9 Lives

9 Lives is the latest book by William Dalrymple. I have grown fond of his readings after reading City of Djinns, The Last Moghul and In Xanadu.

When I got the book ( borrowed from my cousin in exchange for the Last Moghul), I was wondering what the book would be about. It was about 9 lives - or people that was clear. But what was not clear was how it would be played out.

Well, its simple really. These are 9 different lives. Its like the biographies of 9 different people. Each life is contained in its own - a separate story.

Each story is about a religious sect - which you may heard of, but in the urban worlds we live in, these are shunned. Its a peek into the lives of the sadhus and other holy men and women of India. It delves into their psyche as to what makes them do the things they do. Be it a Jain nun, or a Tibetan Monk or a Tribal Singer or a Tribal dancer. Following these unlikely people and learning about their lives , WD has presented a look into a world we know exists, but never bothered to find out about.

This book is definitely a must read. I am sure you will be touched by these lives, and would want to find more about India.

iPhone vs Android

For those who did not really like my write up :)

( Courtesy : Greywulf's blog )

In Xanadu

In Xanadu is William Dalrymples first book, and his 3rd book that I have read after City of Djinns and The Last Moghul.

Unlike the other 2 books, which deal more with the people and their lives, In Xanadu is more a personal journey story by the young William. In this book, he undertakes the journey following in the steps of Marco Polo all the way to Xanadu - the summer palace of the Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan. At the time of Marco Polo this route was a major route on the silk routes, but not much known to the western world.

At the time WD undertakes the journey, the world has transformed a lot. In giving descriptions of the places where they are travelling through and comparing with notes from Marco Polo one feels the differences that have undergone. Some routes are just too dangerous or just not doable due to political reasons which were part of the main thoroughfares. A kind of comparative history of the route takes place all throughout the journey.

Another feature that I felt was quite apparent was the differences in descriptions. While the world of Delhi was populated with colorful characters and you can imagine the various scenes in Delhi, the populance of the journey almost seems drab. It could also be because I am reading about places that I do not know much about. Ultimately, it felt to me, that India with all its shortcomings, is just a place which warms the heart more.

If you want my opinion of the book - I can say that you can give it a pass. Nothing really sticks to my mind about the book. Probably it is as I say before - I am unable to visualize the places that the journey took place through.

--

Next book is "9 lives" and the update will be up in a few days.

Android vs iPhone

Yesterday I got a chance to chill out with an Android phone - the HTC Desire. Its being used by one of my team mates (recently I have started working on a project with tenCube which makes the security software WaveSecure).

As a long time user of the iPhone (one and a half years now!), and having a good knowledge of current trends in the market I can say that I would passably know what I am talking about :)

At the end of the playtime ( which was like a few hrs since we were celebrating 5 years of tenCube in a lounge ) , I am left with mixed feelings. Let me elaborate.

What the Android has that the iPhone does not.

The biggest +like factor is the ability to multitask. That was like wow ! coming from the limitations of the iPhone. My colleages gtalk was working silently in the background, and he got an IM from another colleague from Singapore - which shows up as a scrolling text in the top status bar. I was like WTF ! cool !

Since its a google android, it works seamlessly with gmail. In fact - when you first start an android based phone, it will ask you for your gmail id - and if you are not using gmail as your primary email - you are not gonna enjoy the integration. But I suppose, if you are reading this post, you do have a gmail id.

Apart from this...

... nothing much.

Some comparison Notes

These are the things that I noticed while playing around with it.

iPhone has a kind of 'multiple desktop' concept where you can just scroll around by swiping left and right. In Android you require 2 steps : 1. click the button to bring out the list of apps and then scroll through them.

Android has the gadgets concept which is like the Windows or Google gadgets that you have on your PC. I think these are highly overrated as per screen you cannot really fit in more than 1 or max 2 gadgets.

Game quality on the iPhone is much superior to the Android. I have Assasin's Creed and Hero of Sparta on my phone, and going through the Android market I was not really able to find out any similar kind of game.

The Android market is tiny - and also not very well categorized. For instance, on the main screen you just have 'games' and 'apps' category. in games you just have some 4 different categories. In spite of what people may say about the android market place increasing - it still feels very limited and stifled.

Another annoyance is that the size of download is tucked away in the text and not shown at the top. Further it is greyed out - its like they want to trick you into downloading without knowing the size.

Form factor both were near enought. I guess thats cause of HTC engineering rather than Google.

Some pages have login screens with the login and password boxes. On the iPhone when you touch any of these, the page zooms so that you can easily see what you are typing in. On Android there is no such functionality. On top of it, double tapping does not work as expected. On the iPhone double tapping expands the table element , so for instance, if you double tap on a text column, it will 'fit-width' and you can continue with it. On android, it just zooms without looking at the element you are tapping. So most of the time, you end up pinching to zoom correctly.

The HTC also does not do landscape view - which is a mystery to me. Some text is still a bit small when you look at it in portrait mode. So, i am used to tilting to horizontal mode and can easily read it. On the HTC, I was not able to find such stuff.

The Facebook app for iPhone is much much better than that on Android. I think that the app is still new to Android and expect it to improve, but the one on iPhone is just better.

oh, and gmail integration is also doable on the iPhone by hooking up your gmail account as an exchange account. So that advantage goes away.

Conclusion.

On the whole - the User eXperience is much better on the iPhone, even now. Android has one upped on the functionality scale, but I have a big suspecion that the iPhone release ( on 7th June 2010) is going to blow away that advantage.

At this point I will not recommend any phone to you. Wait for the 7th , and i will be doing a review of the iPhone OS.

But one thing I do know - my iPhone 3G will not be doing multi tasking as apple is deliberately crippling that option.

Multiple GTalk accounts

If you are like me, you will probably be having multiple Gmail accounts. I have a primary gmail account, and a couple of google apps accounts. The issue always cropped up that I could not use gtalk for all the accounts. Fortunately a bit of digging around, and it is quite a simple solution !

Just create a shortcut on the desktop for gtalk. If you have an issue creating the shortcut, navigate via the start menu to gtalk , right click -> copy -> right click on desktop -> paste.

Now right click the shortcut, and chose 'Porperties'.

In Target, add a /nomutex option at the end. E.g. : following is how it looks like in my shortcut.

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

Now, just click on the gtalk shortcut to start a new instance of the talk messenger. Add your gmail and domain accounts.

Have fun !

The iPod Revolution

[Source: Online MBA for MashableMashable.com]

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 !