the legend lives on..in our hearts

Today is Annavru Dr. Raj's 80th birthday. There are celebrations all over the state; so many cultural programs, blood donation camps -- all in the honor of the Kannada matinée idol. Two years have passed since he has passed away, but he remains fresh in our memories.

I don't intend to write an essay about him because I'm afraid it many run into tens of pages. :)
But I want to enlist few of his qualities that has made him the icon that he is.

1. He was a perfectionist - he would retake his shots several times until he was completely satisfied with his performance.
2. He knew his core skills & didn't allow distractions to lose focus on his core abilities - after he gained immense publicity after the Gokak Chaluvali, many political parties pleaded with him to join their party. But Dr. Raj plainly refused responding that he was not made to be a politician. He would continue to serve Kannada & mankind along with his acting career.
3. He gave back to society from where he had gained so much. He donated generously to orphanages, widow upliftment programs, etc. But while giving such donations he always made sure that his left hand wouldn't know what his right hand gave. Isn't he so different from those whoDuring the Kargil War crisis, he roamed across Karnataka to collect donations for the Kargil fund. Gokak Chaluvali that was initially started by the Kannada thinkers assumed the proportions of a movement only Dr. Raj joined in his hands.
   

Above all this, he was a talented & diversified actor, unparallel to none other. This combined with singing talent made him such an unique personality. Who else have got a Dada Saheb Phalke award and a National award for the best playback singer?

3 days-3 marriages

Mom returned today evening from her '3 days-3 marriages' trip to Kolar. Its the season of marriages here now. So its not uncommon to have 5-6 marriage invites for a single day!! My dad is on a business trip to Mumbai, so its was imperative for my mom to attend all the marriages.
When she returned, she gave quite an interesting account of her experiences, something worth blogging about. So here it goes..
She left on Thursday morning to attend a family friend's marriage in Chintamani (my native). It was a "no hassles" marriage & everything went fine, as in 99.99% of marriages.
That evening she traveled from Chintamani to Kolar (about 40 kms) to attend a far relative's marriage-reception. As she was entering the marriage hall, she saw the bride & party (our relatives) standing outside the hall. For some unknown reason (with so many people around, its easy for the main reason to be lost in translation :) ) the bridegroom was objecting the bride's party entering the hall. The bride's party were all waiting there, at the enternce. Then Bang!! entered my mom, went & spoke to the groom & his parents & managed to get the bride & party in. After that the groom (again for some unknown reason) refused to wear jewelery during the function & objected even the girl wearing it. This was turning to be really absurd, a nightmarish situation to the bride's parents. Again Bang!! entered my mom, convinced the groom & he agreed to allow the bride to wear jewel but he wouldn't wear any. A groom's jewel would be hidden by his suit anyway, there wouldn't be many objections to this condition.
All the experiences my mom had from arranging umpteen number of marriages for my cousins had proved useful here ..
Later that night, she along with my sister, 2 cousin-sisters & their bunch of kids has to spend the night at another cousin's house & return to Chintamani and travel further 40 kms to attend another relative's marriage, the next day.
My cousin had been out of town (for a marriage ofcourse :) ) & had given the keys to a neighbour. Mom & gang were welcomed to the house by a swarm of mosquitoes. Unluckily for them, mosquito mats were empty & the mosquito net would be sufficient for just two people. After all the confusions in the marriage, everyone seemed to have lost their apetite during the dinner & now with the mosquito menace, they were feeling the hunger pangs. But nothing could be done now, it was 10:30 PM & all the stores in that small-time town would be closed. The elders in the gang packed up the kids on the cot having the mosquito net & they got into bantering that comes so naturally to women folk. But the mosquitoes & empty stomachs wouldn't allow them to have a meaningful conversation.
Only those who've been through such experiences can understand how dreadfully long such nights can be. You'll be just waiting for even a small streak of light outside your window to conclude that its morning atlast & run out of your bed.
The next day the elders got ready at 4:30 AM itself & got their kids also ready in jiffy & headed to the bus stop to catch the 5:30 AM bus to Chintamani. Still starving but nothing to eat, they luckily found some snacks at Chintamani bus stop. With their stomach Gods happy, they boarded the bus that would take them to another of those 99.99% successful marriages.

an embarrassing start

Certainly Dravid, Vijay Mallya and gang haven't done a good job in team selection. They had to pick up a few good hitters. Without these run making machines its not possible to do well on such batsmen centric wickets.
We need good fast bowlers than spinners, coz usually the later can be easily taken for boundaries than fast bowlers.
Hope Dravid & Mallya keep these in mind when selecting for the next season.

Today's fielding has left a lot to be desired. C'mon Royal Challengers, u need to better than this to make us proud.. :)
All the best for the next matches!!

Some brainless talks..

The evening coffee breaks these days with my coffee-gang: Manoj & Ashok, have invariably have lead to some interesting discussions.
The other day, while we were sipping coffee, as usual an a plane flew past our GVC (Golf View Campus) office. "ಥ್ಹು, ಈ ಪ್ಲನೆಗಳದ್ದು ಏನ್ ಕಾಟನಪ್ಪ..." (these planes are a pain in the ***) I said to myself. I think, only those who have been victimized by the constant sound of flight takeoffs can understand my then state of mind. :)
Anyway, the discussion had been shifted to air travels and Manoj was mentioning how some people throw-up (a condition where the food you've eaten moves in the opposite direction in your digestion tract, resulting in the emission of the food through you mouth) during flights. Just as I was wondering what could be the reason behind this, Ashok mentioned the research he had done on this topic.
As we become air-bourne, our inner ear that is sensitive to even slight pressure differences sends a signal to the brain that it senses motion, while on the other hand, our eyes sense that our surroundings are static since there's no relative motion visible and hence signals that everthing is still. Now the brain, the master controller, detects that there is inconsistency in the data received from the sensory organs & concludes that the body is under hallucination caused due to poison ingestion and induces the stomach to "throw out" whatever was eaten. In biology terms this is called "Motion Sickness"

Now, being a techie that I am, I couldn't resist the temptation of writing down the brain (modelling it as a programmable machine) implementation in this condition:

/*this is the brain code */

main ( int argc, char* argv[ ] )
{
while (1) { //run this forever (till we are alive :) )

//many things happen here..
//a few hundred billion lines here..

receiveMsgFromEars( &msg );
setMotionStateFromEars ( msg.MotionState ); //values = inMotion or static
receiveMsgFromEyes( &msg );
setMotionStateFromEyes ( msg.MotionState ); //values = inMotion or static
if ( g_motionStateEars != g_motionStateEyes )
{

//poisoned !!!
while (!TheDigestiveSystem.stomachContentsEmpty ( ) )
TheInvolutaryMuscleManager.move ( INVMUSC_STOMACH, DIRECTION_REVERSE );
}

//a few more hundred billion lines here..
//many things happen here..

} //end while :(

} //end main :(


Seems to be some crappy code, right? But by writing these few lines of pseudo-code, I've realized how immensly complex our brain/body is. Call it God or call it evolution, it has given shape to one hell of a machine: ourselves..

I't it fascinating how evolution & natural selection has shaped organisms to handle even minutest situations in order to ensure their survivability?

It may however take a few hundred generations for our brains to learn not to trigger "false alarms" of poisoning just because we are flying.. Seems providing the patch-fix takes time. It certainly wont be delivered in our lifetime.. :)

So the next time you feel like puking during the flight, you know whom should be blamed.. :)

why we should thank Steve Jobs

First, let me clarify who the "we" here means -- its the multi-trillion dollar telecom networks business fraternity. An industry that is already running reeling under pressure from diminishing ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) rates and further deteriorated by the largely looming global slowdown. Many of the NEM (Network Equipment Manufacturers) biggies have been posting losses from past few years.
The NEMs were spending their fortunes to push the limits of high speed data transmissions (UMTS HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) field trails showed speeds of 2 MBPS), while the LTE & WIMAX are poised to have speeds many times this.
But alas, not many end-users needed this much bandwidth. So it made no business sense for the SPs (Service Providers) to buy these new high-speed networks.
Infact, there were a few speculations that the SPs had already peacked their revenues in developed nations and from now on the strategy was more of sustaining those revenues. The game had changed from attacking mode to defending mode.
For the NEMs this simply meant: less revenues -> lesser R&D investments -> even lesser or no money for R&D staff like me..
Then came the ray of the hope, the "iPhone". Can you believe just in few months of its release, it has sold more than 4 million pieces? 2 million with AT&T itself?
According to AT&T figures, on a certain day, iPhone accounted for 80% of AT&T's Internet traffic, with the all the remaining mobiles accounting for the remaining 20%.
So the message for the telecom industry is quite clear: continue development of higher speed wireless technologies, but at the same time come out with super-cool & easy-to-use gadgets to harness the power of these technologies. This would ensure that the revenue graphs would look upwards once again..
This lesson had to be taught by someone of a stature of no less than Steve Jobs himself.