A few years ago, I had complained about the lack of a well-stocked and accessible library in Bangalore. To a certain extent this complaint has been addressed since by the quick rise of Just Books in the city. Just Books has a rapidly-growing chain of lending libraries here in Bangalore (and in some other cities in India). The collection of books is decent enough and the lending-rates fair enough for this to be an attractive option for most book-lovers in the city.
Showing posts with label bangalore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bangalore. Show all posts
2011-08-15
2011-02-07
Monitor Woes
I decided to finally replace the ageing CRT monitor of my desktop PC, after having repeatedly put it off over the last few years. This CRT monitor, a 17" Samsung Samtron 75E, had served me remarkably well for over 11 years. When its display started to blur and intermittently turn yellow (cured by a hard whack on its side), despite a couple of repairs that seemed to initially fix the issues, I knew it was time to say good-bye to it. Since it is nearly impossible to buy a CRT monitor these days, I set out to buy an LCD monitor. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an affordable LCD monitor good enough to replace my old CRT monitor and I had to ultimately settle for a less-than-perfect replacement LCD monitor.
2011-01-05
Year-End Breaks
Towards the end of the year 2010, Anusha and I went for a couple of day-trips to places near Bangalore. The first trip was to Balmuri and Yedmuri falls, along with a visit to Brindavan Gardens. The second trip was to Belur and Haalebidu along with Shravanabelagola. While we drove to the former set of destinations ourselves, we opted for a KSTDC bus-tour for the latter.
2010-03-17
On Watching Films
Like many people, I like watching films for entertainment. Unfortunately for me, it seems that the film industry is hell-bent on making this as difficult as possible. They have succeeded to a large extent - I now watch far fewer films than I used to a little over a decade ago.
2009-11-02
The Landmark Quiz 2009
I participated in the Landmark Quiz 2009 (Bangalore) yesterday on a lark along with a colleague and a remote acquaintance of his. Our team was appropriately named "Last Minute Line-up". We only managed to get 19 correct answers in the preliminaries for the 40 questions that were asked. We didn't make it to the finals, but it was fun watching the quiz.
2009-09-01
"Capital Gains"
The latest issue of Granta has an article by Rana Dasgupta titled "Capital Gains". It talks about the huge wealth and power recently accumulated by a few in Delhi, their unabashed flaunting of this new-found wealth and power, their displacement of the previous elite who are now disgusted and the resulting class divisions in the society. It is a long article, but well worth the read.
2009-05-20
Reynolds Liquiflo
It seems silly to gush about a pen on a blog, but I can't help it: the Reynolds Liquiflo pen seems to actually live up to its claim of having an "ink that glides on paper" and it's a delight to write with this pen. At just Rs 10, it's surprisingly affordable as well. It's the kind of pen that makes you want to write on paper simply for the pleasure of writing with it. I am tempted to keep an old-fashioned diary just to have an excuse for using this pen every day.
2009-05-05
Driving Directions for Bangalore
Some time back I noticed that Google Maps has now started provided driving directions for Bangalore (and some other Indian cities). This is a very useful feature if you live in Bangalore and wish to avoid its awful traffic as much as possible. It's invaluable if you are new to the city and trying to figure your way around it.
2009-02-02
Jazz and Blues
This Saturday Anusha and I went for a jazz and blues festival organised by Radio Indigo. I liked it so much that I went back on Sunday as well. Five hours of great live music is not something to be missed.
2009-01-12
The Return of Priya Ganapathy
Priya Ganapathy, one of the best radio jockeys that Bangalore has ever had, returns to Bangalore after a hiatus. She now hosts a programme called "Playback" on Radio Indigo (91.9 FM) from 9 AM to 12 noon on Sundays. She played a lot of good music on the first programme - as one of the callers to the programme gushed: "How do you know all of our favourite songs?"
2008-12-14
"You Can Leave Any Feedback You Want..."
"...as long as it is good." This seems to be the unwritten instruction on feedback forms handed out to diners by many restaurants in the city. If you thought that such forms help a restaurant to improve itself by taking the feedback of its customers into account, you are apparently mistaken. Such forms are seemingly designed only to stoke the egos of the restaurants' owners and managers. A couple of recent incidents have led me to this conclusion.
2008-05-24
ACM
I received a mass-mailed letter this week from the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) asking me to join it. The ACM is an organisation of computer scientists and professionals. It publishes several magazines, journals and newsletters related to computer science and engineering. It organises conferences, has several Special Interest Groups (SIGs), conducts programming competitions and provides a network for seeking jobs. The ACM Bangalore chapter in particular has been quite active in recent times.
2008-05-12
Disenfranchisement
I went with great enthusiasm this 10th of May to the nearest polling booth to cast my vote in the current elections here, only to discover that I could not vote since my name was not present in the voters' list. This was despite the fact that I had a valid Electoral Photographic Identity Card (EPIC) issued just a couple of years ago. My name just does not appear in the revised voters' list that was drawn after the recent delimitation of constituencies in Karnataka. I had to come back home disappointed.
When you consider the incredibly small impact that a single vote has on the outcome of an election, you might be tempted to ask "Why vote?". Given that the Congress, the BJP and the Janata Dal (S) are realistically the only parties that will be able to form a government in Karnataka and given their utterly shameless behaviour to grab power the last time round, it is natural for us to be dejected or at best feel apathetic towards this election. Some of us just don't want to take the trouble of going to a polling booth, standing in a queue and casting a vote.
When you consider the incredibly small impact that a single vote has on the outcome of an election, you might be tempted to ask "Why vote?". Given that the Congress, the BJP and the Janata Dal (S) are realistically the only parties that will be able to form a government in Karnataka and given their utterly shameless behaviour to grab power the last time round, it is natural for us to be dejected or at best feel apathetic towards this election. Some of us just don't want to take the trouble of going to a polling booth, standing in a queue and casting a vote.
However, democracy is how we have chosen to be governed in this country and voting in an election is the very least we can do to make sure it works as intended. The effect of a single vote might be negligible but the cumulative effect is considerable and is for the greater good of the society. It then feels like a shameful subversion of the democratic process when the names of willing and eligible voters go missing from the electoral rolls and they are thus disenfranchised.
Anyone even slightly familiar with a voters' list in India would agree that there are usually a lot of appalling mistakes in it. It is not uncommon to find a lot of people missing from a voters' list despite having valid EPICs and a lot of people who have long since died still lingering on in the list. Many people have had their names misspelt or their addresses mangled. For example, the last EPIC that I had managed to get everything about me (except my photograph and my sex) wrong in one way or another - it had incorrect entries for my name, my father's name, my address, my date of birth, etc. So I was not completely surprised to find my name missing from the voters' list, but I was surely disappointed.
Update (2009-04-22): This article in The Times of India offers a possible explanation for the mystery of vanishing names from the electoral rolls.
2005-12-29
Terrorists Strike in Bangalore
Terrorists opened indiscriminate fire and killed at least one person and seriously injured four to six others yesterday. What was particularly appalling was their choice of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and researchers attending a conference on Operations Research as the target!
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-12-15
The Battle for Bangalore
Just when I was wondering how ironic it was to have FOSS.in 2005 and Microsoft's developer bash happen within a week of each other in Bangalore and at the same venue (Bangalore Palace), comes this article. Bill Gates also launched a rather "The Apprentice"-like code4bill contest while he was here, apart from promising to invest 1.7 billion dollars into India. The Times of India and NDTV did not shy from calling him a corny "Geek No. 1" (in reference to a series of hit Hindi movies named "Hero No. 1", "Coolie No. 1", etc.).
So which way would the Bangalore hackers sway?
Despite having a very large number of Software Engineers, I come across only a very few here in Bangalore who are even interested in coding and Computer Science and precious few who are willing to hack on FOSS and give back their changes to the community. For all the brouhaha in the general media about India being an IT superpower, it is a depressing scene for someone who actually likes CS.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
So which way would the Bangalore hackers sway?
Despite having a very large number of Software Engineers, I come across only a very few here in Bangalore who are even interested in coding and Computer Science and precious few who are willing to hack on FOSS and give back their changes to the community. For all the brouhaha in the general media about India being an IT superpower, it is a depressing scene for someone who actually likes CS.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-09-28
Bangalore Computer Graphics Group
Anirban Deb, who is a colleague of mine, has started the Bangalore Computer Graphics Group along with like-minded enthusiasts, which aims to bring together people in Bangalore who are interested in computer graphics (not the Photoshop or Maya stuff). If you are interested in such things, or know of someone who is, spread the word. Their initial plan is to meet at least once a month to discuss interesting stuff and to get to know like-minded people and to eventually become the local SIGGRAPH chapter.
In other news, look who's blogging! Now that Andrew and Tom are blogging, Bryce is the only one in the Red Hat GCJ Triumvirate who doesn't. Who wants to persuade him to blog?
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
In other news, look who's blogging! Now that Andrew and Tom are blogging, Bryce is the only one in the Red Hat GCJ Triumvirate who doesn't. Who wants to persuade him to blog?
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-05-30
Havoc in Bangalore
The past week was terrible for people in Bangalore. Almost every day of the week, the weather would follow the same pattern - it would get very hot during the day and then the evening would arrive with very strong winds, heavy rain and lots of lightning and thunder. Apart from the usual flooding of roads as well as the houses of some unfortunate folks and consequent traffic snarls, this time many more (at least 150, by most estimates) than the usual number of trees were uprooted. Most of these were Gulmohar (Royal Poinciana) trees that line many of Bangalore's roads and that look beautiful when in bloom. These trees seem to have awfully shallow roots for their size and they fell over electric wires, telephone wires, cable TV wires, vehicles, houses, etc.
So we have had intermittent power, noisy telephone lines, now you see it, now you don't cable TV, no internet connectivity, etc. in our house. Many people were much worse off. I hope this week would bring better weather.
As if this was not enough, the software engineers of Bangalore now have their lives made even worse by robbers. In the last few months, quite a few techies have been increasingly becoming the targets of robbers and muggers who perceive them to be "soft targets" with loads of money and offering little by way of resistance. In the last month alone, two people from my office were mugged in two separate incidents in the vicinity of our building in the night. Call centre and BPO workers have also been hit similarly. To make matters worse, the police commisioner thinks Bangalore has actually become safer in the last few years and quotes some questionable statistics to prove his point. We have already given up on our government which seems more eager to cling on to power by appeasing its coalition partners than bother to develop the state and the city.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
So we have had intermittent power, noisy telephone lines, now you see it, now you don't cable TV, no internet connectivity, etc. in our house. Many people were much worse off. I hope this week would bring better weather.
As if this was not enough, the software engineers of Bangalore now have their lives made even worse by robbers. In the last few months, quite a few techies have been increasingly becoming the targets of robbers and muggers who perceive them to be "soft targets" with loads of money and offering little by way of resistance. In the last month alone, two people from my office were mugged in two separate incidents in the vicinity of our building in the night. Call centre and BPO workers have also been hit similarly. To make matters worse, the police commisioner thinks Bangalore has actually become safer in the last few years and quotes some questionable statistics to prove his point. We have already given up on our government which seems more eager to cling on to power by appeasing its coalition partners than bother to develop the state and the city.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
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