Entries from August 2008 ↓

That’s what these leaves seemed to be singing to the sun. This was taken near a cluster of bamboo at the Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary at Srirangapatna. The bamboos make a particularly creaky noise; which is surprisingly soothing, as they collectively sway in the breeze. The next time I go there, I should try and record it. This picture seems incomplete without it.

I was drawn to this old man at Srirangapatna by the florescent-pink tilak on his forehead. I vaguely remember paying him for this portrait, but it could be a false memory.

I am glad that I have a category called “Weird and Wonderful” under which I file photos, because for pictures like these, it comes in handy. This shot was taken at Chickpet in Bangalore. This quaint building houses a camera shop where you can buy everything – from a B&W film roll to the latest and greatest gear for your camera (and indeed the camera itself).

Sticking a colorfully painted statue onto a wall of a building might not quite agree with my taste but I’d prefer it over the monotony of glass and concrete that we see these days in Bangalore any day.

p.s. The caption etched into the concrete in the first picture reads: Shri Rajrajeshwara Sahasrarjuna.

Ok, I realize that not all is well with these shots. I was merely experimenting with placing the camera in the midst of the pigeons while they gobbled up our French fries. It did turn out to be a somewhat expensive mistake. Leaving the camera on the gravel dented the rim of my lens, causing its status to fall from “in mint condition” to a relatively less desirable “excellent”. It fetched a few £s less than it would have in the second-hand lens market.

It’s been close to 9 months since I picked my 24″ iMac. Despite the initial scare (yes it was bizarre!), things have turned out to be great. Being a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user, I did tinker with Windows Vista inside Bootcamp but there was something alluring about Leopard (aka Mac OS 10.5) which kept pulling me back. Having mastered the OS for daily tasks, and having overcome the muscle memory of 8+12+ (I am older than I thought) years of Windows usage (from Windows 3.11 all the way to Windows Vista), I decided to tackle the next frontier – developing for the Mac.

After several attempts at using cross-platform frameworks (wxWidgets, Mono, GTK) with unsatisfactory results, I started exploring the native Mac development platform. The biggest hurdle here was Objective C. For someone who is coming from a C#/VB.NET/C++ background (with good exposure to PERL/Javascript thrown in), the syntax stumped me. Then I came across Aaron Hillegass’s brilliant Cocoa Programming book some 3 weeks ago, and it has been a smooth sailing ever since. It reminds me so much of my days in college spent learning Win32 and MFC programming.

Today I came up with a small app which I thought I’d share. This builds on the SpeakLine example presented in Aaron’s book. Instead of using a Text Field to take a string from the user, it uses the sample text which comes with each voice profile on the Mac, and says it when you click the Speak button:

The sample text for a lot of voices is hilarious (just like the voices themselves). It is one of the many small things that add up towards making Macs a fun, playful platform.

p.s. The app, the complete XCode 3.1 project.

Spotted at Lal Bagh. I would have loved to stay back and check if the contraption is still functional but it was threatening to rain, and cameras are more hydrophobic than; for want of a better simile, a rabid dog.

We were walking a particularly desolate stretch between two monasteries in Bhumtang when we passed a little village house. This brother-sister duo stood in a little field behind (what I presume to be) their house. They had the most charming, carefree smiles and were soon exchanging our names – in proper English, no less!

p.s. It sure feels nice to be published.

“Customer is the king” goes the old adage. Nowhere is it falser than in India. Till the 90s, the state owned PSUs doled out slipshod products and services to us, and now the private sector is leaving no stone unturned to ensure we stay a bunch of dissatisfied, unhappy customers. I am going to state 3 recent ‘case-studies’. They are representative of the experience me and my friends have had:

a.) Café Coffee Day: Today is friendship day. To celebrate the occasion, Café Coffee Day has introduced a new menu. Everything on this menu is 15-25% more expensive than their ‘normal’ menu. Ordering something from the old menu is not an option that I am given. The basic Rs. 50 Cappuccino has taken a new avatar (’Go Nuts Cappuccino’ or something to that effect) which will set you off by Rs. 62. What did I do? I came home and made myself a cup of tea. You’d have gotten Rs. 50 from me Coffee Day, you got nothing instead. I just hope that the new menu gimmick doesn’t last beyond today, otherwise Coffee Day just lost a customer.

b.) Planet M: They are definitely feeling the pinch – especially the store at Brigade Road. I have mixed feelings about their diversification into mobile phones. Sure it helps them optimally utilize their real estate investments but at the same time it dilutes their brand as a speciality music store. In any case, they can’t beat Subhiksha and Big Bazaar on cellphone prices. Nor are they trying to differentiate the experience (try offering sales and service under one roof guys. Anyone who has had to go to the official Nokia repair center will tell you that it is not something one would ever do out of choice). And I don’t know how you plan to attract customers on a warm day if you switch off the air conditioning without ensuring proper ventilation. Add to this poor inventory management/ignorant staff and you have a fiasco in the making (specific instances: Life in Metro (out of stock, no idea when to expect fresh stock), Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na (music lying on an obscure shelf, staff doesn’t know they have the music), Dham Dhoom (out of stock, no idea when to expect fresh stock).

c.) Levis (and other big-name garment brands in general): Is it just me or does everyone else feel that the cuts, colors and designs offered in India look jaded and utterly unwearable? I realize that clothes are a matter of personal choice but the number of times I’ve come out without buying from the big-name brand stores makes me wonder if the problem is not entirely with me. The prices these brands are charging these days are quite close to what you’d pay in the US. And yet the quality and the overall tailoring feels like that of a lot which was rejected by the importers abroad.

Yes, rising real estate prices and a slowing economy are problems that all of us are confronted with. Add to that the quality of labor in India, (how many times have you been put off by unhelpful, ignorant, discourteous staff?) and it makes for a very tough retailing environment. But it doesn’t mean that you forget the customer. Sure we’ll buy – since often our choice tends to be between the devil and the dead sea – but don’t expect the stellar growth rates that everyone has been hopeful about.

It was spectacularly hot during my second visit to London in 2006. Having been there first during winters of 2005, the contrast was very striking. The flowers and trees at Regent’s Park didn’t seem to mind the heat much though.