“All-india Adivasi Kongress And Sonia Handheld” Device
Today I had a hands-on ‘Aakash‘ tablet in our lab. It has our processor. The performance is not bad when compared to its price. I don’t want to talk much on its features, as many have already talked about it. The tablet response is relatively slow, but I was able to browse through internet. The other draw back is old resistive touch screen, which was obviously chosen to achieve low cost.
The '$35 tablet'
For some reason, which I don’t understand, this tablet was not named after Rajiv/Indira Gandhi. Who knows? May be the name Aakash is an acronym which has not yet been revealed. I gave a try, “All-india Adivasi Kongress And Sonia Handheld” tablet. Oops! couldn’t get crappier than that.
Politician or Actor?
Look at this profile of Manmohan Singh on FB. Funny but correct.
Simon says…
Simon Katich recently made a very good statement on employee’s salaries/hikes and relative performances:
“If you pay peanuts you get monkeys“
Online Interactive learning
Recently, I came across a study saying that on an average a teenager spends about 31 hours on internet per week. If you read a text book for 1 hr and say you get 1 knol (imaginary unit of knowledge – by Google) of knowledge. Then I’m sure with the average of 31 hours spent online every week the amount of knowledge would not exceed 1 knol. Thats because the internet is filled with filth.
We do google every now-and-then to get instantaneous solutions. Usually they serve the purpose. But it is difficult to find a complete course which is exhaustive, interesting and still to the point. Yes, there is Wikipedia. But, it is not interactive. Especially for kids, they like it to be mode simple, less verbose, more video kind of thing.
I found a video today on TED Talks in which the speaker, Salman Khan (I know who is in your mind!) speaks on his work Khan Academy which works on the above idea. It is an online FREE interactive video education for kids. The syllabus covered here includes basics from 1+1 = ? to integral calculus to statistics. It also covers some topics on Biology, Physics, Chemistry and History. There are a lot of videos. A lot of interactive tutorials. It is very good! … at least a great start.
All you need is a Google account or Facebook account to use the site.
Today’s TOI blooper
Today I found out this blooper on our own good-for-nothing TOI newspaper. It is about IPL match result. Video headlines suggest Pune Warriors won over Deccan Chargers. But the other headlines says DC won over PWI.
I know this paper is junk, but somehow I end up atleast once every day here 
TOI Blooper : PWI Vs DC
Wow! I drove on the world’s widest and busiest road.
Yes, I travelled on the world’s widest and busiest road. It is the El Toro Y in Irvine, CA. It is on Freeway-405 and It has 26-lanes! About 4,00,000 vehicles travel by this road every day!
In fact I didn’t drive the car, I was co-driver. Although I travel frequently on this road I never noticed it, got to know about this fact just today!
View Larger Map
… a new start
For a change in work location, I got shifted to Newport Beach, CA on 15th March. It is quite a good place to live except that it is pretty expensive, being the richest city in US. The weather is pleasent almost throughout the year.
Being with your family is obviously the best thing . I’m currently with the next best thing . I’m sharing accomodation with my friends. I’m staying quite near to my office, Conexant Systems.
Everything else seems to be going well, except the Japan Radioactive threat to the Southern California region. Keeping my fingers crossed….
Google maps bloopers
I was casually going through some location search in Google Maps and found these errors:
1. Rangareeddy district in Karnataka. Now this is a new point to protest for TRS
2. A point of location to Tulu Nadu in Karnataka
Google Maps blooper
Know your Sonia…
I am for sure with anti-Sonia and anti-Nehru political view. I have read so many articles with references suggesting anti-national moves by Sonia in so many instances by Gurumurthy and many others. Obviously all these writers have been labelled by the ruling party under BJP <Safron Terror> tag.
The efforts by people like Gurumurthy, Subramanian Swamy et al. to educate people on who they have chose have always been sidelined by media (‘NDTV’ and other Congress chamcha channels). They wouldn’t publish until the banana is completely peeled off, like in the case of 2G/ISRO scams.
There is an article on Sonia in Janata Party’s official website: ‘Do you know your Sonia‘ by Subramanian Swamy… very interesting to someone who still don’t know the facts… very obvious to someone who knows about her.
Here is a snippet from his article:
Is it not significant that the political career graph of Sonia Gandhi advances concomitantly with a series of assassinations and apparently accidental deaths?
How did Sanjay’s plane on June 23, 1980 nosedive to a crash and yet the plane fuselage failed to explode upon impact? There was no fuel ! How was that possible since flight register shows full tank before take-off ? Why was there no inquiry conducted ?
Is it not a fact that Indira Gandhi died because of loss of blood from the wounds and not directly due to a bullet impacting her head or heart ? Then is it not strange that Sonia had insisted that the bleeding Indira be driven to Lohia Hospital– in the opposite direction to AIIMS which had a contingency protocol set up for precisely such an event ? And after reaching Lohia Hospital, did not Sonia change her mind and demand that they all drive to AIIMS thus losing 24 valuable minutes ?
The same kind of mystery surrounds the sudden deaths of Sonia’s other political roadblocks such as Rajesh Pilot, Jitendra Prasad, and Madhavrao Scindia. Such untimely deaths happened in the dark ages in Italy. Should we allow it to happen in India like dumb cattle going to slaughter?
New Year eve @ Hampi
The work pressure in the month of December was a bit more. It has been so for some time now. The only way to get out of it was to get out of Hyderabad for a couple of days and get refreshed. Luckily my office had a shutdown during the last week of December. Initially thought of going to Bidar, but finally fixed Hampi as I somehow missed out seeing it even after staying in Raichur for almost 2 decades. As Hampi can only be visited in winter, I thought this to be the right time to visit. So, booked tickets on Rajahamsa(Bus) and we went there for 2 days trip. Hampi will turn into an oven in summer.
We stayed in Pai Residency (a lodge near Hospet Bus-stand). It is quite decent one with reasonable prices. We had food at Hotel Aamantran (besides Pai Residncy) on day-1. It is not bad for South-Indian food. We booked a cab for Hampi from Hospet (Rs 1000/-). At Hampi we hired a guide for Rs 800/-. It took us that entire day to see Hampi.
Hampi, once capital of the great Vijayanagara empire is a place of ruins. There is a still little bit of architecture left over, but not comparable to that of Belur and Halebidu. It once enjoyed being the most architecturally beautiful places in the world. You will today see it as a vast city, of about 30 sq kms, of ruins everywhere. The little bit of architecture what ever left over is still worth visiting.
With the guide explaining you every prominent ruin you will get a feel of how brutal the invaders were. Almost every sculpture has a broken limb/ear/nose. It might have easily taken the invaders several months to just do eat-destroy-sleep kind of job. You tend to curse the invaders every now and then.
Among the left outs, I liked the Urga-Narasimha statue, Hazara Rama Temple and Vittala Temple. The Vittala temple has many beautiful architectural splendors in it. The iconic sculpture of the Stone Chariot is located here. It also shelters the famous Mantapa with musical pillars. The Lotus Mahal is also worth watching. The Maharnavami dibba looks like a Harappa/Mohenjodaro site replica with all ruins. It took us the entire day of day-1 to see Hampi. It was a bit tiring.
The next day (1st Jan) we reseted ourselves a bit. We had lunch at Iceland Hotel. It is close to Pai-Residency and Bus-stand. We had North Indian lunch and I would say it was one of the best North-Indian food I had in hotels. Very good quality at reasonable rate. Post lunch we planned for Tunga-Bhadra dam and nearby park. It is about 7 kms from Hospet. All the dam gates were closed. So no much fun there. The park has a deer park and an aviary. We waited for evening musical fountain show at the park which was also good. After returning from the dam, we had to catch our bus back to Hyderabad at around 9pm.
In all it was a nice refreshing trip to Hampi, and now I am back to work 
Hampi Collage
