Workplace Wisdom

Its been a year now, living a techie's life. Here's some wisdom that I mean to share.

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Have you heard of this thing - which is like the slowest killer known to man. Our assasin is stealthier than a B2 bomber, yet slower than a field snail. In fact the victim is even paid for it. What's more, they even have a neat name for it. Its called a job.

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The tip of my hat to all the non-typical days at work. Its the typical day that bothers me.

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The perfect workplace is the one that has the right blend of all the constituents. For starters, here's a recipe.

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And a tribute to the ubiquitous euphemisms and management jargon.

On a closing note, here's a thought:

They say Work is Worship.
So maybe its sufficient to be a theist,
We don't need to be saints.

Go Green

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VK's... Helping people weed out troubles from their lives since 1986.

Happy Birthday Dear Internet

Vint Cerf's baby is baby is growing and how! Google today muscles through 20 petabytes of data every single day. The 10 billion user photos shared on Facebook take up in excess of 1 petabyte of storage space. German upload giant Rapidshare, declared way back in in April 2008 that it had 240 Gbps of allowable bandwidth and 5.4 petabytes of usable disk space. Memory no doubt is getting cheaper. The cost per gigabyte of data has dropped over the last decade from $31 in April '99 to a measly $0.17 today for the new Maxtor 1.5 TB disk. Fact is, as storage becomes cheaper and internet penetration and bandwidth available the world over soars, the internet growth curve will only get steeper. Even the gurus of internet today can't tell us what the 'size of the internet'(keeping aside the ambiguity of the term) maybe.

2009 marks the 40 birthday of the internet. Applause! Its been 40 remarkable years since its conception as Defence and Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA's ARPANET. What is more interesting is how the web has matured from mere telnet and gophers to e-mails and to the current day cloud of social networking sites, wikis, portals, blogs and a gazillion other types of websites I'm unfamiliar with. So much so that search engines, thought of by everyone during the founding days of Google as a ridiculous and whacky concept, have today become an absolute necessity to find your needle in this ever growing haystack. Those of us who have been up there since the 90s will know how much things have transformed, right down to the narrowest of alleys of the world wide web. What has changed among other things is the language used. The chat lingo ushered in by the onslaught of IMs and IRC aside, the language of the common man's website is becoming more liberal. Enter Web 2.0.


If you're the kind of person who thinks people ought to be more specific when they're using the term mail to refer to snail mail or if you'd come running to your keyboard to google for "fonegrs struxk siperglye" rather than simply calling up your doc or you just think all mail ids are Gmail ids until mentioned otherwise, then in all likelihood you already have an inkling of what I'm talking about. Gone are the days when websites sounded as if they had been designed to be read by bots. In the early days of the net, it was funky to sound technical and sophisticated. Maybe even adding a hint of credibility during the early days of Web 1.0 and dot-com bubble later on. Ironical as it may sound, the world wide web come a full circle and we're back to where we started from.

A little touch of warmth always help, especially on a login page. That's someplace to start.



Then there are the sign up forms that's we've all filled by the dozens. If you were to sign up on Digg, you'd be getting (much) more than what you'd ask for. After all why make signing up so cumbersome and mundane?

How can one fail to mention the nagging captcha. I've always hated captchas... All but this one.

Digg just doesn't sieze to amuse me!

Websites today don't treat you like a just-another-brick-in-the-wall-client who likes to tip toe into their office, be done with the business and just walk out the front door. Website are invariably getting more user-centric.

I can't think of a better example than Google. Their 'Official Google Blog' couldn't have been more unofficial. The Gmail team appears to enjoy discussing what's cooking in their cauldron as much as they enjoy delivering it. They tell you what the employees were doing during the holidays and share pics with you on their blog. Google shares its life and culture with you, as if you're one of them. They love to hear from you all the time on the Groups - be it your woes or your likes. Could you imagine that a decade ago? I wouldn't be surprised if Google itself was responsible for the institution of this culture. I'm all too glad that Google happened. I believe that the worst of disasters was averted the day Microsoft's attempt to merge with Google in the October of 2003 failed. If that deal had materialized, we'd probably be purchasing annual subscriptions to get organic search results and still be using a search engine that hanged every few minutes - very much unlike the Microsoft Live! that you see today.


To call it a day, my heart sings for Web 2.0! Life without it would be like watching a movie in black and white -everything is out there, but there's still something missing. Something significant that's leaving a lot of the fun out. Well you get the picture. Here is the disclaimer from Last.fm's blog to wind it all up.

"Everything here is copyrighted by Last.fm and the author of the respective article. Beware, our lawyers are stiff-lipped limeys without any sense of humour. And we have an office watch-moose!"

Madhugiri Trek

Starting Point: Bangalore
Destination: Madhugiri Fort
Date: 11th April '09
Distance: 250kms (Both ways)
Route: Bangalore - Dobbaspet - Koratagere - Madhugiri
Conveyance: Bike
Approx Cost: Rs.200 per head
Trek Pics: Madhugiri Trek

Madhugiri is a smallish town situated 100kms north of Bangalore in a geography dotted with numerous hillocks. On the hill closest to the heart of the city sits this ancient fort constructed in the year 1601. Madhugiri betta has long been believed to be Asia's biggest monolith. Plan cleverly and you could also do any of Siddarabetta, Devarayana Durga or Chennarayanadurga as well.

The Plan
If its a weekend escape from Bangalore that you're looking at then to make the most of Madhugiri, drive there in your car or even better, your bike in the evening and embark on a night trek. I'm very particular about the night trek plans because the journey from Bangalore takes you almost 3 hours. So even if you leave early on a Saturday morning, by the time you hit the top it'll be high noon and the sun will bake the cookies out of you. Its far from fun and plain silly.

CURRENT MOON

moon data

Instead enjoy a leisurely night trek and wake up to a feast of a sunrise. And when you're at it be sure your plans are in sync Chandamama's itinerary else things could get slightly ugly. With ample moonlight the trek is a breeze; quite literally so. Without the sun threatening overhead, there's absolutely no rush to escape the agonizing heat. We took it real slow and completed our trek in 3 hours.




Getting there
The truth is that the 125km onward and return bike journey is what kills you back and legs. Even so, if you start in the evening from Bangalore, the ride gets pleasant once you leave the city - with the sun simmering down and the landscape slowly turning into a mix of fields and bushland with an occasional village or town accentuating human habitation. A full tank and a bunch of like minded fellow riders is all you need to enjoy the roads.

Take NH 4 (Tumkur Road) out of Bangalore and just ride on until you're at the Dobbaspet. The road having been constructed on a BOT basis is par excellence. Once at Dobbaspet take the road to the left of the flyover. This route will take you to Madhugiri via Koratagere. The sign overhead preceding the flyover is slightly misleading. The flyover will take you to Tumkur. Going to Madhugiri via Tumkur is longer by a good 10kms atleast. Dobbaspet is around 50kms from Bangalore. Its your gateway to the countryside and the ambiance thereafter is more vivid. You wouldn't want to ride at over 40kmph here. There are ample road signs all along.

The trek
The fort is right next to the bus stand. There's a hotel there where you can help yourself to some food of extremely questionable hygiene. I highly recommend that you close you eyes or simply look away when the waiter brings water to your table.
The trek to the top takes less than 2 hours if its a night trek and maybe two and a half in broad daylight. Wear your favourite trekking shoes. A shoe offering good grip which you can count on, means you work is half done. The path is entirely rocky. In case your shoes are sloppy it'll make life that much more difficult for you.

There nothing much to explore there. A lot of the natural historical beauty has been destroyed either by gross restoration work using mortar followed by a generous dash of whitewash or my hooligans lacking even an iota of civic sense. Everything apart from that is nice and beautiful. Once at the top may want to sleep on the roof of the building on the west side (back) of the main structure. But mind you, since the place is very breezy it will get chilly later in the night.



What to carry
You need not carry anything much actually. Just a little food, some water and a sleeping bag or a couple of blankets for the night will suffice. And of course torches if its a night trek. Your cams obviously go into your backpack without saying. Be sure to fill you fuel tanks when leaving B'lore. There are ample stations all along the way; but it leaves you with one less thing to worry about.
All said and done, plan what suits you best and get there and enjoy. Just keep one thing in mind - To leave the place just the way it was when you got there, and if possible better.

If there's anything else you want to know from me, just drop me a comment. A mail will do just as well. Cheers!