Photosynth rocks!

Ever since Photosynth was released to the public in the second half of 2008, I have been wanting to try this out. A trip to St. Louis while visiting my sister for Easter gave me a chance to create a memorable synth of the city from the top of the Gateway Arch.

Check it out! Select 'View synth in Direct3D viewer' for the best experience.





Unfortunately, I was unable to create a synth of the Gateway Arch itself. It was too huge and I simply did not have the equipment to do justice to this magnificent piece of architecture.

Hopefully, this is the first of many synths that I will share on this blog.

India - Dec 2008

I recently returned from a trip to India. Some random musings:

- The new airport at Hyderabad was impressive.

- I would trade all the 'Starbucks' and 'Dunkin Donuts' in the world to have a 'Coffee Day' in Seattle.

- I'm driving slower with each passing year. (Much to the relief of my passengers)

- I walked into a bank and watched helplessly while 10 people pushed past me to get ahead in the line. I seem to have lost my ability to push back.

- Each time I walked out of an Indo-Chinese restaurant, I contemplated quitting my job and settling down in India.

- Trains now have power outlets for Laptops. suddenly I prefer a train to long flights. :-)

- Kerala has more water than land.

- I'm convinced that Kanyakumari is the windiest city in the World. (Yes, even windier than Chicago)

- The highlight of the vacation was a day on board a Houseboat. It was thoroughly relaxing and refreshing.

- Beggars make me more uncomfortable with each passing year. I even cited this as a reason for taking a flight instead of the train. My point being: Why feel bad when you can't do anything about it. My Dad's response: The more you are in touch with reality, the more likely it is that you will do something about it someday when and if you can. Can't say I disagree with that.

- It was great to spend Christmas at Home after three years!

- Nothing beats meeting up with very close friends you haven't seen in a while.

- Discovered that all the 'Ready to eat' foods I brought back with me should actually be called 'Ready to throw'.

Happy New Year!

A Formal World

The modern day definition of a smile seems to be: " Stretch your lips in each direction until your two front teeth are visible. Hold for one second. Bring lips back to original position.".. An alternate definition (Presumably for people who are too lazy to visit their dentist) would be: "Stretch your lips to the maximum extent possible without having to open your mouth. Hold for one second. Bring lips back to original position." The other day, a flight attendant 'smiled' at me.. and that put paid to any hopes I had of catching some sleep on the flight. I knew I would only have nightmares of vampires.

There's also this habit we have of saying 'Hi' to all and sundry. I don't know about you but it puts immense pressure on me. I live with the constant fear that I would forget to wish somebody and that they would then pierce pins into a voodoo doll to exact revenge. It also makes me wonder if I did something wrong when somebody else forgets to wish me. "Hmm.. did I forget to acknowledge their contribution at the team meeting? Did I forget to ask how their vacation was?" And in the process promptly forget to wish the next person passing me.

Moving on to a question that really throws me: 'How are you?'.. It has taken a while to realise that people are not really interested in hearing about my recent visit to the doctor or about my fantastic road trip when they direct this question at me. My initial ' Hey, you asked for it, so take it ' response has now been adapted to the universally accepted 'good/fine' response. But is any other answer even a possibility? Would someone who just returned from a wonderful vacation answer the question any differently from someone who has been sick the whole week or even a person who has just been diagonised with a terminal disease? Probably not.

It is only right to place 'Thank You' at the end. No points for guessing why.. Every trivial action must end with 'Thank You'. This rule is consistent enough to become Newton's fourth law. I wonder if we realise that when we thank someone for getting out of our way, we are actually thanking them for not colliding with us! which they would not want to do anyway, at least not unless we were Aishwarya Rai (I would prefer Kajol myself, but I'm vastly outnumbered here) or Brad Pitt.

Nothing emphasizes my point more than an email exchange:

A to B:

Hi B,

I have a question. Thanks in advance for (......).

(.. Question here ..)

Thanks again.

Thanks,
A.


B replies:

Hi A,

Thanks for asking me this question.

(.. answer ..)

Thanks,
B


("Thanks in advance" is actually a cool trick.. After all, once you have been 'thanked' for something, you HAVE to get it done. :-))

All jokes aside, it seems to me that the more civilized we become, the more formal we get. (Which explains why the United States is a far more formal society than India.) Somehow as we progress towards becoming a tolerant society, we seem to need reassurances in the form of 'wishes' and 'thanks'. But when this is overdone it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

No, I'm not dead..

..But I HAVE broken the record for the 'longest time between posts' since I started blogging in July 2005. One year and five months!!

Lots of things have changed since then. But a couple of these changes make the others pale into insignificance.

1.) I now work for Microsoft.
2.) I now live in Seattle.

Yup, I've moved all the way across the country to work for Microsoft.


A few things I like about living in Seattle:

- Redmond (Microsoft's Headquarters) is a beautiful place that resembles a vast college campus.

- There are tons of places to see and things to do within a 50 mile radius of Seattle.


A few things I don't like:

- The rain..

- Living three time zones away from most of my friends.

- And did I mention the rain?


Let me sign off now with a promise to the readers (if any) of this blog. The 'longest time between posts' record set by this post will never be broken again until at least 2014. Why 2014? That's until when Microsoft has committed to support XP. I'm kidding of course..

Seriously: However busy things get, I should still be able to post more often than I have.. and I will!

Sad but true.. :-(

India the Superpower?

PS: Reflects the sentiments I expressed in my Jan 15th post with a lot more facts and statistics..

Zapped!!!

In winter, getting out of my car invariably involves the following steps:

1. Remove the seatbelt.
2. Open the door.
3. Slide out of the seat.
4. Reach for the door handle.
5. JUMP.
6. CURSE.
7. Slam the door.

Now, being a dignified man, I would like to avoid steps 5 and 6 if I could. But it just doesn't seem possible. In fact, if you could put together all the jumps I make during any given month in winter, you could construct a dance for a very lengthy musical. A clumsy dance maybe, but nevertheless, a dance. And if you put together all the curses, you would have the lyrics for the musical, although it would probably have to be 'R' rated.

I can handle the freezing temperatures that winter brings. I don't mind the skidding and sliding in the snow and ice. I can put up with having to scrape ice off my car's windshield every morning. But static electricity irritates the hell out of me.

The first month of winter goes by with me getting shocks without expecting it. By the start of the second month I am terrified of touching almost ANYTHING. I stop and think before touching my refrigerator, table or doorknob. This is one instance where the thinking DOES NOT help at all. My thought process is along the following lines.. "Oh my god.. I'm going to get a nasty shock now. Maybe holding the door knob at this angle will help. Or perhaps acting very fast will help. Oh.. come on.. this time you may not even get a shock.." My hand reaches out and [zzzaaaappp].. Again!!!

The first month of spring is the worst. Temperatures have become warmer and humidity has improved. But I'm still apprehensive. I make all my 'touching' moves cautiously, flinching when I touch metal and.. NOTHING happens! Though I don't get zapped, I still feel like a fool.

In a departure from my usual style of rambling on about problems, I have actually looked up the solution to this one - A lucky break for the very limited number of readers out there and probably their first justification for reading this blog. The solutions here refer to getting out of your car safely, but you can always apply them to other equally dangerous objects.

Solution 1:
Hold onto some metal portion of the car before you get out and keep holding on during the entire time you are sliding out of your seat.

Solution 2:
If you are like me, you have probably forgotten to use solution 1 and are outside the car shivering in the cold and shivering more at the thought of having to shut the door. Never fear! Touch the glass portion of the car before you touch metal.

Solution 3: (Not for the faint hearted)
Use your key to touch the metal first. This is the option to go for if you like fireworks. You can almost always see a spark when the key touches metal.

If none of the three solutions work for you please sue http://www.static-sol.com/ and send me 20 % of the settlement.

I'm generous, ain't I?

The World may be flat, but India is not..

In fact India is far from flat. She is a region of some of the most uneven terrain on this planet. A few high peaks scattered across low lying valleys.. You could stand on some of these peaks(Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad for eg.), look down into the nearby valleys and see nothing at all - except for a dark abyss. Other peaks and life in these peaks are all that are visible, so much so that life in these few regions is portrayed as typical of the nation, when in reality, it is not.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking of India in terms of these ultra-modern metropolitan cities. The other day, an american collegue and I were talking casually during a training session and he happened to mention that he would like to make a trip to visit India. My instinctive response was a boast "Oh.. you should.. India is very developed now.. You would have an amazing time.. Be sure to visit Bangalore, Hyderabad.." He interrupted me gently: "No.. No.. I want to see INDIA, not America in India." I stopped short, surprised. But the next thing he said blew me away.. He asks.. "Is most of India like Bangalore and Hyderabad now?" After I recovered, I said "No, not at all, most regions are still just India". But it took a foreigner to remind me of that fact.

At a global level, technology may have enabled nations to collaborate on a greater scale than ever before and overall the world may be 'flatter' than it has been in the past, but India has a long way to go.

Now, even I'm not naive enough to think that a nation of 1 billion could develop at a uniform pace and empower all her citizens simultaneously, but I do think that the current economic situation raises a few questions.. Does the 'empowerment' of a few have detrimental effects on the people who have not been 'empowered' yet? Will the underdeveloped be hindered when they try to take advantage of the technological advances we have made in recent years? These questions, though globally applicable are especially relevant to our country because of the huge economic and social disparity that is prevalent. One could just as easily use modern-day technology to push others down as they could to pull themselves up..

India has a notorious history of exploitation of the poor by the rich and it is imperative that this does not happen in the Information age if India is to sustain her formidable growth rates.