NO to the other person.

Person 1 – Hey, can we catch up for lunch?
Person 2 – No. Not today.

Neat, short and simple. Person 1 understands.Person 2 understands. Done.
But then things are not all that great

Person 1 – Hey, can we catch up for lunch?
Person 2 – Looks bleak..too many things to finish. Sorry.
Person 1 –

That comfort level with other person which you enjoy in a good relation no longer exist.

Terse replies:

Person 1 -
blah blah……………….
……………………………………

blah blah
Person 2 – thanks
Person 1 –

shucks!! I am pretty bad at this, I better stop. This is what happens when you are great fan of blogs like PhyBlog (Understand your mind with the science of psychology) but don’t have the necessary skills nor expertise. Anyways, decided to stick on to travel stuff, speaking of which Orissa-Kolkatta-SandakPhu Phalut trek is happening this month end..Yepppeeeeee. Expecting to see lots and lots of snow, it will be bone chilling cold. Very excited. Will talk more about that later.

Does it make sense to buy high capacity CF card for your camera?

Posted by Prashant - 01/12/09 at 01:12:15 am

There are few trips whose itinerary is enough blow you away. National Geographic expeditions are one among such trips

If 12 UNESCO World Heritage sites, one private jet and 22 days does not make it a trip-of-a-lifetime, what will? You are almost tempted to click on “Request a reservation”..all this until you scroll down to a point in the webpage where the cost for this once-in-a-lifetime  trips becomes visible. Then its like popping “blue pill”, you are suddenly ejected out of the holodeck  of your fantasy world in to the real world. 55K USD!!! OMGH!!

While the private jet and the UNESCO world heritage sites are not affordable, at least for now, a plan to trek the north east India this winter is brewing. It will be freakingly cold. It will be beautiful and it will be one amazing journey(hopefully). I had prepared a check list and last week end was going through it and was checking items off the to-be-purchased list. One important item on that list was the camera memory card and for my camera its the CF card. Currently I have 4 GB Sandisk III Extream CF card. Till date it has delivered awesome performance on my Nikon D300. Even in the fast continious mode. But with the trip lasting for close to 15 days, I would surely need much more memory than that, especially when I am planning on shooting in RAW. So the question on my mind was what should be the ideal capacity of the memory card that I need to buy?

I checked couple of places and they were selling upto 32GB CF card for close to INR 7000. A normal NEF  (Nikon’s RAW file) has an average size of 12-14 MB. So if I buy a 32 GB CF card, I can take close to 2600 photos in RAW format ( 32000/14) which I guess should be more than enough. So choice is obvious, I should go for a 32GB CF card right? Nope..not so soon. Now lets calculate the cost per MB that I am paying for CF card. Fairly simple arithmetic;

Cost per MB for CF card = 7000/32000 = Rs. 0.22 per MB

Now in market you get these devices called “Protable photo storage devices”, these devices have inbuilt card reader and a portable (generally 2.5″, similar to a laptop HDD) hard dirve. So you can plug in any CF card and trasfer all your photos to the hard drive with one click of a button. Generally most of these devices support virtually all types of memory cards. We have several players in this market including, Nexto, Jobo, Sanho, Digital Foci, Wolverine etc.  Now it gets interesting if we do the above math for some of these devices. For example for a Sanho hyperdrive Space which comes with a 40GB capacity and sells for Rs 8109 the math would look like;

Cost per MB = Rs. 8109/40000 = Rs. 0.20 Per MB

I know Rs. 0.02 is a meager amount, but heck its still less than Rs. 0.22

Nexto Extream 160GB model sells for close to Rs. 16000

Cost per MB = Rs. 16000/160000 = Rs. 0.10 Per MB

A Wolverine Picpac 80GB sells at Rs. 5640

Cost per MB = Rs. 5640/80000 = Rs. 0.07 Per MB

All these costs include the customs you pay when you buy then in India. So if you directly purchase it in US it will be even lesser.

So does it make sense to buy a high capacity CF card? Before you make that decision, lets see what are the other advantages/disadvantages;

disadvantages:

• Even thought it fits in your palm, its not as easy as carrying a CF card - True, but common, we can let this go. dump it in a corner of the backpack it should be fine.
• You need to worry about another additional source of power – Yes, while traveling with every additional power source you need to worry about, your pain increases 4 folds. But most of these devices have a really decent battery life. So even this should not be a challenge.
• Its not very fast – Yep, transferring photos from your card to the device is relatively slow. To transfer 4GB of photos from a CF card in the worst case might take 20-30 mins, but while traveling 30 mins should not be a big concern.
• Safety against HDD crash - This is a very genuine concern. As per the reviews, people have had bad experiences with the hard drive in these devices especially the low cost devices like Wolverine and Sanho.

So if you;

• Travel frequently, take lots of pictures, experiment with you camera a lot
• Ready for slightly higher risk

then a photo storage device makes more sense else a high capacity card should work just fine. Also with the cost of the netbooks falling with every passing day, it would be interesting to compare photo storage device against netbooks. The other day I saw a pocket size netbook costing INR 11K. Did not check the specs but if this comes with a 160GB HDD and a CF card reader, then that opens up lot more options.

Hunt for ebook reader in India

Posted by Prashant - 26/11/09 at 06:11:23 pm

I get a feeling of remorse thinking about the drop in the amount of reading activity I used to do earlier to what I do now. They were good old days when you had that mental make to churn book after book, but these days it is different. Habit of reading has done the vanishing act to such perfection that even Houdini will be proud of its flawlessness. So it was in an attempt to reinvigorate this almost dead wont that I was bitten by the ebook reader shopping bug. The idea that with this  6 inch by 11 inch photo frame like device I can stay sink in to my bed and read thousands of books without straining my eyes (like reading from my laptop) made me want to buy this device. Thus started this journey of research on various e-book reader devices available and ways of buying them so that the cost remain low.

At the outset let me clarify I have not bought any device because at the point of writing this rant, I found the cost of these devices in India is way too high than what I would like to pay.

So it started with me thinking what do I want out of this device. The list is simple;

1. Cost should be less than 10 K INR. 14K would be a stretch.
2. It should not be too small(mobile phone form factors) nor too big (Kindle DX) and it should be handy. Ideally 6” in width.
3. It should have E-Ink technology. Screens build with this technology are easy on your eyes unlike say your laptop screen. There are ebook readers which are built with screen driven by non-E Ink technologies. They also claim that it is as effective as E Ink screens. But I am not sure if  I want to take a chance on these.
4. There are rumours that ebook readers that display color other than black, white and grey are being planned. I am not sure if this is a must have criteria. But the device should be capable of displaying 8 shades of grey. 4 shades of grey is also fine but not sure how crisp the images would be.
5. There should be a easy way to transfer books on and off the device. Preferably through USB cable. I dont think wireless transfer to the device is something that I would ever need. Even if I am traveling, I dont think I am that busy that I cant do it through a USB cable prior to my travel. So wireless is an option that I am not even considering.
6. It should support various document formats. More the merry. But it must support at least  non-DRM PDF,text, images (gif,jpg) and mp3
7. It should have a built in dictionary and search functionality. Never underestimate the power of an inbuilt dictionary.
8. It should allow creation of custom folders.
9. It should preferably support at least the important Indian languages (Kannada).
10. The OS driving the device should preferably be open source. This is important because, the chances that someone will code enhancements and provide additional plugins is higher and by using open source the over all cost generally comes down and hopefully it will be passed on to the customers.
11. Ebook reader company should have a history of frequently release  of newer firmware for the device.
12. It should allow external memory cards of bigger capacity. The larger capacity card it allows the better.

With this feature wishlist in place, it was time to look at the various ebook readers in the market. A good place to start is the Mobile Read Wiki page. I think it has listed almost all the ebook readers which are currently available in the market.

Pocket book 360°
Liked this device, it supports lots of format, its relatively small(5′), but its kind of cute. No fancy stuff like Wireless, touch and does not support handwriting, but is good enough for reading books. It sells at $240 and can be shipped to India. I would have bought this device, but considering the total amount amount after including customs duty, which you need to pay, it is not worth it

Cybook Opus:
Yet another device in the market, but is damn costly. Not sure even if I were willing to shell out that kind of cash I would buy this device.

Hanlin V5:
Yet another device in the market. Sells at $250, add customs duty and its not worth it.

Readius (unreleased):
No idea on this.

Hanvon WISEreader N526:
This is also pretty nice. It has the hand writing recognition, which can be used to highlight sentences and make notes. I send an email couple of weeks back to these guys asking if they ship it to India. Yet to hear from them.

Sony Touch Edition PRS-600:
Its pretty good but does not ship to India and is pretty expensive. Not worth the price.

Kindle 2:
Ships to India, but then its a pain to get the ebook in and out of the device. Considering the custom duties its damn expensive.

Cool-er Classic:
They sell at $300. It does not have any great features that other ebook readers don’t have. They ask you to select a country before they display the price tag. So for India its $300, not sure if this includes customs duty. If it does not then its not worth the price.

NUUT2 :
No idea

iriver Story:
Looks good. Not released yet I guess and I am sure it will be pretty costly.

Nook:
Pretty good bit does not ship to India. Very expensive also.

IRex iLiad series:
Ridiculously high price.

So if you are in India and want to buy a ebook reader, you are basically out of luck. You either wait for someone to come up with a reader manufactured in India which will bring the cost of these devices to where they are suppose to be or you can ask some one who is traveling from US to India to get one for you.

I tried these options too but it works out pretty expensive

- 20North
This will allow you buy US products from India, especially the one which are not currently being shipped to India. But again customs make it really expensive. But sometimes they come up with some schemes because of which you get products at US prices. But none existed when I looked for Ebook Reader.

- Shipito
This will allow to purchase products in US and then get it shipped to India or for that matter anywhere in the world. Again I don’t think there is a way to escape the customs.

I even tried the Ebay Gobal Easy Buy, again very expensive.  The only reseller of Ebook readers in India that I could find is  Ereaderindia. Based out of Chennai these guys sell Hanlin and Cybook readers. While I was browsing their site, found the contact number of proprietor of this firm and obviously called him. What an conversation it turned out to be. My conversation started with me letting him know about my intention of buying an ebook reader. What followed was something which I had never expected. He patiently listened to me until I completed and then explained to me why buying his products at the current price was really a bad idea. He actually convinced me reconsider my buying decision and asked me to wait for another 6 months when the prices will drop. Now how many people like him do you get to meet? Not many at all.

So with that sagely advice, a halo appreared and I attained enlightment. A realization that buying these devices was indeed a bad idea at this point of time dawned upon me thus ending the ebook shopping journey. But something good happened during the course of this journey. Not sure how but I happen to pick a paper back edition of  Rohinton Mistry’s “A fine Balance”. Slowly but steadly I have inched towards the 3/4th mark of this 500 odd pages of extreamly creative writing.  Hopefully it will continue this way.

Collaboration lessons from Nature

Posted by Prashant - 17/11/09 at 01:11:17 pm

William Wordsworth once said “Let Nature be your teacher”.  If you care to look, its amazing how nature always has an easy way of delivering the message across. With the dawn of the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools and technologies and increased pressure on bottomline, concept of collaboration and how its a win-win situation for all has taken the center stage in the management circles these days. Now the question is what is the best way to explain this “Collaboration” and “win-win” situation to say a layman? Apparently nature has this story of Honey guide bird and the nomadic Boran people of Kenya which beautifully elucidates how working together can be a very rewarding situation for all the parties involved.

Across the bushlands of northern Kenya, a remarkable example of cooperation
between bird and man can be found, operating today much as it has for untold centuries.2
This is the territory of the Boran, a nomadic tribe who continue to subsist through hunting
and gathering. For as long as they can remember, the Boran have been taking advantage
of the helpful behavior of a bird known as the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator),
which—as its name implies—is widely renowned as a guide towards choice deposits of
honey.
By nature the honeyguide displays a great fondness for beeswax and bee larvae.
Inasmuch as beehives are virtually inaccessible to these birds and well protected by the
bees (Apis mellifira) themselves—the colonies are typically located in large trees, rock
crevices or termite mounds—the honeyguide requires the aid of man in order to pillage
the honey-cache. As the natives tell it—and now confirmed by the study of Isack and
Reyer—they summon the honeyguide to the campsite by emitting a specific, penetrating
whistle which can be heard from a distance of over one kilometer.3 Upon hearing the
whistle, the bird responds by flying towards the campsite of the Boran, whereupon it
announces itself by flying close to the humans and moving restlessly amongst
conspicuous perches in the trees, all the while emitting a very characteristic call (tirr-tirrtirr-
tirr). Once it has gained the attention of a potential honey-gatherer, the bird then
proceeds to guide him in a fairly direct manner to the site of the bee-colony, the latter of
which may be several kilometers away. Alternately appearing and disappearing, the bird
periodically returns to check on the humans, as if to make sure that they are still
following, such returns becoming more frequent and agitated as the two parties near the
hive. The Boran honey gatherers, in turn, whistle and bang sticks while following the
bird to maintain its attention and announce their position. According to professional
honey gatherers, “through its guiding pattern, the bird informs them about the direction
of, the distance to, and their arrival at the colony.”
Upon arriving at the site of the bees’ nest, the honeyguide perches near it and emits a
very characteristic “indication” call. By all accounts, this call differs markedly from the
guiding call. Should the Boran experience difficulty in locating the colony, the bird
swoops down and circles it as if to further clarify the precise location of the nest. Once
the nest is found and its thick walls breached, the Boran plunder the honeycombs, always
leaving a few select morsels behind for the honeyguide.

(Source)

Simply awesome isn’t it? If time is not a constraint then the whole article(source) is worth reading. Apart from the collaboration message, you actually start to wonder as to why and how, animals/birds sometimes display such strange behavior. Talking of strange behavior, check this video;

Blame the behavior of Leapord on natal scents of the baby Baboon or maternal instincts of the leapord itself, such instances provide lots of points to ponder upon.

Site Updates – menu

Posted by Prashant - 16/11/09 at 11:11:15 am

Made some changes to the menu;

Old Menu:

New Menu:

I always felt that the top menu was in a way cluttered. Lots on info which the user will hardly use, but has to see it every time user visits this page.  So I have used the dropdown menus to hide it. Now the user can click and navigate to the links. These menus are created using basic HTML and a bit of simple Jquery. I am still a newbie with Jquery, so I have implemented it in a crude way. The code looks lot ugly than the end result. But hey it works (hopefully).  I checked it on Mozilla 3.0.15 and IE 8. Mozillar it works like a charm, but IE there is a small glitch (duh!! Its IE stupid) . I am not sure what is causing it .

Otherwise it works fine in both the above mentioned browser.  Need to check with other browsers and browser versions. So thats the update for now. Drop in an email in case you find a bug. Until next updates. Adios.

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