Finally some hopes from Africa

After coming back from India, I am just busy with office work. Its carzy (going on).
Got this vacation (Thanksgiving vacation time), but still busy with some work.
Lot of things changed in Technical field, albeit with its own speed. Nothing drastic.

On political front, some watershed events happend. Although not much people might be looking towards Afrcis. A sort of revolution is going on there. (although I am not that revolutionary thinking guy, its all up and down for all ideology).
In Libera, a small "African country", a "woman" won the "free and fair election" and put the county on "democratic" path. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is first Africa's first elected female head of state.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4465992.stm

A good article is written by Fareed Zakaria on tis issue..

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/112805.html

This is very interesting topic. I will keep writing on this...

Have a great vacation time...
Ballu

Hi everyone...
I am not able to update my blogs/logs form a long time.. came back from India about 2 weeks back... and after that visited New Jersey on official visit for a week.... I will be updating this post frequently...

Cheers...

India Trip

These days, I am on a month long trip to India. I am not able to update my blog. Will write in details once I will have internet connection available...

Cheers...

"V" + "over" + "IP" = "Vodka"

Today I came across an interesting fact,

".......VoIP is a mystery to the mainstream (a recent Harris poll found that only 13 percent of the public knew what it was; 10 percent thought it was the name of a vodka)....."

(From the article of Newsweek)

Working in technology field, my company, environment (office), friends and I drink, eat and live by the Voice over IP (or Voice over Internet or cheap/free international calls). But seems like Vodka is also as important in the life... or we shoukd go ahead and start brewing Vodka with "VoIP" brand.. or change VoIP name to SKKY...

But one thing is clear, normal people are mor einnovative than techies... (you moght have got my point..)

-Ballu

Mobile (Wireless phone) service in ANTARCTICA
____________________________
ANTARCTICA Viking Wireless

PLAN DETAILS
Voice Rate: $0.99
Internet Rate: $0.00
Frequency: 1800Mhz
Customer Care: No Map Available
_____________________________

On my service provider T-Mobile site, I found the list of countries where T-Mobile coustomers can roam (with roaming charges). I was surprised to find ANTARCTICA. Does any one has some details......

Once I will find more, I will surely post here...

List of (celebrities) Vegetarians:

NNDB site has list of famous vegetarian,

http://www.nndb.com/lists/782/000064590/

NNDB is very interesting site. It has 15,000 profiles and you can browse from person's CV to the group where the person belong (a groups are created on the basis of either some characteristic related to behavior, orientation, habit, ideology etc.) Those people who have never heard about NNDB database, the site defines itself as,

"NNDB is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead. Superficially, it seems much like a "Who's Who" where a noted person's curriculum vitae is available (the usual information such as date of birth, a biography, and other essential facts.)

But it mostly exists to document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been hanging out with."

more is coming....

Art Blog:
I found a blog site (on eBlogger only) dedicated to art news.

The link to the site,
http://www.artnewsblog.com/

Its interesting that Tehran (Iran) has modern art exhibition. There is a link to Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art:

http://www.tehranmoca.com/en/index.aspx

http://www.tehranmoca.com/collection/collection.htm

more later...

1800 miles roadtrip:

(captured from google maps and edited with Picture Window Pro)

Last week, I went to Ottawa for my visa stamping (I am on working visa in US). Earlier I was thinking of going to Toronto, but because of appointment dates and what I heard that Toronto consulate sometimes take more than a day for stamping, I decided to drive to Ottawa, Canada.

6th Sept afternoon: I decided to drive to Ottawa. I started from Columbus, OH on 6th of September afternoon. Ottawa is 650miles from Columbus, OH.

7th Sept: I reached there (US embassy in Montreal), and got a shock, because of Fingerprinting, its rule now to return the passport next day only.

7th Sept afternoon: I had more than a day now. I had 2 options, either stay in Ottawa and do some photography, or drive to Montreal to meet friends (Gagan and Maneesh). I decided to drive to Montreal, another 150 miles. I reached there by 2:00PM (St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, suburb of Montreal). Logged in to company's network. Checked and replied to mails. Made few calls and updated my status to the office people.

7th Sept evening: We all went to old Montreal area. Its beautiful. Worth going there. So different from US cities. We had dinner at fine Italian place with live guitar in the background. Had big ice cream along the Saint Lawrence River.
The maps are available here for Old Montreal:
http://www.vieux.montreal.qc.ca/eng/localia.htm

8th Sept: I started Montreal at 12, reached Ottawa to pick the passport, and after going thru the mess of traffic for about an hour, I started back to Columbus, OH around 4:00pm. Reached US border around 5:30pm. As this was first entry to US after new visa, I had to go through finger printing and photo session. . I crossed thousand Island area. That is so beautiful, I can’t tell. Surely going there next year. I got a glimpse of area when crossing the bi-national the Thousand Islands Bridge. Even the bridge is marvelous in architecture and structure. http://www.visit1000islands.com/Gallery-1000Islands/index.html

8-9th Sept night: I reached Buffalo at 10:00pm. In between I called India in between. What a change in life style and technology. Calling cards and wireless coverage have made the so much changes, I was feeling this... Was tired, so decided to stop at Buffalo for some time. Change of mind, and I decided to watch Niagara Falls at night. I drive to falls, and changed the mind again, and drove to Canada side. It was beautiful, but boring and not that attractive for a "temp" single guy. Decided to come back later again with Seema and Aryan, started from there. now the long night started. I kept calling friends. And esp. Chadhas, Alok and Geeta, were calling in between and keeping me up and driving. The phone died with discharged battery by the time I reached Cleveland, OH. I stopped by the side, connected my inverter (8V to 120V) and put the phone for charging.

I reached back to Columbus at around 4:30am on 9th Sept. Dialed Chadhas one ring and disconnected (a signal that I reached).

Now the time for checking the odometer reading, for this trip it was few miles above "1750 miles".

Privacy and Technology:

We are living in ever evolving society, from social, legal, technological and ethical perspective. With times privacy definition changes, or atleast deviates. Technology impacts every facet of life. Personal info databases (Credit card...) , Internet, networked computers and "out of date" legal framework is making privacy as we see it today, a thing of past.

The new startup in search engine field, zabasearch.com, has literally stretched the limits. This is alarmingly accurate and horribly focused.

Go ahead, try it, to see if your "identity" is in there.

If you were thinking this was bad, the new feature is added, "Zabablog".

In his San Francisco Chronicle column on Friday, David Lazarus reported, "the company is planning to introduce a feature, ZabaBlog, that will allow people to write and post blogs about other individuals".

And I checked, its working and running. Although, you need to open an account.
Shall I open, no.. not at this point.

Think of scenario, when your neighbour will go go and put whatever you he/she will want. It's more like review of each person. Till now internet was full of review of shops and products, this site will make you a real commodity.

I am closely watching this new game....

Internet Explorer History:

I found the interesting link on Microsoft site, "History of Internet Explorer". The most interesting thing is, snapshots of different evrsions as well as of next upcoming version (oh.. so much like Opera's initial version"). The link is,

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/historyofie.mspx

You can see how the GUI and menus changed, showing to evolution in GUI concepts and Internet Browsing/functionality in last decade....

Will try to find Netscape and Opera snapshots too (Mozilla is new in this world)...

TV on the Desktop:

I was thinking of installing TV tuner card (or some other way) on my home desktop. After lot of discussions and confusion, I selected ATI Wonder Pro (whats Pro, I am not able to find.. may be just a upgrade from earlier version).

http://www.ati.com/products/tvwonderpro/features.html

But eventualy I ended up upgrading my graphics card too. I selected Radeon 9550SE 128Mb graphics card, ATi PowerSpec RADEON 9550SE.

http://ipsgproducts.com/products/video_cards/radeon9550se128mb_600726.html
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9550/

Yes, Its working although taking lot of resources of the computer. I think I may end up upgrading memory too. The TV quality is not that great. But I think few reasons are,

• Image size: My desktop setting is 1024 x 780. And NTSC signal provides only 648 x 486 resolution. Either I need to decrease the resolution of monitor or watch in small wondow. I prefer small, and that the reason I installed this (to do multitasking). So its not an issue of clarity but the size.
• Distance: We are used to work from small distance on desktop, may be 18-24 inch). But I think to watch low quality video, we need atleast 3 feet of distance. This is main reason for less than expected quality (again my reason).
• And I think most important: Monitor quality: I have years old monitor. That really sucks.
• Settings: Agian not related to quality, but to me, it looks like, either all the channels are over exposed or under exposed. This may be due to the default settings of channels feed. My monitor settings are according to the applications and OS I am running.
• Whats about light in the room: Usually we watch motion picture in dark roombut the computer area is light-ed. Not sure this setting is also playing any role.

But I am happy with my new toy. I will put details later...

Ciao & Arrivederci...

Renewable Energy:

Guardian Unlimited has realy nice page on renewable energy (a special report).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/0,2759,180749,00.html

There is one article, about how the life will be in 2020. It's scary to think what is projected. Things usually doesn't materialize as predicted, but all the events are practical. a must read,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1072526,00.html

I am reading lot about wind mills (power generation). Will post more on this...
cheers...

Alone and growing...

On that day walking with little naughty guy, i saw the creeper. Alone but growing. It was saying, who needs the path, I can make myself...

Test blog with palm

using AvantBlog
& Palm Tungsten E

Hocking Hills Hiking:

Last weekend was hectic. Went to Hocking Hills state park. For little hiker, this was a "hike". He just liked that. Water is his weekness (till you tell him to drink at home). It seems the fresh air and the nature talk to us, every time we visit these places. We all are in love with hiking. Waiting for the day when the little one will be the part of backpacking trip.

Its a nice palce to visit. Link of the site:

Hocking Hills State Park

Fall

I have seen so many fall, so many fell just in front of me... but what about me. Somewhere with no identity and forgotten, I have become the watcher of this fall and upcoming falls...

Blogger picture....

(Macro shot.. captured last year..Slide, scanned and did minimal proceessing with Picture Window Pro)

Toys worth wasting time....

Just like every other guy telling that "oh... I luv electronics gadget", I will also write about my experience with my toys...

• PALM (Palmone) Tungsten E
• Nokia 6600
• and lot lot of cameras: Canon Rebel 2K, Elan II, Elan 7 (friend's), Canon Canonet G-III QL17, Digital P&Ss (2MP and 6MP), web cam (one at home and one in office), Camcorder and tons of lenses (mostly cheap one.. no pro grade)

These days I am hooked to Mobile Internet (GPRS on 6600). I just bought Opera browser..

My first take about Opera browser,

• Believe me, Its worth buying..
• Its fast, handy and shows the page "great"

I will put more details about Opera Browser experience on mobile phone.

Till then...

Current TV: new phase of broadcasting

Today is the launch date for new TV network, Current TV. First about this network,

• Brainchild of Al Gore (a real insider of Washington) and few of his Democratic buddies.
• May be a liberal channel, but for insider, philosophy is not issue (name, fame and power are the pillars of life)
• First broadcasting channel in last 10 years (last one was "O", Oxygen)
• http://www.current.tv/
  

In my opinion this is first attempt to integrate the generation which is growing in Internet world. People are becoming used to getting little information from all spheres. Yes, its hippie-r and yes you can say it’s not serious, But what’s the issue with this. With decades, generation changes. There was first generation which watched Disney, first one to hook to CNN... things come, change the face of industry and eventually this change is for good.

Whether this channel will be another startup or will become some ground breaking, time will tell. If its digital only, I am not sure how many 18-25 generation has digital network in the hostels/Dorms?

Another key point is, consumers will be able to send their own videos. I am the guy who is pushing from long that the Internet should be used to tap "Global intellectual knowledge". Anyone who is able to tap this, will be big player.

The good details of this channel are provided here,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101081.html

More to come.....

Finally Ford Escape Ltd 4x2 '05 model

Finally, after marathon search and discussions, We bought new vehicle, and yes.. its again Ford. We were swearing 2 months back, not to go for Ford... Eventually after going thru all the things and what we wanted, we went for Ford Escape '05.
Seema drove the SUV to home....

And Little guy, Aryan had slept before reaching home... He is enjoying the high ride...

Few links to Ford Escape '05 Limited Edition 4x2 (Front Wheel Drive)...

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2005/ford/escape/100376001/researchlanding.html

http://www.fordvehicles.com/suvs/escape/

More about this new toy later....

Milan Kundera, Nietzsche and Blogs...

I remember when I started reading Milan Kundera's "The unbearable Lightness of Being". The very first line was just a shot directly hitting the torpedo. The mention of Nietzsche is somewhat electrifying for me. But a novel strating with "eternal return", was interesting to me. The line(s)was,

"The idea of the eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?................................

Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?

It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.

If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they .deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. "

a..ah.. but how blog will come into this picture. Blog is evolution to some and sort of revolution to others. But is this like French revolution which will call for republic and democratic system with equality to all throught out the world.

May be.. Blogs are hit everywhere. The mainstream media (what main and from where its media) is jumping on blogs. Instead of comments you can blog the news. Everyone is jumping the bandwagon. Every journalist has blog and every other person who can type is writing how much his cat is eating these days.

a.. l.. la... Deja Vu... Is this a French revolution in the making or war of small kingdom who are fighting from last some years without getting the solid mass.

Do we all bloggers bear no weight or consequence to our actions in the grand scheme of things of technological innovation.

Are we just like herd who were jumping on NASDAQ in late 90's, then became doomsayer of technology based industry, and now bloggers. and in between we acted like Security expert too.

Are we just waiting to jump on the new bandwagon like Podcasting, or video blogging or something more weird.

This is interesting topic.. will write more later... till then..

Salute to the world..

A salute from new blogger to this world. I will try to keep updating my online dairy at least on weekly basis. As the blog says, I will just tell about my life, my thinking and the surrounding around us. I am working in the telecommunications industry, enjoying the happy family life with lovely wife Seema and cutie but really naughty son Aryan. Sometimes uses my camera but still not comfortable with digitals (please don’t want to enter into good, better & best discourse). Luv running (one day will complete marathon... may be just a day dream). Read books, some time Nietzche, sometimes Milan Kundera to Telecommunication blogs. You are going to read lot about my socio-political thinking and my views on telecom industry and Internet future. Movies are something never able to attract me, but like watching sometimes. After all life is full of contradictions and simplicity will never take someone to anywhere. Complexities and contradictions are not just need but way of life.
More is coming......