2011 Archives
I am not a mac fan boy. For that matter, I am not a gadget freak. I have been using a Mac for a couple of years. I very recently started using an iPod and an iPad, all thanks to Yahoo! And I am amazingly impressed by both the devices. I am sure both these devices are going to change the way I look at gadgets.
May be that is why, when I woke up this morning to the news of Steve Jobs death, I felt as if someone close to me has died. Even after all the fun we had today, somewhere in the bottom of my heart, that sorrow feeling lingers on.
RIP Steve Jobs. You have changed the way people will look at gadgets.
In June, while I was preparing for my trek to Roopkund, I was looking for trekking shoes. I was recommended Forclaz 500 Ventiv by friends. The shoe was retailing at Rs.2999 at Decathlon. The same was available for Rs.2499 online with free shipping. I went to the store to try it out, thinking that will order online and save Rs.500. John, the salesman helped me out with my questions and suggested that I pick up a tight fit. It was too tight but he suggested that it will expand a bit and will be fine. He also promised that he will replace it if I find it uncomfortable after a couple of days use. I told him about the online store and price and he told me that he can give it to me for 2799 and joked that Decathlon needs to pay him salary and hence cannot match that price. I bought the shoe and paid the premium just for his service.
A couple of days burn-in did not help and it was causing pain in the toe. I called up the store and Kuldeep another salesman at the trekking section suggested that I bring in the shoe for replacement. I picked up one size bigger and it was very comfortable for most part of the trek.
On the last day of the trek, thanks to heavy snow and rain, the shoe lost its shape. There was a bulge around the ankle support and due to this the show wasn't stable, causing ankle strain. After I reached Bangalore, I called up the store and mentioned about the problem. Kuldeep asked me to bring the shoe along with the bill for exchange. I never had the time and I almost forgot about it. Last week I remembered and took the shoe to the store. I had already lost hopes but wanted to give it a shot.
I walked into the store on Sunday, explained him the problem and showed the shoe. Kuldeep / Jon, said only one thing "Give it at the counter calling it a defective piece and pick up a new one'. Absolutely no questions, no nagging, not trying to put the blame on the buyer, no delay.
This is an excellent example of customer service. I had to go to the store 3 times but I will never mind the distance of driving 20+ KM to the store for such excellent service. Looking forward to the store opening in Bannerghatta Road. I am a Decathlon convert.
I watch a movie to relax and laugh. And I prefer to watch it at my own pace, pausing it, rewind / forward, sometimes with subtitles. However, we have been thinking to watch a movie in a theatre for a while but that never happened. I hate this idea of reserving a ticket well in advance. I prefer to walk up to the window and buy tickets. But this mad rush in Bangalore does not help. So I decided to try my luck today for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Bookmyshow crapped out, INOX was unavailable, Cinepolis was giving useful error messages. Until I discovered Vision Cinemas and Ticket New. Got the tickets booked for the 7pm show, at 6:00pm. And a mad rush ensued we reached the theatre on time.
Enough story, now about the movie. The movie is about 3 people rediscovering themselves while giving up their inner fears. Nothing new in the story and I felt as if I have seen the story before. But what stood out was the amazing shots of Spain, the way the story was told and some really funny lines. Every one had played their role very well but Farhan Akthar was classy and stands out. There are some amazing lines in the movie (BML, Bagwathi). I have tried skydiving but the film makes me think about skydiving again and deep sea diving. Though the music was good, I don't think any of the songs stayed with me. And I did not get the ending where Kabir goes to marry Natasha.
Sitting in the first row, the full screen barely visible, a slight neck pain and the tension to get to the movie on time - All worth it for a good evening and a nice movie.
--
My name is Imran but my friends call me Majnu.
The day of the run, Pratheepan, Vasu and me, managed to reach the stadium by 7:30AM to join the sea of runners. For the first 10 odd minutes, we just moved with the flow, while Pratheepan moved ahead. The crowd eased up a bit after the 2km and we saw a lot of familiar faces going past. I kept cheering while telling Vasu to keep moving. It was down all the way till the U-Turn point and it was a good place to pick up some pace. She was doing her run, walk routine but we could not gain much pace. Around the 4km mark, she got severe cramps and was struggling in pain, almost in tears. I was worried but suggested that she should keep moving if possible. And onlookers started cheering us and that gave the motivation to walk. I also tried my PJs but it did not help. We walked till about the 7K mark, but tried to keep a pace of about 9mins per KM. At the 7K mark, a wheel chair participant had an emergency and I suggested Vasu to go ahead, while I went in search of a support crew / ambulance. It took about 10 minutes to get some help, and then I ran to catch up with her. She had covered a good pace and was entering Cubbon Park, by that time.
We met another couple of folks who were walking at a decent pace. The next couple of KMs were covered with ease, since it was our regular route. I also realized that we would be missing the 90min mark but tried to motivate her to keep a good pace. We ran the last few hundred meters to the finish.
Except for a bit around the 7K mark, I ran along with her, most of the time holding her hand, and pulling her along, until the finish. It took about 94 minutes for the entire run, but it was awesome. It was my way of saying thanks to her, making this run memorable for her. And I did make my home minister smile at the end :)
--
It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse.
-- Ann Trason
I use Yahoo! Calendar to keep track of my calendar events. I sync to it from Lightning/Thunderbird and iCal. And use the iSync plugin to sync it to my phone. I also use mutt over a screen session at times. During such times, this is how I update my events to Yahoo! Calendar.
- Save the text/calendar attachment from the mail to a file, say cal.ics
- Determine the UUID of the calendar event. Not the best, but one that works is given beow.
perl -n0e 's/(.*?)UID:(.*?)\w+?:(.*)/\2/gms; s/\s+//gms;print ' tmp/ical.ics
curl -i -k --data-binary '@tmp/ical.ics' -H "Content-Type: text/calendar" -X PUT \
https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/<yid>/Calendar/<calendarname>/<uid>.ics \
-u <yid>:<password>
And here is how, I discovered this. Enable debugging in iCal, with these commands and then start iCal from a terminal. You can see the HTTP transactions between iCal and the calendar server.
defaults write com.apple.ical IncludeDebugMenu YES defaults write com.apple.ical LogHTTPActivity YES
It is the Marghazi of Bangalore. The Carnatic Music season that happens around the Rama Navami festival. Looks like my blog gets a lot of hit where people look for the concert details. And this time, the official website of the mandali seems to be down. So here you go.
Sree Ramaseva Mandali - 73rd Ramanavami Celebrations from 04-April to 05-May 2011 at Fort High School Grounds, Chamrajpet, Near K.R Market, Bangalore.
04 Apr Mon
06:00pm Inauguration
06:45pm Nityasree Mahadevan & Party
05 Apr Tue
06:30 pm Rajesh Vaidya ( Veena ) & Party
06 Apr Wed
05:15 pm Suman G & Party
06:30 pm T M Krishna & Party
07 Apr Thu
05:15pm Sriranjani Santhanagopalan & Party
06:30pm Neyveli Santhanagopalan / TKV Ramanujachryulu / K V Prasad / Sukanya Ramgopal
08 Apr Fri
05:15pm Shikha & Party
06:30 pm S.Sowmya & Party
09 Apr Sat
04:00 - 6:15 S V Narayanaswamy Rao National Award Function
06:30 pm K J Yesudas & Party
10 Apr Sun
05:15pm Niranjana Srinivasan & Party
06:30 pm Mysore Manjunath ( violin) & Purbayab Chaterji ( Sitar) - Jugalbandi / Thiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam / Viswanath Nakod
11 Apr Mon
05:00pm Dr.Muralidharan & Party
07:00 pm Gayathri Venkataraghavan / B U Ganesh Prasad / Cheluvaraju / Sukanya Ramgopal
12 Apr Tue
06:30 pm Kadri Gopalnath / Kanyakumari / B Harikumar / B Rajendra Nakod /N Amruth / B Rajasekhar (Saxofone)
13 Apr Wed
05:15pm Praveen ( violin ) & Party
06:30pm Lalgudi GJR Krishnan& Vijayalakshmi ( violin) / B Harikumar / Guruprasanna
14 Apr Thu
05:15 pm Sridevi Koushik & Party
06:30 pm M S Sheela / Mysore Srikanth / H S Sudhindra / Sukanya Ramgopal
15 Apr Fri
05:15 pm V Vijayalakshmi & Party
06:30 pm Sudha Raghunathan & Party
16 Apr Sat
05:15 pm Abhiram R N & Party
06:30 pm P Unnikrishnan / Mysore Nagaraj / thiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam / Guruprasanna
17 Apr Sun
10:00 am Founders Day - Felicitation of senior musicians
M S Anantharaman-M A Sundareswaran -M A Krishnaswamy - Parur Ananthakrishnan ( Violin Quartret) / R Ramesh / N Amruth
06:30 pm Ranjani& Gayathri / B U Ganesh Prasad / Poongulam Subramanyam / M A Krishnamurthy
18 Apr Mon
05:15 pm Malladi Vasavi & Party
06:30 pm Malladi Brothers / S Varadarajan / K V Prasad / Giridhar Udupa
19 Apr Tue
05:15 pm S A Karthik & Party
06:30 pm O S Arun / H N Bhaskar / J Vaidyanathan / S Karthik
20 Apr Wed
05:00 pm Bangalore Brothers / C N Chandrasekhar / V Krishna / Rajashekhar
07:15 pm Kunnakudi Balamuralikrishna / H N Bhaskar / J Vaidyanathan / B N Chandramouli
21 Apr Thu
04:30 pm Akshay Padmanabhan & Party
06:45 pm S Shashank ( Flute) / Avaneeswaram S R Vinu / Yella Venkateshwara Rao / S Karthik / B N Chandramouli
22 Apr Fri
05:15 pm Harsha & Sanat ( Violin) & Party
06:30 pm N Vijay Siva & Party
23 Apr Sat
05:15 pm Suchetan Rangaswamy & Party
06:30 pm Mysore Nagaraj & Mysore manjunath ( violin Duet )/ Karaikudi R Mani / V Suresh
24 Apr Sun
06:30 pm T V Shankaranarayanan / T K V Ramanujacharyulu / B Harikumar / N Amruth
25 Apr Mon
05:15 pm R V Nityasri & Party
06:30 pm HK Venkatram(violin) / G Ravikiran ( Flute) /Ashwin Anand ( Veena) Venu-Veena-Violin / Neyveli Venkatesh / Ramanujam / Guruprasanna
26 Apr Tue
05:15 pm Hosahalli V Raghuram ( violin) & Party
06:30 pm Praveen Godkhindi ( Flute - hindustani) / Ravindra Yavagal
27 Apr Wed
06:30 pm E Gayathri ( Veena ) / Ganapathy Raman / B R Ravikumar
28 apr Thu
05:00 pm Anupama Srimali & Party
07:15 pm Muddu Mohan ( hindustani) / Vyasamurty Katti / Ravindra Yavagal
29 Apr Fri
05:15 pm Arjun Srivasthav & Party
06:30 pm Sikkil Gurucharan / S Varadarajan / Arjunkumar /Giridhar Udupa
30 Apr Sat
05:15 pm Sangeetha Tharanathan & Party
06:30 pm Ashwini bhide Deshpande ( hindustani) / Vyasamurthy Katti / Ravindra Yavagal
01 May Sun
05:15 pm S Vidya & S.Vijaya and Party
06:30 pm Hyderabad Brothers / Mysore Srikanth / MNL Raju / Giridhar udupa
02 May mon
05:15 pm Madhuri Kaushik & Party
06:30 pm R K Padmanabha / C N Chandrasekhar /C Cheluvaraju / B R Ravikumar
03 May Tue
05:15 pm B N Skandakumar & Party
06:30 pm Anuradha Madhusudan ( veena) /C Cheluvaraju / Sukanya ramgopal
04 May Wed
05:15 pm B S Murali & Party
06:30 pm Kanya kumari & Embar S Kannan ( violin duet) / K V Prasad / N Amruth
05 May Thu
05:00 pm Pallavi Prasanna / Anuthama Murali / Renuka Prasad/ Srishyla
07:15 pm Vijayalakshmi Subramanyam / Usha Rajagopal / Sudhindra / Krishna Prasad
06 May Wed
05:15 pm Vidya G Subramanian & Party
06:30 pm O S Thyagarajan / Mullaivasal Chandramouli / S Thyagarajan / M A Krishnamurthy
07 May Sat
06:30 pm Abhishek Raghuram / Mysore Nagaraj / Ananth R Krishnan / Guruprasanna
08 May Sun
06:30 pm Pt Vishwamohan Bhatt & Lalgudi GJR Krishnan ( hindustani & Carnatic jugalbandi) / Yella Venkateshwara Rao / Vishwanath Nakod
09 May Mon
06:30 pm Vishaka Hari & Party
Thyagaraja Aradhana is an annual carnatic music festival, held every year on the day, the saint attained mukti at Thiruvayaru. On the Aradhana day, the Pancharatna kritis are sung by all artistes, in unison. Over the years, the event has spread to various places and now many cities have an annual commemorative event to pay homage to the great composer and one of the Trinities of Carnatic music.
We attended one such event a few weeks back, presided over by R.K.Padmanabha. The event had a concert by Pattabhiram Pandit followed by the singing of Pancharatna kritis. While speaking, RKP narrated a hilarious event that happened a few years back at his home town Rudrapatna.
For Thyagaraja Aradhana, he had organised a week long music festival and on the day of the Aradhana, he had arranged for food for everyone. When he was explaining the contributions of Thyagaraja and the importance of Aradhana, one gentlemen misunderstanding the meaning of Aradhana (which also means worship) interrupted and said - Sir, We should do an Aradhana to you for all your good work and for the feast. RKP was stunned but when he quipped, "Give me another 10-20 years and then you can do my Aradhana", the entire audience burst into laughter.
Last week, I ran out of space on Mac. I had less than a gig left and the system started complaining that my boot disk needs cleanup. I did not know where to start the cleanup from and was looking for something similar to the Disk Usage Analyzer for Ubuntu. My search led me to Disk Inventory X and this has made my life easier.
Some of the significant points of the tool
- Displays disk usage based on directory and kind.
- Displays the size as a treemap.
- Ability to filter files based on kinds. This feature came in really handy when I sorted by name per kind, resulting in easily identifying duplicates.
The only gripe I have is that, when I delete a file from the window, it takes a while. This is probably because, the tool apart from deleting the file, also recompiles the size, location, etc.
Give it a spin, if you run out of disk space.
Wow, is 2010 over already? Time flies fast and 2010 is no exception. There were lots of ups and downs both personally and professionally. But nevertheless, it was a fun year and a lot of positives to take from it.
- Completed 5 years at Yahoo!
- Did my first full marathon. And in general was very active with running.
- Read a lot and I hope I can put things that I learnt to use in my life.
- Have definitely improved my Carnatic music listening skills
- Travelled a lot.
I hope 2011 is even better.
Here is wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year 2011. Hope 2011 brings a lot of joy, happiness, health and peace to each one of you.
Keep your frown upside down and enjoy life.
