A People's History of the World

Just completed reading " A people's history of the world" written by Chris Harman. It is a fabulous study of the human history from the beginning of paleolithic era 12000 years ago to the beginning of 21st century.  Harman takes us on a guided tour of how the social classes and systems of feudalism, capitalism and socialism evolved among the Homo sapiens. Unlike THE history books which speak volumes about the transfer of powers from one king to the next, Harman brings the outsider-the common man and proletariat to the focus in this comprehensive analysis.

We all know that the oldest of humans were hunter gatherers . Harman quite successfully establishes that everyone were equal in the beginning of our race and class differences originated owing to non-natural reasons. In fact there is more analysis than plain history in this book albeit giving succinct discussions at relevant places which might have been overlooked by the traditional historians. I was awed by the comprehensive nature of the work. It describes events from the birth of humans in Africa and sprouting of civilisations in Middle East, Asia and America to the upheavals in the 20the century. True to his socialist roots, Harman has consciously tried to bring about a truly global focus and thus negating the conventional view of the history commencing with ancient Greek.

++ to be concluded ++

Broadband Unlimited ?!!!

Ever wondered how the ISPs are able to offer us unlimited packages. My belief was that the unlimited packages are made possible as the community of users won't be able to utilise the entire spectrum allocated to them generating comprehensive profits to the provider. This would be very similar to the concept of unlimited buffets where unlimited quantity of food is offered on substantially higher price.

However my expectations got ruined today. Our 2mbps internet connection with beamtelecom was giving pathetically low speeds during the last four days. I had written a mail to them on Sunday morning, but I didn't get a reply till Tuesday. Today when I tried to send them another mail, I found that my id is apparently blocked by the providers. wtf! Then one of my friends suggested to phone the customer care number, I had searched for their number to no anvil earlier. Though this time after spending a few minutes on the site, I got the CC number. An answering machine took my call and after some dilly-dallying got me transferred to a human being. The lady told me that as I had used up 50 GB, I would be getting internet at a lower speed for the rest of the month. She informed me that the 2mbps connection is for the first 50GB only, thereafter the speed automatically gets reduced to 786kbps.

News for you, unlimited data transfer @ 2mbps is not equal to 2mbps speed with unlimted data transfer. For our unlimted connection we will be getting the said speed only upto a particular amount of data transfer. As a matter of fact, these terms are well described in their site as 'fair usage policy'. It had missed my attention when I was searching threadbare the schemes of various ISPs. I guess it's just another case in point of the cliched small letter clauses.

Nevertheless I asked her to check whether we are having the assured speed as I was getting something like 300kbps of speed when I tested it. It appears to me that they have done something during the daytime. The speed has quite a bit improved compared to what it was in the last four nights.

ONAM...

It is 00.01 am, what just passed by was the thiruvonam day of 2010 or rather 1186 as per Kollavarsham (the Malayalam Calendar). I don't exactly remember the last time when I had celebrated onam at my home. Guess it was in 2002 or some other year near to that. Nevertheless this is probably the first time that I am feeling alone in celebrating such an event. In the last 8 years I had celebrated onam with my classmates and friends in CoH and then in IRMA. I did enjoy them despite the fact that those pre-professional semi-matured ways were a far-cry from the way we used to celebrate during our childhood with innocent games during the ten day holiday when schools were closed for onam. I do remember how the tiny white flowers of thumba (Leuca Indica) interspersed with the yellow flowers of mookkuthi (Galinsoga parviflora) made our whole yards, fields and roadsides look beautiful. Thumba plants used to come up only during this season of post-torrential rains of SW monsoon and its flowers were very easy to pluck, if you could master a peculiar massaging motion over the plant. No wonder for us the children it was our favourite for the white portion of pookkalam. However in the last 10-15 years, the plant has become sparse and sporadic. I don't know whom to blame for its painful gradual vanishing act. Ofcourse I can rhetorically name 'global warming' and the fucking USA for that but, .....it is just rhetoric.

Thumbapoo

Thumbachedi Leuca Indica

Nonetheless I can recall a number of things that have changed in the last two decades since my schooldays. There was this vast paddy field whose mud bunds were part of our daily route to school. We used to catch crabs and frogs in those green fields. Sometimes an occassional snake used to appear from nowhere just to scare us and go on its way. The field was landfilled longtime back, soon after our municipality had made bypass ring roads right through the middle of those fields. For development of transportation anywhere in Kerala, paddy fields were the first choice as martyrs. They were far cheaper than uplands with connected plots of wetlands covering amazing distances without touching even a single house. Most of the time the roads were built right through the middle of wetlands. The blind and unscientific pattern ensured that the conventional flow of water is impeded leading to floods on one side and shortages on the other ultimately making all of the wetland unfit for cultivation.

We used to walk around the three kilo meters to school in about half an hour. Our primary school army used to raid mango, guava, jamba, mulberry, tamarind and every other fruit tree on our way. In fact in one of our great adventures we had tried to slip away with a giant jack fruit. We were too small to carry the fruit weighing something like 30-40 kilos, yet we successfully rolled the fruit for about two hundred meters and even that had took us something like ten-fifteen minutes. However our enthusiasm went in vain when the lady of the house discovered that we were stealing something from her field and tried to follow us. We fled like thorough professionals leaving behind the evidence but none of our IDs. (quite smart ;0 ). And we even swapped the route for a longer one as a precautionary measure for the next two months.

The best thing about hyderabad...

What is the best thing about Hyderabad ? I say, it is the food. You get mouth watering delicacies at belly popping quantities for very reasonable prices. I doubt whether this can be generalised to the rest of Andhra Pradesh. (The way Shashi craves for biryani from Cafe Bahar every other night has played a significant role in that assumption.)

Today I ate a sweet called 'junnu' జున్ను (?, I hope it is written so, trust google !). This was not the first time that I was given away with a bowl of this sweetened cheese by my office colleagues. Junnu is made from the colostrum of cow,lactated in the subsequent days of delivery. For the obvious reason it is available only sporadically. No wonder they are bringing it to office as a big celebration. I am unable to equate its taste with anything. It has the distinct taste of milk, added with the flavour of Jaggery.

Another item which has captivated our tastebuds is a snack called dilkhush available widely at the coffee bars of this great city. In one of my old FB posts, I wrote like this "Dilkhush is just another junk food-soft loaf with a sweet filling, yet we walk 2km and ride another 5km for that". And that was less than the truth! Fatty and me used to walk about 1.5 km down and 1.5 km up the road to Narayanaguda to have dilkhush from a particular cafe. If Kubbu was in his mood we used to rev his thunderbird to Abids. The quality of this sweet varies from outlet to outlet and so far the best ones I have got are from Bombay Restaurant of Abids and Adarsh Cafe opposite to Old MLA quarters in that very order. 

It is ramsan going on now and I cannot help but write a few lines about haleem, a light to medium repast served especially during this season. It is a dish made from finely ground mutton added with wheat flour and dry fruits. The first time when I tasted it, the flavour appeared quite bland to me. I was attracted to the dish for it being a protein rich substitute for our usual elaborate dinners. Gradually I have learned to appreciate the flavour and aroma of Haleem and I was told by an autorikshaw driver that the best Haleem of the city is available near Charminar. Hopefully we will be able to taste it in the coming two days. 

skip screen extension

i am forced to write another review on yet another browser extension. The skipscreen extension promises to get rid of menacing countdowns from filesharing sites such as rapidshare and megaupload. I was expecting some mechanism which will crack the sites and make the free users equal to premium ones. Well it turned out to be some what different. This extension gets activated and takes control of the browser when it reaches any of the filesharing sites. Thereafter the countdown is managed by the extension itself and downloads are loaded automatically. Thus towards a major extent what we need to do is to load the relevant page and leave it to the extension.

So far in my experience, it performed very well with rapidshare and megaupload. However it do not give a commendable performance with hotfile. Bottomline-it's worth sparing a few bytes of browser memory if you are a download freak.

cool iris extension for chrome and firefox

I am coming up with another review of my internet experience. This time about a browser extension called "cool iris" which believe me is really COOL. The extension gives us experience of  mac book photosliders on our browser. We have seen how Steve Jobs browse through pictures magically using his fingertips in his keynote addresses. Well this time we can also do it. See the snapshot of the tool

This was the result of a google image search for keralam, which I was able to do on the inbuilt search bar of iris itself. We are able to navigate to multiple page results with just one click and one slight movement on my mousepad. Vertical and horizontal slides enables you to scroll left or right and zoom in or zoom out on individual pictures. I also installed the same extension on firefox. My observation is that it is working better in firefox with better speed and control. The reason might be that the extension has a much longer association with firefox.
Now what are the minuses- so far nothing. Although soon after its installation when I tried to load a few new sites, it took some what longer time. Though I am not sure if the problem is caused by this extension. I googled for effects on browsing speed because of its installation. There was atleast one article that said so, but the comments can be attributed generically to any of the extensions. We know that third party extensions are though incredibly extends the usability, might hamper some basic features such as upstart time, browsing speed etc. Nevertheless through the years we are seeing more innovative extensions with better compatibility. Let me sign off with kudos to all those extension builders out there !

I guess I should also describe about the availability of high speed internet which enables us to try out these extensions, which are data intensive. Well I will do that sometime later. For now happy independance day !

one of the most disorganised days. umm...really?

Guess I have reached the zenith of disorderliness. In the morning I woke up late, then I watched a movie, then I watched a series of mallu comedy scenes, then I facebooked, then I went out, met a few people, had food, came back watched more comedy and finally in the wee hours of the very next day putting them into record.

I am more than certain that no one else is reading my notes here and it is the reason for posting this kinda stuff here. Other than reading the newspaper which in fact is a habit for me and cannot be considered to have done because of some effort, the only thing of any significance that I did today was to meet a person called RC Reddy. He is a director of a well established coaching centre at Hyderabad. I wouldn't have met him but for the interest of Kamal. Dude I need to get into a proactive and aggressive mode regarding myself. I realises them only in the presence of friends like Kamal. As fatty pointed out one day, 'people are going places..think..'. Then another fine day I came across some pics from Maneesh. He had posted some photographs captured by himself on facebook. I have seen his 3D renderings earlier as well. But his graduation from Maya/3Dmax or some other drawing/modelling tools to professional photography did make me tiny bit jealous. Why people attempt at impossible things- prove oneself ? to scream that you have wrong all along? Nopes, I am going wrong way. It is something else.

Well we have diverted from our topic. We had a chance meeting with Mr. RC Reddy today. We were at the place to attend a seminar to be led by him. However we soon found out that such a thing was not scheduled for the day. Thus the staff allowed us to meet their director in person. Mr. RC Reddy turned out to be an unassuming person in his fifties.He was in a very quizzical mode, he inquired about our background, inclinations and targets. I was not comfortable that this person whom we had gone to meet and demand answers was taking more time on probing the interviewers and spending less time on giving advices. Soon it got to my mind that he was measuring us with a some invisible parameters. Every question and gestures was making it clear. In the end he gave us some advice free of cost

1. clarity of thought, effective communication

2. neat and legible handwriting

3. mature personality

These are the things that will lead one to success. To gain these there are no shortcuts. The long goal is really far far away. This is an excellent chance that I have got, with more excellent favaours from environment. All I need to be is to be the brave guy of that adage "fortune favours the brave"

What the **** is DSS

Even after two weeks of interaction with Infosys team, Decision Support System still remains an enigma to me. It appears to me that whatever I imagine of DSS is not the same as what my top management thinks. In this post I am trying to put together some info on DSS from various sources, starting from our very own HKM.

 Well here goes the first things that we should know about DSS

1. It do not make any decisions, it supports decision making  
2. It interacts with the user
1. compiles information for the decision makers
3. It has all the properties of an Executive Support System which include
1. designed for strategic level
2. based on TPS exernal data 
3. can do trend analysis and projections
4. Aimed at unstructured problems

Components of a DSS

1. DSS software provided by the vendor
2. User specific decision model
3. Database or depository

Types of DSS

1. Model driven
2. Data driven

Limitations of DSS

1. Owner might not comprehend the relevance of DSS
2. Will give alternatives based on predesigned models

Mr. Kuberan Selvaraj

Kuberan or kubbu as he is more popularly called, is our flat-mate and despite being younger by a few years to us had completed his degree from IRMA one year before us. He always reminds me of Mohanlal in Nadodikkattu in the way of his frequent proclamations to the world that he was the silver medalist in his engineering course. Another peculiar way of him being his assertion that whatever he listens to in his laptop at its highest volume should be listened by one and all. He is a very jovial person and undoubtedly heartthrob of girls of IRMA ranging over five batches.

I am attaching here a presentation he delivered at the recently concluded e-India conference.

Review of epic browser

The last one hour I spent on installing and customising epic broser, quite possibly the first serious effort for an Indian browser. When I clicked on the download button on their home page, I was not expecting much. Especially since I had tried the all new FF4 beta yesterday night, only to uninstall it in 5 minutes.

Well it was a pleasant surprise that awaited me. The array of apps was the first one to captivate me, then came the expanding sidebar. It functions as a browser inside a browser. I don't know whether mozilla is already having an extension for that. (Just checked there is more than one for that). With the aid of this sidebar I can watch a youtube video or watch NDTV on my left while simultaneously browsing other pages. Then there is an inbuilt indic language engine which enables typing in regional language using google transliteration. I had spent half an hour in the morning adding two extensions for the same in chrome and FF. Then there are many more apps for facebook, gmail, yahoo etc. There is also an impressive list of Indian skins to choose from. I tried it with munnar , raja ravi varma and ems. The skins are good but not excellent. There is also many more politicians, landscapes and actors available as wallpaper and skin. There is another impressive app for bringing the news from nation and regions.

It is not to say that the browser is not having its limitations. It is taking much longer time to start up, possibly because of the huge number of already available add-ons.There is only NDTV available on the liveTV tab, I guess there is some arrangement for the same with NDTV. Beyond the initial curiosity of sidebar, I am not sure whether there is any substantial additions to FF. How will I be able to update this product in tandem with the updates of FF?. And can people write apps specifically for the epic browser?. I hope so

there is a long way ahead for the team, however as one of my friends just posted in his fb profile it's a
A BIG THUMPS UP TO EPIC BROWSER

Jai Telengana !

Telengana is one of the three politically distinct regions of AP, the other being Rayalseema and coastal Andhra. AP was created in 1953 by carving out Telugu speaking districts of erstwhile Madras state. This appears to have happened even before the recommendations of Fazal Ali committee which was formed during the winter of 1953 and subsequently recommended the creation of states on linguistic basis. 

It was only in 1956 that the Telengana region from the Nizam ruled Hyderabad became a part of United AP. This happened apparently after vehement representations from the people of Telengana region in the form of Andhra Maha sabha and other movements. The Nizam's rule is regarded as an exploitative and discriminatory one, an example being the absence of even a single Telugu medium school in the Telengana region. 

Consultant !!!

More than three months after the completion of IRMA, today was the day when I got an assignment which made me feel like a real consultant. It came from most unexpected source at most unexpected juncture. The issue and my expertise to deal with it is further debatable. Nevertheless it was a gratifying experience to give small suggestions to those veterans. In the coming four days I am supposed to be engaged with this assignment. 

it was not easy to get the attention from the people we were supposed to 'consult', as they have spent a huge time mining through realms of paper and loads of data. Yet we could very easily spot one or two mistakes here and there and pinpoint some simple but relevant remarks. One of our graphs can encompass about 40 pages of their hard work. Life in IRMA definitely helps. 

off to work now, I will definitely write about this in the coming two days. But this might also take a toll on my beginning of organised life. 

***I am continuing this thread after six days, A lot have happened during these days, lemme try to make sense of some of them***

First things first, the call came from office of the minister of Rural Development. The minister himself met us along with a cabinet colleague and briefed us what to do in the next three days. What we were made to do was actively participating in drafting a presentation and notes to be submitted to the Justice B.N. Srikrishna commission who is looking into the issues of Telangana agitation. We worked our ass in the next 18 hours to come up with a framework for the presentation and filled some primary contents. We were visited by Deputy speaker a young guy with distinct american accent and elitist mannerisms. Later I came to know that he is the son of a former chief minister of AP and comes from a very influential family. However our entire work on the first day went in vain as the minister had got a presentation prepared by one of his advisers. After a very hearty course meal at his residence, we were asked to work on the revised presentation. We worked on it the entire second day and at the end, minister had it presented to his cabinet colleagues. The very next day he presented the same to the commission as well. The latter was done remarkably well.


One important thing that I learned from the experience is that it is always good to have running notes with you for a presentation. Extempore is sometimes too big a risk !!
 

Me and my blog

It was roughly two months ago that i decided to be a regular blogger. I imagined it as a diffficult but very ncessary thing. I had this weird idea that I would be able to anlayse and comprehend the current issues if I am forced to write about them especially in a pulblic forum. Well after two months, this is yet to be materialised.

I eagerly follow blogs of shashi, sudhir, nishant etal . Sshashi with his regular and prolific blog entries is my role model. Though I am not sure whether i will be able to write as good as them any day.

Hopefully I will be getting my third monthly salary from SERP tomorrow. Even after three months in Hyd, my life reamins disorganised at best. I still suffer from many of my minuses that I had developed during those not so good years. Duno what is the big deal with the first day of the month, of the week or the year. i guess we need to be at some psychological boundaries to sit back and  reflect on what we were doing and what we are going to do. I guess it's high time that I started approaching things seriously and follow some routine. ......Phew!! that was easy to write, but seriously I need to shed this inner image of perplexed kid.

mallus and their lungi; from a forwarded mail

The Legendary Lungi 


Just as the national bird of Kerala is Mosquito, her national dress is 'Lungi'. Pronounced as 'Lu' as in loo and 'ngi ' as in 'mongey', a lungi can be identified by its floral or window-curtain pattern. 'Mundu' is the white variation of lungi and is worn on special occasions like hartal or bandh days, weddings and Onam.

Lungi is simple and 'down to earth' like the mallu wearing it. Lungi is the beginning and the end of evolution in its category. Wearingsomething on the top half of your body is optional when you are wearing a lungi. Lungi is a strategic dress. It's like aone-size-fits-all bottoms for Keralites.

The technique of wearing a lungi/mundu is passed on from generation to generation through word of mouth like the British Constitution. If you think it is an easy task wearing it, just try it once! It requires techniques like breath control and yoga that is a notch higher than sudarshan kriya of AOL. A lungi/mundu when perfectly worn won't come off even in a quake of 8 on the richter scale. A lungi is not attached to the waist using duct tape, staple, rope or velcro. It's a bit of mallu magic whose formula is a closely guarded secret like the Coca Cola chemicals.

A lungi can be worn 'Full Mast' or 'Half Mast' like a national flag. A 'Full Mast' lungi is when you are showing respect to an elderly or the dead. Wearing it at full mast has lots of disadvantages. A major disadvantage is when a dog runs after you. When you are wearing a lungi/mundu at full mast, the advantage is mainly for the female onlookers who are spared the ordeal of swooning at the sight of hairy legs. Wearing a lungi 'Half Mast' is when you wear it exposing yourself like those C grade movie starlets. A mallu can play cricket, football or simbly run when the lungi is worn at half mast. A mallu can even climb a coconut tree wearing lungi in half mast. "It's not good manners, especially for ladies from decent families, to look up at a mallu climbing a coconut tree"- Confucius (or is it Abdul Kalam?)

Most mallus do the traditional dance kudiyattam. Kudi means drinking alcohol and yattam, spelled as aattam, means random movement of the male body. Note that 'y' is silent. When you are drinking, you drink, there is no 'y'. Any alcohol related "festival" can be enjoyed to the maximum when you are topless with lungi and a towel tied around the head. "Half mast lungi makes it easy to dance and shake legs" says Candelaria Amaranto, a Salsa teacher from Spain after watching 'kudiyaattam' .

The 'Lungi Wearing Mallu Union' [LUWMU, pronounced LOVE MU], an NGO which works towards the 'upliftment' of the lungi, strongly disapprove of the GenNext tendency of wearing Bermudas under the lungi. Bermudas under the lungi is a conspiracy by the CIA. It's a disgrace to see a person wearing burmuda with corporate logos under his lungi. What they don't know is how much these corporates are limiting their freedom of movement and expression. A mallu wears lungi round the year, all weather, all season. A mallu celebrates winter by wearing a colourful lungi with a floral pattern. Lungi provides good ventilation and brings down the heat between legs. A mallu is scared of global warming more than anyone else in the world. A lungi/mundu can be worn any time of the day/night. It doubles as blanket at night. It also doubles up as a swing, swimwear, sleeping bag, parachute, facemask while entering/exiting toddy shops, shopping basket and water filter while fishing in ponds and rivers. It also has recreational uses like in 'Lungi/mundu pulling', a pastime in households having more than one male member. Lungi pulling competitions are held outside toddyshops all over Kerala during Onam and Vishu. When these lungis are decommissioned from service, they become table cloths. Thus the humble lungi is a cradle to grave appendage.


!credits to the original author!!