birds seen from KP Tower-2 620

1. Common Myna
2. Jungle Myna
3. Brahmini Myna
4. Ashy Prinia
5. Some Warbler (booted?)
   
6. Tailor Bird
7. Oriental White-eye
8. Pied Bushchat
9. Indian Robin
10. Oriental Magpie-Robin
11. Great Tit
12. House Sparrow
13. Red-vented bulbul
14. Red-whiskered bulbul
15. Little Brown Dove
16. Blue Rock Pigeon
17. Asian Koel
18. Common Crow
19. Jungle Crow
20. Grey Hornbill
21. Shikra
22. Black Kite
23. Pond Heron
24. Little Egret
25. Intermediate Egret
26. Red-wattled Lapwing
27. Little Cormorant
28. Indian Cormorant
29. Rose-ringed Parakeet
30. Alexadrine Parakeet
31. White-breasted Kingfisher
32. Common Kingfisher
33. Baya Weaver
34. Dusky Crag-martin
35. Red-rumped Swallow
36. Little green Bee-eater
37. Scaly-breasted Munia
38. Black Drongo
39. White-browed Wagtail
40. Greater Coucal
41. Ducks (unidentifeid) - probably Spot-billed
42. Large Cuckoo-Shrike (?)
43. House Swift
44. Cattle Egret
45. Indian Silverbill

Crazy engineers

CrazyEngineers.com was in news (literally) recently.

Why is that a big deal?
Well, for one, it is a one man run website and Kaustubh (the Big-K as likes to be called sometimes) has worked really hard for it. I think this has turned a page for the site.
The site is already 40k members strong from more than a 100?? countries! Quite an achievement considering it is only word of mouth.

It does not need any shameless advertising from my end, or sure.

I do visit the site sometimes, the interviews the site has managed are varied and interesting. It is nice to read stuff about leaders and local entrepreneurs. I think the 'Know your CEan' feature is interesting too, adds to the dynamic nature of the site. (Nice to see champ being interviewed. Though I don't think he was candid with his answers.)

Always nice to see some hard work getting visibility.
Way to go Kaustubh. Hope you are making some money out of it now. :-p

मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

आसमां से ज़मीन को छूता, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष
गुमसुम सा रहता, कुछ न कहता, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

क्यों रूठे हो पूछा मैंने, मेरे प्यारे इन्द्रधनुष
आँख चुराके, खोया रहता, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

सागर से गहरा, अभिमान से ऊंचा, मेरा अनूठा इन्द्रधनुष
पर्वत से बहता छिछले नालों में, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

प्राण हो मेरे, आन हो मेरे रूठो न मुझसे इन्द्रधनुष,
रोज़ रोज़ की ताने सहता मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

धूमिल से हो तुम, दूषित गलियों में खो न जाना इन्द्रधनुष,
भीड़ में जीता, शुन्य में खोया, नुक्कड़ पर बैठा इन्द्रधनुष

टूट चुका हूँ, जाग गया हूँ, कहाँ है मेरा इन्द्रधनुष?
सिसक सिसक के कोने में रोता, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

सदियों से जीता, पल-छिन्न में मरता, मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष,
मुझे देख कर, क्षण भर जी लो मेरे भोले इन्द्रधनुष,

आखिर थोडा सा, कुछ घबराया सा मिला मुझे वह इन्द्रधनुष
अपनी काया से, कुछ गदराया सा, मुझमें रंग है भरता...
मेरा फीका इन्द्रधनुष

All talk and no play never takes you too far

Talk about following your dreams! Caught up with an old friend of mine while back after a good couple of years. I remember talking to her and her telling me how unhappy she is with her current job and she is meant to do somthing better. Something she has her heart in.
She had an artist's flair to her and wanted to go for a course at the National Institure of Design - probably the most reputed design school out there. But, something seemed to hold her back. I don't know - lucre, self confidence, doubt or just plain luck. That was when I last heard of her.
Today she proudly announced that she was in Bangalore. In NID! Everything apart, she is an inspiration for morons like me who blabber about following your heart and stuff. This is the real deal. Somebody actually took the plunge! Someone actually followed their dreams. And am proud (and envious, in a good way) of her. :)

Out of the purple

I must admit, I have been off colour for the past month or two. Guess am going through one of those 'existential/relalizational' phases of life. Everything seems bland, boring and banal. Trying to come to terms with my new found boredom.

I am, as usual, confused from the last couple weeks. Guess, I'll never get over bewildering over 'appraisal/feedback' thingie. I've always believed the whole thing to be a scam.Though, it is much better at my current company, I just think we Indians are by default to polite to give honest feedback to each other. Me, guilty as charged.

I've been doing a lousy job in my current project. I know that. More out of self-blocking-out than lack of skill or interestingness of the project. A lo has been happening in last 6 months or so and have not been able to think straight. I hope to get back on track before other people realize this :-D .

Been reading an interesting book - Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson) . It's a mishmash of everything nerd. World war, cryptography - both old and new, guns, espionage, hacking, phreaking... Loving the book till now. It's a huge tome. At a hulking 1100 pages, it's the biggest piece of bound paper I've read (out of college text-books. Wait. technically, you have to read a book from cover to cover, right, to actually read it? Cryptonomicon wins.). It has quite a bit of geeky, tounge in cheek humour and also has it's share of gore with sharks and cannibals and bombs and huge guns. The book, somehow felt very masculine. Something that panders to the male geekdom. But, then it is written well enough to be more than that and some across as somehing I'll refer to a friend or two.

What do I give her?

Something random I wrote this weekend

How about those ear-rings that jingle, sparkling like tiny stars?
Or maybe an expensive evening, with moonlight, champagne and fancy cars?
Oh, what do I give a girl who hates chocolates and is allergic to flowers?

I know she hates roses, she wouldn't stop sneezing for what seemed like hours.
And she doesn't fancy chocolates, cause I still have those three boxes of Mars.
So, what do I give her? She hates chocolates and definitely not into flowers.

She tells me she doesn't need chocolates to woo her or a fragrant floral shower,
She tells me she happy with what we have, something we could call ours
What do I give her? She is sweeter than the chocolates and much prettier than the flowers.

Something I wrote - अदा

आपकी इक नज़र से न जाने कितने  दिल पिघलते हैं,
आपके हुस्न के आगे लाखों आफ़ताब युहीं ढलते हैं,
आपकी मोहब्बत ने तो सिर्फ़ हमारी ज़िन्दगी बदली है,
आपकी अदाओं से ही तो यह मौसम बदलते हैं.

Such a long journey

The greatest plans are made in the spur of the moment (except wars, of course). And so was this.

3 PM, 4th April
Me and Mohnish just realise that our stay in Bangalore may be longer that we had initially expected. I, as usual, started cribbing about lack of transport around Bangalore. I, in other words hate being away from my bike for too long.
I suggested, rather half-heartedly, that we should go get my bike from Pune. Monday being an optional holiday, we could take our own time in doing the 800 kms. The plan sounded ridiculous as none of us had ridden for that long. Plus, we had to make a move tomorrow. From Pune. And we were . Much to my surprise, Mohnish latched on to the concept! We had no idea about the roads or the time it'll take for us to achieve the feat.

We had a one line plan -"get the bike from Pune to Bangalore till Sunday". Booked the tickets for the next day (tickets courtesy the company - it supports weekly travel to the home city :-) ).

11 AM, 5th April
It gave me goosebumps looking down from the plane window thinking we'll be treading the same ground (albeit slower, much much slower) in a couple of hours. Landed at 12 in the noon the next day and planned to move at 2.

We packed my saddlebag, stacked it on my ThunderBird and out for the journey. But first things first - fuel up. Filled the tank to the brim at Wanowrie petrol pump and set about. well, sort of ...

I revved up the bike to begin our trip. The plan was to halt at Kolhapur, 225 km away. We stopped much earlier. 400m. Thats all we could manage when the bike broke down. Remeber the one line plan? Well, it did not include checking if the bike was travel ready. I opened up the battey compartment to check for the fuse (every Enfield owner worth his salt knows how to do minor repairs on his bike). My heart sank when I saw he sight that awaited us. I had forgotten that the battery needed replacement. It was leaking like a faucet.

We called up the garage only to be told we can not get help for atleast an hour. We contacted a local mechanic and waited for him to take a look. And waited some more. The mechanic arrived an hour later, turned the key, pushed the ignition switch and voila! the bike started. I, being scientifically inclined killed the engine and repeated the process again. Thrice. The bike was humming like it sweet honey bee. After the mechanic assured that he'll be on 24 hours assistance in case anything happens again en route, we started the journey again. And this time, it was on.

... end of part 1

Thoughts work. some times.

Hurray to my new job!
After spending a couple of years at the giant virtually adding nothing to my portfolio, I decided to call it quits. My decision stumped my friends and family. My parents couldn't fathom why I was leaving such a 'good' company. My previous employer had a name that some of my extended family had heard of. And that meant a lot for my folks.

But then, hard decisions have to be made. A lot of factors went into making me switch, but there were a few areas where my friends thought I was mistaken.

• I was doing pretty well at the current job
• I was the youngest team lead around
  
• I was the de-facto expert at the product I was responsible for (and could hold my employers at ransom for keeping me happy)
• Was earning pretty ok and my new job wasn't, well, very high paying
• I was recognised and highly rated by my previous employer

What made me switch then? Inertia.
Some people like to take it lying down. I don't. Why disturb the force when all's hunky-dory? I guess I am a nut. I dont like stability. I like the status-quo to be disturbed. Like to challenge myself. I hate stagnation and am always game for a challenge.

I was stagnating in my job. I love to learn, I love to explore. My job would not have given me that opportunity. I couldn't bare to think that my two years of association with the giant had given me no significant new skills. It was killing me that I was made a team lead so soon. I had to curtail my instincts as a developer and think about 'the greater good'. I felt I was not done yet. I needed to learn a lot more and knew that I will require a free hand at doing that.

The status quo had to be broken. I needed to liberate myself from the slew of processes and become something I always wanted to become - a programmer.

I would love to do bits and pieces job when I can. I want to lay the bricks rather than build the temple. There is a lot of time left for me to think bigger. But for now, being a bit selfish and doing what I love will do. Of course, it means giving up on fat bonuses and big chunky salaries but that am willing to do.

It has been a fun few weeks since I joined the new place. It has been fun, a radical change from the morose environ at the old do. I have been busy learning Ruby - a language I had last touched a couple of years ago but couldn't take the 'hobby' to work as it wasn't aligned to business commitments.

Am not exactly sure what am doing in the new company. Don't know if it will work out in the long run. But then, chances are meant to be taken.
Risks are not a part of life if you don't want them to be. Life is guided by vision and vision driven from thoughts.

and thoughts work. some times.

..uh, bring in the thesaurus

Found in the Katraj snake park.

Seriously, molest a snake??

Ignore me, am just a part of the furniture

There are a number of ways of being professionally successful in IT. The most important of which is "taking responsibility" aka "take the blame", "bear the brunt" OR "the buck stops at you". The most obvious way of taking responsibility is owning someone else's fault, good if it is your peers', better if it is your boss's. Don't just own the fault, advertise it to. Make it obvious. This can be done in a subtle way e.g. telling someone in the team that it was a bit of your fault OR with more grandeur e.g. sending a mail to the entire team apologising for something that you have not actually done. The latter is preferred. Before you think am BSing, take a look at the successful people around you. Most, at some point or the other, have step up to the plate and batted for someone else. The trick is to make it so obvious that your manager knows that you are owning it up for someone else. DO NOT OWN UP YOUR OWN MISTAKES. never!

Taking the blame, unfortunately, only works at a level. Do not do it regularly, in which case people think you are a bumbling buffoon. Or till you have someone else you can blame for your own mistakes (this is the case when you become a manager/lead). It is important to note that you should not take the blame if you know someone else can gain from it. This is the situation when you have someone competing for the position you have your eyes set own. Do not own up competition's mistake, the other person will only try to trample upon you. However there is a trick to this too (isn't there always), own your competition's fault if it is so glaring that every one knows who the guilty party is. Your competitor makes a mistake, a big, obvious one everyone knows about it and then you turn up and try to own it up. Try to cover for him. Make it obvious that you are "defending" the poor being. Thats how you show compassion, responsibility and leadership ability.

Have to leave now, gotta own a build break...

Comics for geeks

We geeks often feel left out. We are not exactly introverts but fear making idiots out of ourselves by talking to people. Or we most often don't care :D.
I, for example, can not talk to a girl without discussing the intricacies of the new algorithm I have been dreaming about or discussing the use of alternative fuels in everyday life. Girls also don't seem to take liking to my interests in paleolithic zoology and my scatological humour. Strange, I'd say.

XKCD sometimes mirror what I feel. Here are a couple that I really like :












































This I'd love to solve :D

I am BORED

More than half IT workers sleep on the job

This report says that a lot of IT workers sleep on the job. This might come as a revelation to my friends outside the industry. But this is a well known secret we IT workers have. Yes, we sleep on the job.

Some of my co-workers can put सरकारी बाबु s to shame. A lot of It companies provide dorms for the employees but not my company. No Sir, sleeping in a dormitory is so lame. My kind of sleeping is - hands on the desk, fingers at the keyboard, head slightly tilted towards the screen (the screen saver turned off) and wearing my glasses for that extra effect. Now that is what sleeping on the job is all about.

Sleeping is such a personal activity, why should I declare my boredom by sleeping in the dorms. The fun part is to sleep right in the cubical and not get caught. It brings so much fun of a cat-and-mouse game to a boring job that most of us have.

'nuf said, am off to my 3'o clock sleep, tata.

Eloisa to Abelard

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

-- Alexander Pope

An atheist's view on the Ram Setu controversy - Part 1

Every Ambika, Jairam and Advani is jumping in to offer their own view of the Ram Setu controversy. Why not me?

My close friends know I don't follow any religion. Am not proud or ashamed of admitting that. Thats how I turned out to be. Am not a atheist by choice, but by accident. I've always felt religion was too private to be discussed. Today I decide to come clean.

Here is my story:

I grew up on mixed religious beliefs. Was taught about Christianity in the tuitions and moderate Hinduism at home. My tuition teacher taught us about Jacob and Moses and Lazarus and all the biblical characters of the mid-west. Weekend classes were spent enacting excerpts from the Bible.

That brings me to my tuition teacher. She was, technically, a Hindu. A Brahman at that. But she was a disgruntled Hindu. She found peace in Christianity, Hinduism did not offer her solace in her sufferings, Christianity did. She had turned into a "Believer", she praised the Lord and so were we supposed to do. We greeted Madam (as we called her) with the greeting "Praise the Lord" and were greeted the same in return - every single day; every single day of my childhood. There was no feeling of 'religion' attached to the greeting. It was just like greeting someone with a simple "Good Morning" or "Namaste". I greeted my school teachers with a "Good Morning" and my Grand-mother with a "Namaste". Every person has a greeting associated them. Madam had a "Praise the Lord".

Religion did play a big part in our house hold. But it was never an integral part of our daily lives. It never imposed at home; culture was. We were never expected to pray 4 times a day, not even once a day for that matter. It a private affair, it was a choice. I was an observer at the Poojas - passive at times. Never learnt a single श्लोक or भजन - I wasn't expected to. But I was never vehement in rejection of my Mother's religious beliefs. She had her freedom, I had mine. Don't get me wrong, I loved the पूजा, I loved the rythmic chanting of the shlokas, the incense sticks and the प्रसाद.

For me पूजा and festivals were not a matter of us beliefs but an occasion for social gathering. For feasting, for meeting up with cousins and uncles. Though my Mother was concerned with my apparent apathy with religion, I guess she figured out I was too confused to know how my Karma shapes up.

Though I did not realise it then, I do it now. Not following any religion was not by my conscious effort, it was an accident. I felt Christianity was too fabled to be true and Hinduism was too mysterious for me to fathom. I saw Christianity as an alternative for Hinduism and felt it was like choosing your favorite party to vote for. Or abstaining. I abstained. I didn't know which party was better. Which was the lesser evil; which was "cool"er than the other.

So, there I was growing up confused, not very sure of my religion. I grew up to be neither a fanatic nor a pagan. I turned out to be a mixture of being agnostic with a feeling of apathy. As a child, it started with the question : "Which God exists?", graduated to "Does God exist?" and ended up with "Should God exist? Prove it to me it should."

As of now, am not sure where my faith lies. I don't believe in religion or God or "The One That Decides Everything". Am not even sure am an atheist. What is an atheist anyways? Shouldn't I be an agnostic? Shouldn't I question if God actually exists instead of denying his existence?
I don't know.

But I guess "atheist" best describes me right now.

VERY LAME

I know the title of this post is in CAPS. And that means just one thing - it's an acronym. Acronym for what, you say?

Find out: VERY LAME

The presentation was submitted as a part of "Crazy Concepts" event we had in our company a couple of months ago. Though I did not win, I thought it might be fun to share the idea with you guys.

Cheers!

A Small Slithering Surprise

There I was - attending a boring meeting in the middle of the day. Four of us hounding the round table keying in with fury on our thinkpads, writing another purposeless document.

Suddenly, there was a movement. Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It looked like a hairpin near of the chair's wheels. Then I saw again, it was moving. God! the hairpin was moving! I asked Amit to pick up the "hair-pin" on the carpet. He reached out, jumping back on the slight touch of the thing. It was not a hair-pin. It slithered and swayed, tried to burrow its nose (or whatever it was) into the carpet - probably trying to go down under, being the under ground dweller that it was.


There it was - small, tiny little slitherer. Slim, blind and dying. It was stamped on. May be someone had stepped on it, may be the one of the chairs had rolled over it. I don't know how, but it was at the end of its journey.

I carefully picked up the little guy on a a sheet of paper. Looked at it closely, very closely.

It was small. It was dark. It was slimy. It was not a worm for sure - it had scales. Looked like a juvenile worm snake or something to me. It was probably a Caecilian. I could not figure out where the head was. It either had none or had its head lopped off clean.

I took it outside, prodded it with my little finger. It twitched. So did I. I put it down in the grass hoping it will kick back to life. And then, it moved, it tried to burrow into the ground. Really? or was I seeing things. I was happy that the little guy will survive.

I rushed back into the meeting room and got back to work. But I was pre-occupied with the thought of the tiny guy's survival. I excused myself and went to the spot I had left the little fella.

It was still there.

And it wasn't moving. Damn! I poked it again a little, it didnt move. It lay there like it had never moved. The "hair-pin" was now crooked and stiff like its name-sake. I didn't have the heart to leave that guy out there, I moved it around but then decided that the ground is the best place for a ground-dweller to rest. I left it on a naked patch of soil and bid it good bye.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I hoped it was playing a trick on me and would slither again and burrow deep down into the ground. I hoped it will spring back to action and grow up to be a big boy. I hoped it would live. I hope...


Update: It was probably a thread snake. More info : scolecophidians

Transformers

No! not this one.

This is what am talking about. Transformers - the movie. If you were like me - fed on a diet of American and Japanese animation shows as a kid, you'll love this. It has my childhood hero Optimus Prime so the movie could not have gone wrong.

As this is the first movie in the series, it is a bit descriptive at times, so that folks not familiar with the original series can catch up. But even that story telling part - how Megatron destroyed Cybertron and fled to Earth to crash is enjoyable too. Even those who don't give a rat's ass to the original series will enjoy the amazing CGI - the most detailed thing ever attempted.

I must admit, I felt like a 10 year old boy in a toy shop. I sat transfixed in front of the screen. It was like watching Transformers for the first time - over awed with with it all. The transforming into cars and trucks and planes and helicopters. The Autobots and Decepticons outdoing each other with transformations. The matrix, the cube, bumblebee ... Everything came rushing back to me.

Can't wait for the sequels. Can't wait for the Autobots kicking some Decepticons' ass.

Meri gaadi

2007 Royal Enfield Thunderbird

Rattles like a mixer-grinder, feeds on fuel like a Hummer and sounds like a flour mill. Handles like an angel and fits like a throne. Smoothest ride in town.