Thoughts on The Last Moghul

Just recently completed reading 'The Last Moghul' by 'William Dalrymple'.

Its a moving account of the Mutiny of 1857 and the twilight days of the Moghul empire - with Bahadur Shah Zafar as the last of the line. This blog post is not a book review - read the book - its worth it. Its more of the thoughts that crossed my mind when reading the book.

• Delhi used to be hot, but the heat usually started around May. Nowdays , April is itself considered summers.
  
• The British came as merchants, but were able to rule and conquer India, as the various tribes of India kept fighting among each other. The rebellion of 1857 was with sepoys from UP and surrounding areas. The British used Punjabis and Gurkhas against them.
• Equally horrendous atrocities were committed by Indians and British. The main difference was that while Indians went about it just like that, the British went about it efficiently.
  
• While the Indians did not know whom to attack ( was he a conspirator of the british or not) , the British treated all brown skins the same.
• The British were able to spy in the city of Delhi , while the Delhi governance were cluless about what the British were upto.
  
• While the sepoys were Indians, the officers were British. So when it came to strategic thinking, the British had the upper hand and were able to win the battle, even though their forces were outnumbered 10 to 1. Again and again, it is shown that Quality matters over Quantity, but still people continue to value quantity more.
  
• I keep wondering what the Red Fort would have looked like before the mutiny. After the mutiny, many parts of it were torn down by the British and the remaining were made as company barracks and officer mess & quarters.
  
• Many of the traditions of 150 years ago still remain in the indian culture.
  
• Bahadur Shah Zafar was an incompetent ruler. However, he found himself as the unwilling leader of the rebels ( or Pandeys the colloquial term given to the rebel sepoys after Mangal Pandey). He was not able to make up his mind whether to side with the sepoys or call of the mutiny. Being an old man 70+ years in age, it can be conceded to him that he was not able to take decisions - but ultimately it lead to his demise and the demise of the line of Moghuls.
  
• Was also wondering if Zafar could not take clear decisions, what would happen to India now with the top politicians also in that age bracket and not able to take clear decisions.
• Zafar was ultimately brought down by his wife, who wanted her son to take on the throne. Behind every unsuccessful man there is a woman also.
• The accounts of Chandni Chowk etc are too good to be true. The Chandni Chowk now is a dump.
  
• I also was struck by the fact that Indian leaders are so weak as they have no idea of actually leading and governing. For ages before India got independence, all the decision making was in the hands of British, which they never gave to the Indians. As such after the partition, India was lead by people (and still is) who have no idea how to govern. And so the sad state of the country.
  
• The British found it easy to rule Indians by playing off one side against another. The same is still being done by Indian Politicians ( MNS, etc. ).
  
• There was a lot of greenery around Delhi.
  
• Nizammudin was a different village - away from Delhi.
  

Such books should be part of the school curriculum. They make you think.

non-US iTunes

I always had this problem .. whenever i used to tap the iTunes icon on the iPhone, it would say that it is not available in my country.

Stupid. I can't imaging why a company like apple would be so short sighted about iTunes, while the appstore works ( except that the india app store does not have Civilization Revolutions). Also, after getting my new Acer netbook and installing Ubuntu on it, it becomes difficult to access the iTunesU - a great resource for any kind of knowledge seeker.

I am yet to see the apple keynote from 8th April - for the OS4.0 details. I downloaded on my PC in iTunes but forgot to sync to the iPhone. Now, I am trying to get it to download on the ubuntu netbook, but firefox crashes for any itunes link!

Finally, in frustration, i browsed to the itunes web store in safari on the iPhone ... and ... it opened the itunes app ! I was delighted. Now I can browse all the stuff - from the ringtones ($1.29 per tone - boo!) to the movies and songs downloads to the podcasts. Damn - this thing is a gold mine ... and if you have the moolah to fork over for the movies and songs - you can damn near get anything !

I dont really like the iTunes software on the PC - because I was primarily using it for my music collection. But now, browsing through the podcasts and videos - it was an enlightning moment. This , together with the appStore and now the iBook marketplace , defines why apple is getting so far ahead - and why it will remain so far ahead.

Sometimes I think that locking up to the walled garden of apple wont be too bad after all.

Network not working after upgrading Ubuntu

So, I upgraded to 10.04 beta, and the network stopped working. Ping to local machines based on IP was working, but pining google resulted in host not found. Firefox was also not working...

After much R&D finally figured out that the problem was with the DNS resolver - which got overwritten during the upgrade somehow. The quick hack is to just edit the file and enter the DNS name servers. Here's the output :

vibhu@zion:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx
nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx

Put the IP addresses of your name servers instead of the xx's

The puzzle which still exists is why the DNS is not put in automatically. Still looking at that

Happy Diwali !

From Diwali 2009

Daddyhood II : The powerup sequence

I am sure everyone has wondered at one time or the other about the 'machine' called 'man' (or woman if you feel offended by the classical way of referring to humans).

I have.

I wonder about the complexity of the machine. The different parts that go up in making it. The co-ordination required. The development of each part which become a whole.

And now, with Vansh, I am seeing the development of a human being.

It reminds me of a powerup sequence of a very complex system. More complex than anything man made - like for instance - a nuclear plant.

You may have read about how each part of the plant under goes many tests in powering up.

It seems to be same case for humans also.

Sequence 1 : It started with the breathing aparatus - the lungs, windpipe and the vocal chords. As a new born baby, whenever it is awake - it cries a lot. I suppose its to get the lungs working. A few minutes of crying and then the fatigue sets in - and he sleeps. It does not matter that he is fed, and is warm. He has to have his hourly dose of crying - without which it does not fall asleep.

Along with this sequence is the digestive system coming online. At start only a liquid diet of mother's milk - which over the coming months will move to semi-solid and then eventually solid.

Sequence 2 : The eyes. At first unseeing - with each eye's control not fully functional. So, at times the kid will seem to be looking at his nose. Scary the first time you see it. Slowly the eyes start to look in the same general direction.

Sequence 3 : After the lungs sequence is ok'd by the body, the system shifts to other things - like moving the arms and legs. It learns to control the vocal chords so that he does not howl all the time - unless in discomfort - like when it wants to be fed.

Sequence 4 : The facial muscles come online now. The start with sequence 1 was frown and a screwed up face. Now the muscles start to strengthen the 'smile' and he starts to smile a bit, then a lot more. I am not sure if he understands what a smile is at this time - cause anything can trigger it. A touch on the cheek, a sound of a voice - or just simply smiling while lying on the back and kicking his legs.

Sequence 5 : The eye muscles having found that they are in sync, now start to follow people.

Wow ! They say life is a miracle - and its hard not to believe !

India's Achievements ?

Tomorrow is Independence day.

Once more people will get drunk it being a holiday - oh wait ... its on a Saturday. Damn! One holiday gone ! WTF !

I though am thinking on other lines.

Its been 60+ years now since India gained Independence. And I wonder.

I wonder how. I wonder why.

There are almost no world class achievements.

I can only think of one achievement which puts India on par with other world powers. The Delhi Metro. I see that and think - wow ! This is something which the people have done which we can proudly say we are shoulder to shoulder with other countries.

I am sure there are other achievements, but I can't think of any.

Achiements like a gold medal in the Olympics don't count - for a country so vast and with so much potential, a single gold medal is like a consolation prize. I am thinking more on the lines where can say 'hum kise se kum nahi' .

What are your thoughts ? What achievements can you think of ?

TFD : Patanjali

When you are inspired by some great purpose

Some ExtraOrdinary project

All your thought's break their bonds

Your mind transcends limitations

Your conciousness expands in every direction

And you find yourself in a new and wonderful world

Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive

And you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

Cost of a Mac

So, someone was telling me the other day that if one wants to get a laptop of the same spec as a Mac, it would cost more.

Is that true ? I decided to check it out.

I decided to check it against the Alienware laptops from Dell. ( Alienware used to be a different company, but Dell aquired it a few years back. I guess they thought they would benifit from the reach of Dell).

Here I am not going to go on about the OS part of it. Just the hardware part. OS is a personal choice. If you like to let the OS do everything - its a Mac for you. If you want to configure everything - go and get Linux. If you want something in between - try Windows. Whatever.

This is a comparison purely for gaming rigs. I am looking at the cost vs specs of a high end gaming rig.

	Macbook Pro	Alienware (custom rig)
Cost :	$2499	$2074
Screen :	17"	17"
Memory :	4 GB	4GB
Hard Disk :	500 GB 5400rpm	500GB 7200rpm
Processor :	2.8 GH Intel Core 2 Duo	2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
Keyboard :	Backlit	Backlit
OS :	Mac OS X	Windows Vista Home Premium 64
Colour :	White	Black
Graphics :	9600M GT (512MB)	GTX250M (1GB)
Weight :	2.99kg	not specified
Battery Life :	7 hrs	not specified
Screen Size :	1920x1200	1440x900

Matching the specs of the apple , the Alienware rig comes out to be less costly !

What Wizard Colour Are You ?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

warning : Don't take such things seriously ;)

Daddyhood

So, finally my relatives heaved a sigh of relief. I became a daddy.

Its strange, relatives have an insatiable hunger for fiddling with other people's lives. First they hound you to death for getting married, then they keep asking .. "when will you become 3", and now that I finally have a kid, they want to know when is the 2nd one coming ! WTF ! People ! If you have messed with your life, don't go and mess with mine !

Anyways, rant over, back to the topic.

So, finally I became a dad. Kid is doing fine. a pic on facebook. People/Relatives decreeing that I should not be posting up more pics as they will catch the evil eye. gah !

Mixed emotions really. At first its unbelievable - not like 'it cant be happening' but more like 'has it really happened?' No matter how much people tell you about the 'miracle of life' you don't realize what they mean till it happens to you. So much for learning from history. I guess thats why we keep making the same mistakes ... we dont learn from others mistakes.. but I am digressing.

I was called in first to see the kid in the Infant ICU. He was sleeping peacefully on one side, legs crossed. took a pic to show to my in-laws as they were not allowed inside. Took another pic the next day which I uploaded on FB. Thanks for the wonderful comments folks ! :)

Wifey and baby got discharged after a couple of days at the office. She felt great coming back home. Hospitals kind of freak her out.

The next night was the 'i will keep you awake' night. The kid started crying at 3 am till about 7am. I had slept at 1am. Only 2 hrs sleep. Took to doctor as soon as we could. He checked and said everything is ok - just some gas.

Also he said that kids are usually active at night, and the patterns change after 2-3 months.

/sigh

so, as of now, more sleepless nights. Getting to know the kid. Sometimes he frowns in his sleep. Sometimes he smiles , then wakes up, realizes he is not where he was dreaming, and starts to cry. sometimes he just wakes up, makes a slight sound - making us think he is getting up, and then calmly sleeps for another hour. sometimes we think he is sleeping when he gets up. Somehow he knows when we are getting ready to sleep, and he gets ready to wake up !

a new experience. its a 'wow' experience.

Different Perspectives

Today, while working on my laptop I realized that it is becoming more and more irritating to work with Windows. Its the simple things that get your goat. E.g. extra confirmations for everything (Windows Vista). Un-accessible software (e.g. visio drawings) which you cannot view till you have expensive software installed.

As a good regular twitter user I twitted this:

"At one time Windows was the easiest to use. Now it is a lesson in frustration."

The responses were quite interesting :
From a friend from darjeeling, who is a non-techie user of the PC :

"its still the easiest for me, coz i never had a chance to try the rest hehe! but lots of problems i agree"

From a friend who is quite into tech:

"for me its always frustration, most things r non-intuitive & when things dont work, its difficult to figure out why, no logs :|"

I think this quite goes to show that most of the users are not worried about the technical aspects of the software we use on a day to day basis. They are quite ok working with familiar software and yeah, some issues are there, but they take it in their stride.

The tech junta on the other hand, who work quite a lot with the softwares are tuned to the nuances of the stuff, and quite know what works and what doesn't. They are the ones who give the reviews about stuff which works and which doesn't. But does that really matter ? Cause most of the persons using the software are ok with what they have. Does it really matter to have intellectual discussions dissecting the software when the regular user is ok with it ? I still know people who are running windows 98 and are quite happy with it.