Traffic laws abiding citizens of Delhi

The red-light intersection on the outer-ring road near the place I live is a live example. Most of the evenings, one finds the vehicles crossing the stop-line and ready to jump into motion as soon as they realize the other intersection is going to go red, and it is going to be their turn now to go green.

However the days when a lone traffic cop with a diary snugged up his armpit is standing at a short distance from the intersection, everybody start to obey the rules to the book. It is not because they fear the police, it is because they do not wish to spend extra cash on the challan or the "tip".

Pathetic!

आहिस्ता आहिस्ता पप्पा-जी आहिस्ता आहिस्ता! #RIPJagjitSingh

This is what I tweeted. I do not know how to react. As far as his physical loss is concerned I am really not impacted in any way, but from now on there is always going to be that feeling inside that JS is no more with us.

I have been listening to his music from the age of 14. My understanding of music does not go much beyond his performances. Such is his power of music, that I still do not feel that I should switch to some other singer. Whatever he has sung till date or whatever collection I have is enough for me to take me through my lifetime. If I have not got bored or used to the songs for the last 18 years, I will not for remaining of my life.

His music has played a pivotal role during my growing up from adolescence to youth. His music was a great companion during my struggle period. It is no understatement to make if I state that his music kept me so occupied that I did not lead astray at difficult times. I was focused and disciplined much like his album recordings.

My interest in Urdu poetry too stems from his music. I shall continue to post about his songs and his ability to understand the meter of the ghazal, his ability to render classic Urdu poetry in the same manner that I have been doing in the past, in this blog or wherever I comment on such things.

Thank you JS, may you rest in peace.

Flashing ROMs on X10 mini pro

For the last few weeks, I've been working on my near year old 'X10 mini pro' to install custom firmware on it. Sony Ericsson has already declared that they are not going to provide any further updates on this model. This means I have to remain stuck at Android 2.1 (Eclair) for the rest of my phone's life, or take on the risk of installing custom ROMs on my phone.

Prior to be able to install custom ROM, I did the following activities  (in sequence):

• Get Root rights for the phone
• Unlock the stock bootloader (Though later I learned that this is not 'mandatory' but required if the next step is undertaken)
• Install a custom kernel (Again, this is not 'madatory' to install Custom ROMs)
• Install a software called xRecovery and then install ClockWorkMod (CWM) software.

Once all this was done, I took a full backup of my phone using CWM. This is a very good thing to do. If anything goes wrong during the entire operation, one can simply reboot, invoke CWM during the reboot and then restore the backup. By the way, doing all this will break your warranty and you cannot blame anybody but yourselves if you "brick" your phone. [Brick-ing means, that your phone is rendered so useless that it can only be used as a brick now :) ]

Now one can visit various Android development sites and download custom ROMs. I always follow the xda developers forum. They have a dedicated section for X10 mini pro, so things are real easy. The development community is very active too.

For a complete guide, one can refer to the following link: From n00b to Custom ROM

My phone is now running on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). I skipped Froyo as I knew I would switch to the latest version anyways! Obviously I will skip Honeycomb as it is only for tablet devices, but don't know if the phone's hardware will be able to support Ice Cream Sandwich. And by the time Jelly Cake(?) is out, I will probably have a new phone!

Here are a few screen shots from my phone. I have installed the custom ROM, MiniCM7 Pro. This is version V16 of the software. This version is very stable and almost all functionality are working fine for me.

JS Serious

Heard this disturbing news yesterday that JS was admitted to Lilavati and operated upon in the evening after he suffered a brain hemorrhage. The reports say he is still critical and in ICU.

We can all hope for the best, but surely we will not be able see him performing live anymore.  It was only the other day that I was discussing with my wife that one must attend at least one live concert of an established artist like JS. Well, it seems it cannot be JS anymore.

Hope for the best.

Update on 1st October: JS is still in coma. We all pray for his speedy recovery.

Who says there isn't a God

There has to be some power that dictates the sequence of events in this universe. Otherwise how could one event be linked to other as a chain of actions? When I say there exists God, I do not imply that he is someone who would always do good to someone.

By God, I mean some power (or anything I don't know yet) that dictates what will follow what and why in this universe. And, I do not think that our wise men of the earlier times made any mistake in realizing this.He/She/It has a set of rules and they apply same to everyone depending on individuals action.

I may be sounding a bit confused, complex and idiotic but I will sure rationalize my thoughts and present it in a better manner.

Obsolete

The project that I work on at my workplace, it is possible to obsolete a delivery if there are some serious issues with it. This set me wondering, how nice it would be if we could all have this feature in our lives. I would obsolete so many things, few memories from my school days and many right after it. I could also use it to undo few utterances for which I regretted later. I could undo my habits to make my body much leaner. I could also undo many mistakes that I made while writing code.

But that is not apparently possible. It seems the function: y = f(x) { where x is time, and y is event in life at the time x} is a distinct value function. It cannot have 2 values, such that if, y1 = f(x) and y2 = f(x), then y1 = y2 has to hold true always. Of course, all this holds true in the domain that we are present. It is said in quantum physics that there are infinite states of the universe, so there could be another Niranjan somewhere in some other universe who could be what I want to be. But would he want to be what he is? Because Nida has said, "Kabhi kisi ko muqammal jahan nahin milta"

He he... confused? But seriously I would like to explore this angle of philosophy if and when I get time in my life.

Easy Life

This monsoon season, a thought time and again surfaces on my mind. How nice and peaceful life it would be if my wife and I could stay in a small town, with almost all the basic necessities. We would have a little house, and I would have no work to go to.

Our garden would be covered with plush green grass, freshly grown this season. The trees would all be covered with greenery. We would take a walk in the city during the day, enjoying the slight drizzle and watching people by the road.

A simple life, no malls to visit, no driving cars in water-logged roads, no cursing the people causing traffic hold ups due to protests against corruption. No talking to people for the sake of talking.

Ah! I think I am old now.

Firefox Fired!

Well I suddenly realized that after purchasing the new laptop, I've yet to install Firefox on this machine. However, I don't think I will be installing it anyways. I am of course using Chrome as my default browser and not the one supplied by Redmond.

I will be playing a little with HTML 5 this weekend. Let us see, it should be fun!

Boredom and Work

Seven years and some months, it seems that I am still doing the same sort of work that I did when I had started. It is not that there were not times when I have had opportunity to work on interesting things, but in majority it has been the same boring stuff, 'fixing broken things' (named various things in service companies).

This routine work is probably a result because I have yet not worked with a product based organisation. I enjoyed a short stint working with our client, when we developed a nice product. 'Enhancements' are the nearest I have worked on in services company. 'Deliveries' are the next boring things I have faced. When, how and why they are planned still remains a mystery to me.

By the way, there have been some new services introduced in Google App Engine. Will be exploring them in due course of time.

Tich! Tich!, have office tomorrow :)

Spot rain and a ghazal symphony

It is suddenly raining with thunderstorm here in Delhi. It was predicted by our MET department. Satellite images are made available on their website, with periodic updates. It is a welcome respite from the rising heat, though surprisingly, it has still not got that warm here till now.

JS is going to perform a first ever "Ghazal Symphony" of some sort in Gurgaon, today. I am not attending of course, as I have resolved not to attend any of his concerts in the NCR region. Concerts here are mostly a platform for JS propaganda. JS only performs from his selected list of ghazals, which frankly look stale now. His real worth is when he picks classic Urdu poetry and renders them in perfect style, capturing the true poetic mood.

Anyways, here is a near full page add of one of the leading dailies today about that concert.

Same beher same tune

There are many instances, when I have noticed that Jagjit Singh used the same tune for the ghazals with same beher. During one of his (rare) workshops in Bengaluru he demonstrated to the audience how he goes about composing ghazals. In that, he chose a Mirza Ghalib ghazal and one another ghazal and demonstrated how ghazals with same beher can almost always be composed on a same tune. It is because of this reason, he is able to spring surprises in his concerts singing a ghazal in the tune of another ghazal, when audience demands him to sing both the ghazals!

I have remarked on this blog a number of times, JS has a fantastic ability to understand the meter of poetry. He knows exactly, how to split the misra into his tune and can thus render ghazals with same meters in those tunes.

An example below,

इश्क की दास्तान है प्यारे,

अपनी अपनी जुबान है प्यारे.

and

उसकी बातें बहार की बातें,

वादी-ए-लालाचार की बातें.

Both the ghazals are on the same beher: Khafif Mussadas Makhbun Mahzuf (2122/1212/22). They also are sung in the same tune :)

Ekta mein bal vs Managing the ekta

For a few days, an old public message that used to be aired on "Doordarshan", keeps floating in front of my eyes. It showed that a single stick by itself was easy to break, but when tied together with a piece of rope, they were impossible to break. That is, "Ekta mein bal".

Now, I have been thinking that this philosophy has an intrinsic overhead. When the number of sticks are massive, then tying the string properly to ensure the "ekta" over weighs the power provided by it. For example, consider a team of professionals. When there are few people in the team, it is so easy to manage it and the real power of "ekta" (or team work) is realised. Now consider a huge team (read as sticks), then we intend to go for multiple managers (read as strings) and managing the managers and sticks causes a massive overhead to the project, that impacts the output of the team right away.

Similarly consider the fact that as a nation we have been trying to stay united, from the time of our independence. Have our political system, politicians and administrative systems been capable enough to tie us all together?

Hello World!

Just to say, that I am once again connected to all of you, courtesy Airtel :)

Back

So my 20 month stay in foreign land is about to be over. It was a pleasant experience. I had wonderful view of the Europe subcontinent, beauty of which is so difficult to summarize in few words.

People, are the next best thing. The general courtesy, smiling faces on the streets, sense of driving on busy roads were all new experiences for me. The methodical system and the discipline to obey the rules are qualities so worth imbibing. Basic honesty in daily life too is so evident on the streets.

At work, I learned and experienced interesting ways of getting work done. Earlier I always had the notion that you needed a "Super-man/woman" to hold the project together. That myth is now blown away. Given the right amount of freedom, every member of the team works honestly towards the goals. The commercial aspects of a project should be put in the "product-backlog" in descending order of prioritization. There is a limit (physical and mental) to which a team can work in terms of number of hours, and that should be honored if quality is to be maintained.

Now, it's time to go back to my 'Karm-bhoomi'. That is the place where my duties and responsibilities lie. I am waiting eagerly for my return and to resume my life there.

Happy New Year 2011 and all that

Wishing everyone happy and prosperous new year and all that.

So, last year I fared miserably on my average on number of posts per year on this blog. I will try my best to make it up this year. Last year like the one previous to it, just came and went by. I did not even realize the "swishing sound" that it made!

This year seems to be one like the previous two again. I am set to change my geographies later this month, and hope it goes as planned.

See you all in next few days (if not months!)