I mean, what more could one want?

A review on PHILIPS 29PT4824 

Written on: 25-Jan-2001 

Pros: Too good! 

Cons: No in-built signal-amplifier :( 

And I really mean it ... what more could one *ever* want from the good ol' boob-tube, now-a-days more a part of the family than many family-members themselves? Large screen? At 29", it makes Shah Rukh's pimples in 1-2-ka-4 look larger, fuller and redder than the real thing. 

Great picture? The equation for once is really simple: Great contrast + great brightness + great colours + noise reduction + sharpness control + a world-renowned brand name on the tube = Great, great, great picture. Anytime. Anyplace. 

Great sound? 400 thundering watts, surround­sound speakers, that great Philips patented invention The Incredible Surround mode, Auto­Volume Leveller, treble and bass control, ultra bass, another great Philips invention The Cinema Surround .... any more features and one'd forget the list (and forget to use it anyway). Misc. features? Digital-tuning, child­lock, auto-surf (a very handy feature), auto­volume leveller, sleek cabinet styling, the works. Sales and service? We're talking about *Philips* here, man! Not some cheap johnny­come-lately from the upstart far-east. 

Now onto non-features...

Dolby? Tell me frankly ... can you distinguish between a system with Dolby Prologic and one with Philips Incredible Surround blindfolded? Yes? Then you must be a double-PhD-in-audio­DSP-technologies sitting in some anechoic acoustic chamber in some research labs nestled somewhere in the Austrian Alps with like 4 decades of experience in sound sampling only. For everyone else, in every other real life scenario, the two are indistinguishable. Moreover, no number of PhD's can make Shah Rukh's "K .. K ... Ki. .. Kiran" sound like the Big-B's "Daddu Tum?" 

Flat-screen? Really ... you're not planning on watching the telly from anything beyond the normal 100 - 110 degrees viewing angle, are you? You are??!! Then you must be sitting pretty towards the edge of the 700-inmates-in-1-TV-room crowd at Tihar. Better learn to bully your way to the centre. Or you can send a requisition through the jail-warden of your cell to Kiran Bedi for a truly, really, perfectly, pool­table-like, 180-degree-viewing-angle, fully flat, fully square screen TV. And costing about twice the normal TV, to boot. For any other scenario, there's the Philips 29PT4824. 

Built-in signal amplifier? Hello? Are you from Philips? This is (the only one) on my wish-list. 

- Rajesh 

Would you recommend this television to your friend?: Yes 

How was the Picture Quality?: Excellent 

How was the Sound Quality? (output,clarity .. ): Excellent 

Love At Second Drive!

A review on Matiz 

Written on: 31-0ct-2000 

Pros: Strikes straight at your heart! 

Cons: Bigger engine needed! 

On the first (test) drive, the drawbacks of the Matiz were glaring: 

* Underpowered engine (especially when you turn on the AC). 

* Sloppy gearshift (especially from third to second and fifth to fourth). 

* Inter-changed light and wiper sticks on the steering column. 

The test drive of the Santro drove me back to Matiz: The engine noise was unaccpetable. The WagonR I had ruled out due to the very, very high cost of the spare parts: On an average seven to ten times costlier than those of the Matiz or Santro!! And so here I am, the proud owner of a week-old Matiz SA. And what's more, LOVING IT!! 

The Matiz endears itself to you the more you drive it: 

* The under-powered engine I've gotten used to (I can now down-shift and turn off the AC in one clean, smooth sweep as I approach a slope :-). 

* The sloppy gear-shift is no more sloppy (though I had to un-learn a few year's worth of gear-shifting experience). 

* The light and wiper control sticks befuddle no more (though the correct ones on my sister's car do). 

But umm ... could I have a bigger engine please? Also, isn't there any law against switching the light and wiper sticks? I think this is a big security risk! 

Altogether, Love At Second Drive!! 

Quality of ride: Smooth as silk 

Is your vehicle new or used?: New 

Cost of spares and servicing: Reasonable Mileage (kms per litre): 10-15 

Would you recommend this car to your friend?: Yes 

Now Go Get An Attitude!

A review of the book Selected Poetry Of Ogden Nash

Written on: 12-Mar-2001

Pros: Great Compilation! 

Cons: You can't live without it! 

The Cow 

-----------

The cow is of the bovine ilk. 

One end is moo, the other, milk. 

Welcome to The World as seen through the verses of Ogden Nash. 

Let's try another:

The Cobra

-------------

This creature fills its mouth with venum 

And walks upon its duodenum. 

He who attempts to tease the cobra 

Is soon a sadder he, and sobra. 

It's good. Very good. And hell! It's infectious!!

This master of light verse has written on every possible subject, as the varied topics of the fifteen chapters in the book show. There are two-four line verses on animals. There are philosophical poems that run into a couple of pages. There are lyrics on people, travel, the seasons and children. And then there are rhymes on love, marriage and family life. Whatever the size, whatever the subject, they are all, without exception, laced with the delicate humour and satire and play-on-words-and-sounds that only a master like Nash can achieve. 

Let's probe further:

The Pizza

------------

Look at itsy bitsy Mitzi! 

See her figure slim and ritzy! 

She eatsa 

Pizza! 

Greedy Mitzi! 

She no longer itsy bitsy! 

We're neck deep into it now. There's no getting away from it. It grows on you. It permeates your very being. It first takes control of your mind. Then your body. And finally your very life! It has grown on me so much that I can't spend a single day without thumbing through a random Nash verse! I use it to forget that tiff with mom. I use it to heighten that ecstatic feeling on sharing a few words with that beautiful colleague. I use it to fight the ennui of being "on bench-warming" after my project got scrapped. And I had used it to cope with the project-pressures when the project was around. If ever there was a panacea, a "cure-all," this is it, this is it, this is it! After all, isn't it universally acknowledged that laughter is the best medicine? 

The book boasts 650 rhymes, verses, lyrics and poems. In 15 chapters. 682 pages. Each piece a beautifully crafted, glossy-finish, original Nash. The style? Well, I would hate to club it with any others. Also, I am not at all convinced that there can ever be anyone in this league. So I call it Nash-esque. 

The final bow:

The Termite:

----------------

Some primal termite knocked on wood 

And tasted it, and found it good, 

And that is why your Cousin May 

Fell through the parlor floor today. 

Now go get an attitude! 

- Rajesh 

Would you recommend this book to a friend?: Yes

Puttaparthi - From Pitiable Penury to Pious Plenitude

A review on Puttaparthi

Written on: 19-Feb-2001

Pros: Serene atmosphere, idyllic lifestyle. 

Cons: Weather is hot and dry. 

Come let's travel on a UFO. 

View from 1000 miles: Azure oceans, brown¬white continents, lots of puffs of white clouds. Zoom In: South asia. The triangle jutting out into the ocean very prominently cut off from the rest of the mainland by streaks of white - the Himalayas. 

Zoom In: South India - Green ghats on the two shores, a mountain range cutting it from the north. In the centre is a huge plateau - mostly dry / semi-arid. 

Zoom In: South-Central India. Rayala Seema region of Andhra Pradesh. Bone-dry, rocky hillocks as far as the eye can see. 

Zoom In: Large, lush green lawns. Picture¬perfect pink and yellow buildings. Calm, serene, smiling people mostly wearing simple white cotton dresses. About a third of them much fairer than the rest. No un-met wants here as far as the socio-economic eye can see. No confused/wandering minds as far as the philosophical eye can see. 

Surely there is a mistake here. This is not possible. It's not logical. 

We repeat the Zoom-In steps above. Results: Ditto. 

We zoom in further onto a name-plate. It reads: Puttaparthi. That explains it. It's the Baba's abode, aye it is. Even our ET-colleagues in the UFO seem to have heard of him.

But first things first. The drive from Bangalore - 157 kms. National Highway no. 7. Drive past Yelahanka. Chikballapur. Bagepalli. (Now you are in AP.) Koduru. Here take a right and cruise on to Gorantla, the last town before Puttaparthi. The road - excellent. I reached 140 kmph at least half-a-dozen times. Cruising along at 110 - 120 kmph seems to be the norm. Just a small inconvenience: The 43 km Koduru - Puttaparthi stretch is single-lane. But the surface is excellent. 

And then you enter the picture-perfect concept-town of Puttaparthi. You drive past the HUGE buildings of the Medical Institution, the music-theatre (shaped like a huge drum and tabla), the Sai Baba Museum, the Sai Baba Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, etc. Then you reach the sanctum-sanctorum of the Baba universe, the Prashanthi-Nilayam. 

Getting an acco is a breeze. Just be sure to reach there around 9 - 930 in the morning. Three canteens are waiting to serve you excellent Foreign, Punjabi and South-Indian fare. Cost: cost price. Just 1/2/3 rupees per item. But don't expect food to be available at all times. The canteens are open strictly during lunch and dinner hours only. (The town though has lots of restaurants from Lhasa to Nigerian.) 

Take along lots of simple white cotton clothes. I felt naked in the crowd there in my denim jacket and jeans - what with all my materialistic leanings thus laid bare. 

Baba's Darshan is at 6:45 am and 3:45 pm. Be prepared to be there at least 3 hours in advance if you want to get real close. And practise those ground-squatting asanas - I actually "got in touch with my innermost self" squatting like that for 3 hours!! 

A must-see in Puttaparthi is the Sai Baba Museum, located behind the stadium. This chronicles everything from the earliest period of Baba's life to the latest. Here there are mini¬theatres explaining Baba's philosophy. I counted at least 25 Sony 34" Flat Screen TV - Sony DVD sets, each one worth at least 1.25 lakhs rupees!! (Oh! The die-hard materialist in me!) 

This brings me to my last topic: The controversy surrounding the Baba, his philosophy and his activities. I felt it finally just boils down to whether you believe in miracles or not. His whole fame is based on his miracles. If you consider this immaterial in light of the stupendous social-service projects undertaken by Saba, then you hit another roadblock on the way to complete acceptance of Saba and his activities: Would you lie to Paul to make him give you his money, so that you can give it to poor Peter, and earn a livelihood for yourself and your people in the bargain? You are entitled to your own views here. 

Would you recommend this place to your friend?: Yes 

How much did it cost per person per day?: Less than Rs. 1000

Nature of your travel: Weekend travel 

Ideal time to visit: March-May 

!!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!!

A review on Venice

Written on: 6-Feb-2001

Pros: Beauuuuuutiful. ... ! ! 

Cons: Unpredictable fog can sometimes play spoilsport - avoid Nov-Mar. 

Intel couldn't have designed a better USP to launch their Pentium II series in late '97(?). They were the very same words that popped in my mind when I came out of the railway station in Venice. 

Take your wildest imagination. Multiply it by 2.

The build-up of excitement in the days leading to our Venice trip was dizzying, to say the least. We were five of the now-familiar Innsbruck (the first stop in our itinerary) gang of six wide-eyed, nervously giggling boys-n-girls. We were going to !!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!! The acme of any serious world-tourists' life. The city of canals and gondolas - unique in the whole world. The most prized possession of one of the most sophisticated and fashion-conscious people in the world. The home-town of Marco Polo and Casanova. The ... (I run out of superlatives here.) 

Right out of the railway station, we step not onto a road lined with buses and cars, as it would be in any other place in the world, but into a CANAL!! Lined with *boats* and *gondolas*. It's the Grand Canal - their M.G.Road. To go to the Youth Hostel, we take *boat* no. 82 or *boat* no. 41. To go to your address (if you have a few million liras to burn - just loose change really), you go to the counter marked TAXI and then you get into a *boat!* 

On the way, you hear the police siren, and a *boat* whizzes past! You see garbage being collected from garbage bins using the huge mechanical arms on a *boat. * The bourgeois goes to office, shopping, school, etc. on a *boat. * The hospital is lined outside with *boats* having flashing emergency lights. The Youth Hostel is hardly a mile away from San Marco, but you don't walk (unless you're Jesus 8-), but you take a *boat. * Parking space is difficult to be found downtown - the taxis take 'em before you swing your *boat* into 'em. (BTW, parallel-parking must be a breeze!) 

Steps lead down from the main doors of every house RIGHT INTO THE CANAL! (No, it's not a trap set up for mother-in-law.) Four storeyed apartment buildings spring right out of the water! (And no, it's not that darned basement pipe leaking again.) If you've got the money, then you have not a private driveway but a private BRIDGE!!! Do they have 'street sharks' and 'alley alligators' instead of 'street dogs' and 'alley cats?' Do they have after-dinner swims? (I've seen a wildly excited dog being taken for a stroll - you guessed it, on a *boat. *) 

It's a different life altogether. Beautifully different. The people. Sophisticate. Suave. Svelte. Immaculate. Just some of the words Ashima (a colleague) and I dallied about. (Cool. Hep. In. Dandy. These are not the words one uses in the power-house of world fashion.) 

Murano is an island a half-hour drive away form Venice. Venetian glass is born and bred here. The furnace room, the highly skilled glassblowers, their coordination, the heat - centuries old technology, attracting world-wide tourists and buyers in the twenty-first. Needless to say, the weak-hearted among us succumbed to a bargain or two. Venetian glass is beyond description in any language known. 

The next island is Burano, famous for laces. Sheets, table-cloths, wall-hangings, even umbrellas - all made of lace. The most delicate of laces I've ever seen. Known to easily entrap the unwary in its web of complex patterns. 

Which trip in Italy is complete without a pizza dinner? We just roam around in the main archipelago of 118 islands (all connected by bridges) till we are sure we're hopelessly lost and then barge into the nearest pizzeria. Regarding the pizzas, well, Italy is not the Land of Pizzas for nothing, you know! After dinner, returning back to San Marco was the fastest thing we did in Venice (we walked at normal walking speed, you see), because the curfew time at the Youth Hostel was fast approaching! 

In Venice, no one is ever disappointed. Life is just one continuous celebration of, well, life. The shops open and close "about" xyz o'clock. The boat comes "approximately" every xyz minutes. The hostel cufew begins "anytime" between 11 and 1130. See you "around" 5 o'clock "somewhere" near Ferruzia. To get to San Zaccharia, walk "generally" towards the harbour. Shops are "usually" closed in the afternoon for "siesta." What a contrast to the cold, high-strung ways of the German world we live in here! (I lived in Vienna then.) I miss Mysore. 

And lastly, the gondola ride. "Just 200,000 liras," we mentally add 'approximately,' "for about 35-40 minutes." "We only have about 180,000. Will that do?" "What's the difference? Jump right in." Thus began the best half-hour ever of our entire European sojourn. 

Gondolas are long thin boats painted black according to a 400-or-so year old law. It seats four or five people in the centre in red-velvet chairs. The gondolier stands behind with a long yellow oar and, sometimes, sings. But we were so full of questions that he never really got a chance. He could only get comments like "This is Marco Polo's house," "That is Casanova's house," edgewise. We found out things like how were the buildings built? How is the driving licence test like? How's the weather like yearlong? How does the drainage system work? 

Getting away from !!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!! was hardest. The city, the people, the spots. Everything, unlike Innsbruck, man-made. Every inch a result of man's creativity, ingenuity and industriousness. Imagine, all the 118 islands and their buildings are secured against oceanic erosion by huge logs driven deep into the ground. It requires centuries of hard work. Venice is truly a celebration of man himself. Venice is a place man built to relax in after the hard work of bUilding it. In terms of just the sheer human effort spent in building a city, Venice is perhaps the New York of the pre-industrial age. 

Venice shall always remain with us as a kaleidoscope of spectacular, yet simple, vignettes. The roadside artist with his paintings. The friendly pigeons in San Marco. The Romanesque style of architecture. (Vienna's Baroque is positively distasteful now.) The pigeons inside McDonald's. (At this rate, very soon they'll add McPigeon to the menu.) The houses on Murano. The people outside the church on Burano .... 

Ideal time to visit: March-May 

Nature of your travel: Weekend travel 

Would you recommend the place to your friend?: Yes 

RIP Rajoo the sot...!

(Written on 31-July-2001 in an email to collegues.)

This is an elegy,

To the Rajoo who for beer and vodka had no allergy!

RIP (Rest In Peace) his beloved soul and not in hell fry,

For, as of 22:15 July 30, 2001 AD, he has gone permanently dry!

Farewell, farewell to those nights at NASA,

When pitchers were gulped down with no care for paisa!

Beer, gin, whisky, tequila, wine, vodka and rum,

It was nice so long as it lasted, so long! and

   Hope we meet again after I break my "dum"!

The hours of fun I spent at the Tavern

Will definitely my memories of you for life govern!

Goodbye, goodbye you wicked old bottled spirit

   Or, should I say, spirited bottle?

I have found my own sweet angel

   And wish no more for a genie-in-a-bottle!

Go find another liver to cirrhos-ise,

Go find somebody else's family to wetten their eyes!

As millions of families are ruined and hard-earned monies

   are wasted in search of a few hours of high,

I hope and pray my friends too find their angels to dry them

   in some time and some place, very, very nigh!

- Rajoo, the d(r)ied one.

My solution(s) to terrorism

This seems to be the season of discussing solutions to terrorism in the world. FWIW, here's my 2-pence.

Issues as complex as global terrorism need to be tackled at several different levels, and with several solutions pursued with several parallel timelines in mind. I'd say we need pursue three entirely different solutions for this issue: a near-term, a medium-term, and a long-term solution.

The short-term solution: This is the most talked-about timeline. You'll find several thousands of solutions prescribed here, ranging from more NSG commandos, to Kevlar helmets and automatic rifles for the police force, to a different CM, home minister, and what-have-you. All seem good, with each to its own merits. I wonder if anything has been left unsaid at all here, so I will just shut up on this timeline.

A medium-term solution: I'd devote a little more energy here. While most prescribe punishing Pakistan, I'd have gone the other way - engage Pakistan. At the risk of over-simplifying ground realities, I'd like to start with a small background study of Pakistani society, based on my arm-chair reasearch.

Within the context of terrorism, there are clearly 3 different classes within Pakistani society today - there are the Western-looking, English educated, urbane, business and mostly ruling class, of which Benazir Bhutto was perhaps the most conspicuous member. This class basically doesn't care much for Islam, India, etc. It is perhaps more of a nascent form of India's nouveau-riche urban yuppie. People of Sind, Punjab are perhaps more likely to be this. Karachi is the central city for this class, with perhaps Lahore coming a close second. 

A second class is that of the military people. They are mostly English educated, perhaps even western educated. They are more Islamic, but not overtly so. You'll find them perhaps in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Pervez Musharraf is perhaps an apt face of this class.

The third, and most complex, is the rest of the Pakistani society, its vast under-belly. These are the mostly rural, overtly Islamic, more militant Pakistanis. It is the sweat and blood of these people that the first two classes largely draw upon for sustenance. Without them, there is no Pakistan. Even though they might not realize it, they are the ultimate deciders of Pakistan's fate - either democratically or militarily. They are also largely anti-West and anti-India.

With this super-simplified, yet adequate for my purposes here, picture of the current Pakistani society in mind, here's my 2-pence: India should increasingly engage, and perhaps even integrate into itself, Pakistan. The ideal would be re-integration of Pakistan (and even Bangladesh?) and India, into an India-of-yore. Although this would be the ultimate ideal, other models on the lines of CIS, EU, etc. can be thought of ad-interim. This should propel Pakistan from the medieval times that it is slipping into, to the 21st century, like most of India. This is the only civilised response to the terrorism threat that I can support.

Now onto my long term solution: How do terrorist justify their actions? How do they defend killing of innocents? How do you motivate a sane, thinking person to go and blow himself up? How do you even approach another human being asking for money, support, etc. for such a cause? Remember, these are not isolated incidents. They are happening by the hundreds. There are thousands, if not millions of highly motivated people involved in this "industry." What keeps it all going? The answer is as simple as it is obvious. God. It is only in His name that you can justify all these acts. It is only in His name that you can support these activities, and still sleep comfortably at night. It is only by following His words that you can find justification to kill another human. Terrorism won't go away unless we kill Him. Conversely, as long as you are pray, you do not have a right to criticise another man for "praying" / "acting as per His instructions" / "carrying out his Holy Duty" in a manner that he interprets His words as commanding him to do. Consequently, as long as you pray / teach your child to pray, there is no hope for mankind's deliverence from this evil. An evil called Religion. An evil called God.

Now, anyone has the balls to support these solutions of mine?

Root cause of Microsoft's apps' reputations?

Documenting here, for posterity, some of my most frustrating moments with Microsoft's Windows Vista Home Premium on my self-assembled computer Quad-core (Q6600), 4 GB, 320 GB SATA + 10 GB IDE. I've installed Fedora Core 9 on the 10 GB HDD.

1) I read up that Vista "assumes" only a single core proc at boot time. Vista can be "shown" that there are more cores by changing the setting in System Configuration -> Boot -> Advanced Options -> No. Of Processors. I try opening the setting, but lo, the "Advanced Options" button just doesn't respond to my clicks! What's more, the list of OSes in the dialog box is empty! Does that mean I have NO OS on my PC?

After researching for about a week, I found that apparently Windows Vista doesn't like the fact that it is being booted through the Fedora boot manager! The solution? I had to delete the boot manager partition on the Fedora HDD.

So now, how do I boot into Fedora? Simple (I thought!). Add it to the list of OSes in Windows Vista's System Configuration -> Boot. Is there a simple way to do this? No way! After some more researching, I finally did it this way: http://www.canerten.com/dual-boot-linux-and-windows-with-windows-boot-manager/. Apparently, Microsoft is trying their darndest best to stop you from even experimenting with any other OS.

The list of OSes System Configuration still shows only 1 OS, although mercifully bcdedit.exe shows the Fedora entry, and so does the new boot menu (Vista's). Also, I can now change the number-of-processors setting to 4, although I don't notice any speed up in boot time.

2) Windows Vista's Backup and Restore Center just doesn't work on my PC. I just want to back up my Digital Photos, but Vista just takes me through some 40% of the process (if the progress bar is any real indication at all!) and just hangs there with the DVD writer spinning on and off in a 5- secs cycle indefinitely. I have left it in that state for over 2 hours, and there is no progress at all. What is worse, clicking the Stop button just re-labels it to Stopping..., with no change in behaviour. The main Backup And Restore Center window is non-respondent, so is any new Explorer window that I open. I can't even eject the DVD. Worst of all - I can't log off! The system gets hung in the Logging Off.... screen. I'd seriously suggest this app be skipped by anyone who wishes to keep his / her sanity intact.

Conclusion:

My 2 cents on what is wrong, systemically speaking, within Microsoft. I've seen closely their dev process (am a dev there myself :). Whereas in all the 3 other software product development companies that I've worked for before follow a process of setting a quality bar for a software release before-hand, and then driving the no. of bugs down to meet that criterion, in Microsoft, it is the opposite! In the final drive towards the euphemistically named ZBB (Zero Bug Bar), the new and existing bugs are repeatedly "traiged" (basically punted to the next release / closed / discarded - anything BUT fixed) at "higher and higher bars" till there are zero bugs left during the release! This actually means that the acceptable product quality is progressively lowered till a release can be made! What an inversion of common sense and logic! I was rudely awakened to this skewed logic when, during the internal dog-fooding of Windows Vista, I filed a pretty bad UI bug. When this was punted out, I wrote back to the PM of the feature passionately pleading to take it up, as the fix was pretty simple, according to a fellow dev who'd worked on the feature, and, more importantly, the UI of the feature could be pretty simply totally messed up by even a novice user. Guess what, the PM replied telling me that the bug bar is now past UI - that means NO new UI bugs were to be taken up! Apparently I was late by a couple days! (And this was a good 5-6 months before the Vista RTM.) Thus, Vista actually shipped with the very nasty UI bug, leaving me speechless, feeling totally cheated.