Tum Ho

This song has been running on loop for the past few days on all my devices. Absolutely magical. Mohit Chauhan can do wonders with his voice. ARR takes your breath away with such mesmerizing melody.

Leh Ladakh November 2011

This was in my wishlist for long. Who wouldn’t have wanted to visit the Himalayas and see the snow clad peaks in their full glory? I did. And my dream came true when a group of office guys planned a trip. I immediately asked them to book tickets for me as well.

We set off on a Wednesday night from Chennai. The first flight was from Chennai to Delhi. We reached Delhi at around 10 in the night. And the next flight to Leh was in the morning. So we took a taxi and went to a hotel for night stay. I was setting foot in Delhi after almost ten years. It felt a lot different now, that it was when I lived there. We didn’t get to spend much time in Delhi as we had a high time constraint.

The next day morning the flight took us to Leh, via Jammu. Before the flight even landed, Leh greeted us with thousands of tiny peaks glimmering in the sunshine. It was a surreal experience. I had no idea where the flight was going to land, because all I could see was peaks and there seemed to be no surface flat enough for a runway to be constructed. Then all of a sudden a tiny runway appeared and we landed within a matter of seconds. The Leh airport was tiny compared to the the Delhi and Chennai airport.

Soon after we came out, we got two taxis and went to the hotel that we had booked. It was Oriental Guesthouse. It is run buy a very hospitable Ladakhi family. It was right next to the famous Shanti Stupa. It is a quiet place with a nice courtyard. After some brief refreshments at the hotel, most of us chose to take some rest before embarking on a local trip. So after lunch, we decided to move out. We visited a couple of monasteries viz Thiksey and Shey. There are so many of them in the region. Majestically constructed and beautifully decorated, each of these were more than centuries old. All of them had numerous prayer wheels placed all over and there were many Buddhists monks praying at these places. Perched on top of small mountain peaks, these command panoramic view of the surroundings.

After it was dark enough to not to be able to see the panoramas at its majestic best, we went to the Leh marketplace to try out a few Kashmiri sweets while a few others bought some clothes. Then we returned to our hotel to eat dinner and play Scotland Yard for sometime, before going to sleep.

The next day, one guy in the group was sick. Probably because we didn’t take enough rest to get ourselves acclimatize to the climate. He chose to stay back at the hotel, while the rest of us set off to see Alchi and Zanskar Valley. It snowed just before we started. It was my first brush with real snowfall and it was simply amazing. On the way, the driver stopped the vehicle at a valley where we got the chance to play around with snow. We got a glimpse of the Zanskar flowing from atop a nearby peak on our way to the Alchi monastery. The color of water was a shade of blue that you only see in photoshopped images. The region looked like the Grand Canyon of India. Simply spellbinding.

The other days were reserved for Pangong Tso lake and Khardung La Pass, the highest motor-able road in the world. In both cases, we set off early in the day and halfway the drivers realized that it was dangerous to go beyond a point since the snow levels were high and the chances of accidents and getting stuck were also high. So we enjoyed the snow, panoramic views at these points, which themselves were thousands of feet above sea level. Disappointed we were, but apparently it is common if you visit Leh/Ladakh in Nov/Dec.

The return journey was on Sunday, when we boarded the flight in Leh airport in the morning and reached Chennai by the end of the day. It was a memorable trip. A dream come true. I would have loved to spend more time there and I would definitely go there again if I get such a chance.

On the way to root my Wildfire

It’s been little over a year since I got my Wildfire. Its warranty has now expired. And with quite a few new models up its sleeve, HTC has stopped support for the Wildfire. Guess what, they are now redirecting HTC.com/wildfire to their latest phone catalog.

With much newer versions of Android floating around, and mine still stuck in 2.2.1, I decided a couple of days back to ROOT my phone. And being a newbie to this whole rooting thing, I began to do a bit of research.

Here is what i found:
-You can find the HBOOT version by turning off your phone and then powering it on with the ‘volume down’ button pressed.
-Depending on the version of HBOOT, there are a few apps that would help you change your phone from S-ON to S-OFF.

-Once the phone becomes S-OFF it hardly takes few minutes to deploy a custom ROM.

-CyanogenMod seems to be the preferred community based custom ROM.

-**If something fails during the rooting process, your phone is ‘bricked’. i.e. it can no longer be used.**

-Most guides have a disclaimer for bricked phones saying something like “I am not responsible for your stupidity”.

Despite the last two points being significant deterrents, I am all set to root my phone. More updates in the subsequent posts as I proceed through the process.

Posted from WordPress for Android

New Google Reader #Fail

Google Reader has always been a great RSS subscription tool for me to keep up with the latest posts of my favorite blogs. Apart from that, it has(had) been a great source for me to find new content that my friends were sharing. This was an important reason for me using their service because it helped me find interesting posts shared by like minded people who follow blogs regularly. It helped me find new blogs that I myself can subscribe to.

Google, in their attempt to integrate Reader with their infant social network Google+, have killed that. They have totally removed the entire setup of following others and the Reader specific ‘share’ button. If I find something interesting, I can only share it on Google+, which I rarely use. Moreover, there is a big difference between sharing on Reader and Google+. When I am in a mood to read, I wouldn’t want to wade through zillions of crappy status updates.

And it seems Google just doesn’t care. Reader is going to stay like this and it wants people-who-don’t-like-it to move on.

In all, the new redesigned Google Reader is a big #Fail. It is now just a plain feed reader but a good one at that. Despite all this, I don’t think I’ll move on because I don’t think there is a better feed reader in the market yet.

Browse Happy

When I logged into my blog from Firefox 3.6, WordPress prompted me to upgrade my browser.

The amusing prompt also had a link to a site called BrowseHappy. This site contains info about the latest versions of major browsers viz. Ie, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera and links to download them. A nice initiative by WordPress.

If everybody had the latest browsers, both the users as well as web developers can breate easy.

Up Again

At last, I forced myself to do what I should have done 6 months ago. Brought my blog back to life.

6 months ago, when I was trying to upgrade the WordPress version on my blog, it crashed. And I had not been able to open my blog and I was getting Internal Server Error ever since. Somehow I couldn’t devote time for my blog. Heights of Laziness.

So last week, I got into FileZilla. Connected to my server. Took a back up all the WP related files and content. Deleted everything from the server. Downloaded a fresh copy of WP. Replaced the wp-config.php with the old one which contains all the db related data. Also replaced the wp-content folder from the backup.

All it took was 5-10 mins. No idea why I had been delaying this for so many months. Should blog regularly now.

Take Back Memories, Leave No Trace

I found this statement on one of the boards at Eravikulam National Park in Munnar. It stuck on to my memory and I am planning to use it whenever and wherever I can.

Its an ingrained habit. I hate littering. Any plastic cover or paper that I happen to use always ends up in the garbage bin. If I don’t find one near by I keep it in my pockets and drop it off whenever I find one.

When I travelled to Munnar town, we found tons of litter thrown around near the roads. We had stopped nearby for breakfast. After our breakfast, guys started throwing the paper plates on the roads. I and a couple of friends got a cardboard box and requested everyone to put their waste in that box, so that we could throw it elsewhere. When we got into the bus with the cardboard box in our hands, the driver looked shocked and asked us to put the box away on the roads. We somehow convinced him that we wanted to throw it only at a garbage bin and not on the roads.

After all, when even software engineers have no sense of responsibility towards the nature, how can we expect uneducated people like drivers to understand its importance. Its a collective responsibility and we need to take some conscious effort to bring some change.

We at Chennai Trekking Club ensure that everyone coming to the treks respects nature. We don’t litter at the wonderful places we trek to. We enter the trekking area and leave the place as it was before. We carry garbage bags with us and make sure that we leave no trace.

I’d like to quote another famous trek blogger Sandeep – “One humble request to all the people planning to go to for treks. Please respect nature and remember other people. Never litter these wonderful places. Infact, it will be great, if you can pick up some of the litter (especially the non-bio-degradable) and carry it back. Please abstain from smoking and drinking when you are with nature. Even if you cant help it, atleast carry back cigarette buds and liquor bottles. If couple of us show some responsibility, we can keep these places clean and pristine for the coming generations!!!”

Source Code

I reached Escape Cinemas on time for the movie. But my friend who had the ticket was late. Somehow, we have been late to every movie that I have seen with my college friends. Its almost a habit now for everybody to turn up late.

The movie is a sci-fi thriller directed by Duncan Jones, that plays with parallel reality, time travel and multi-dimensional view of life. Source Code is not exactly the type of code that I write daily. Source Code is an American Govt experiment which enables a person to cross over to another man’s identity for eight minutes or something like that. A military man(Jake Gyllenhaal) is used for the experiment. He is sent to locate a bomb in a train, find the guy behind it and prevent another bigger attack happening in the future. He is sent back to the train over and over again, gathering some clues each time, until he could solve the mystery behind who is responsible.

The movie is filled with twists and suspense.  He relives those 8 minutes again and again and again. Essentially the movie is just those 8 minutes thought out in multiple ways. Gyllenhaal does a good job after Prince of Persia but that isn’t sufficient. The character feels incoherent and doesn’t extract sympathy from the audience.

As far as excitement is concerned, it is very limited in the movie. It doesn’t keep you rooted to your seats. It could have been better. The problem with Source Code is the idea of the Source Code. It is totally vague, confusing and nowhere smart when compared to other sci-fi thrillers.

Six Months With HTC Wildfire

A very short update about my experiences with the HTC Wildfire. This is my first smartphone. And I’m loving it. It is no doubt a handsome phone and its easy to fall in love with it. But no doubt, it is also a low end phone from HTC compared to HTC Legend, HTC Desire or HTC Incredible. As a result there are a few features that are missing and a few apps are not compatible with this phone.

The upsides of using this phone is the Android platform which provides you with a number of fascinating applications. There are a few applications with amazing interfaces that include TweetDeck, Google Reader, WordPress, Maps, Dolphin Browser, Angry Birds etc. The integration with Facebook brings in hundreds of contacts and phone numbers directly to your phone. The sensitivity of the capacitive sensor is also quite good.

The downsides have to be the low resolution screen. As a result many apps are not compatible with this phone. Even the 5MP camera doesn’t work as good as a normal 5MP camera would. Running too many apps at a time may cause this phone to lag.

The phone is an excellent low-budget entry-level android phone for anyone who wishes to be a part of the ‘smartphone generation’.

April: Books Read

Chanakya’s Chant – Ashwin Sanghi

Order this book from Flipkart and it got delivered at my home the very next day. Immediately I picked it up and got immersed into this book. This book has two tales running parallel. One which occurred around 2300 years ago and one happens during the present day. It is the story of the master strategist Chanakya, the king maker and how he makes Chandragupta Maurya the emperor. In modern India, Chanakya is reborn as Gangasagar and with his brilliant plots and machinations nurtures a small slum girl and guides her to become the prime minister of the country. The narration swiftly moves between the two stories and keeps you engaged.

The book was one of the fastest reads I’ve had in a long time. It is a story filled with political drama, murder, revenge and lust. The book is also an apt reminder that anything that happens in politics has a motive behind it. Nothing is left to chance. “Brilliant”.

Buy Chanakya’s Chant from Flipkart.com

Buy Chanakya’s Chant from Amazon

Lost Symbol – Dan Brown

Borrowed this book from a friend and completed it in one sitting. The book has a brilliant start. Relates to the mysteries and symbolism of freemasonry. The background behind the brotherhood is interesting. Dan Brown also sheds some light on a branch of science called Noetic Science which relates to the study of the effects of perceptions, beliefs and intentions on human consciousness.

According to Wikipedia, The theory of noetics centers around the idea that the human mind is capable of affecting work or events or even doing work in the physical world.

After a point of time, the plot of Lost Symbol became quite predictable. It was gripping in parts. I expected a thrilling climax, but the actual one disappointed me. Not exactly what I had expected. Buy this if you liked Dan Brown’s earlier novels and absolutely must read his latest. Else, there are better novels out there.

Buy The Lost Symbol from Flipkart.com

Buy The Lost Symbol from Amazon

The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins

This book is Richard Dawkins’ fight against religion. He systematically dissects the evil of religion. In one the first few pages he refers to a poster which says something like ‘World with no religion’ and shows the twin towers standing prominently in the background. This book illustrates the need for a different perspective towards religion.

Dawkins is a strong proponent of evloution and is very much against creationism which is promoted by religion. Every point that is put forward is clearly articulated and backed up with evidence. This book is a recommendable read and is well written and entertaining.

Buy The God Delusion from Flipkart.com

Buy The God Delusion from Amazon

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