Pesky teens....

Here's an interesting idea, create a machine that emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away. The result was:

At first, members of the usual teen crowd tried to gather as normal, repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off," Mr. Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."

I'm looking for reasons to look forward to my 30th B'day :)

Calcutta and Ganguly

I need to say this once, the people at Calcutta should be ashamed of themselves for the way they behaved during the ODI at Eden Gardens. This is the Indian team, not the Bengal team and if you dont like the fact that your blue-eyed boy (Ganguly, just in case someone was wondering) is not in the team, suck it up... Petty politics that the BCCI propagates should not extend to the team, as Indians, support the damn team, you can always fight your battles off the pitch and elsewhere...

technorati tags: India cricket

Children are more susceptible to Malaria

Children should be the prime target of malaria control as they are ones most likely to be bitten by mosquitoes carrying the parasite (BBC News). Surprisingly, about 80% of all new malaria infections are concentrated in just a fifth of the population, a Nature study of African children found. The study also found that past infections does not confer any resistance. So, if you have had malaria, you are likely to get it again because of your susceptibility.

technorati tags: malaria

'Ten of us, we killed at least 22 tigers'

"Ten of us, we killed at least 22 tigers", reads the title. This story highlights how about half the tiger population at Ranthambore has been wiped out in the space of less than a year. What is scary about this is that Rantahmbore is a premier tiger reserve in the country and one that appears in most 'tiger documentaries' that are shown on the NG and Discovery channels. Apparently all that publicity and what was supposed to be one of the best kept reserves in the country has made no difference.

The plight of the tiger in India was also highlighted by its being wiped out of Sariska, this new report adds an increased sense of urgency to the situation. I'm lucky to have seen a tiger in the wild, I hope T is able to in his lifetime.

technorati tags: tiger conservation

TopGear Magazine in India

Top Gear has been one of my favourite TV shows, it was first shown in India sometime in the late-90's on BBC. I love cars and bikes, and dry brit humour, and TopGear is just the show to bring the two together. So, when TopGear was finally introduced as a mag in India, here was good reason to rejoice.

First, let me say that the mag has been everything I had expected and a wee bit more. Its full of splashy hig-res pics of cars (and uh...uh.. bikes) and well written reviews and articles with a good measure of wit and humour thrown in. About 80% of the mag is about 'phoren' stuff, and the rest comprises of reviews of current/future Indian autos. Some readers of the first issue had complained that it contains too many reviews of cars being sold outside the country, true, but the car industry in India is still in neonatal. So being told what you are missing is probably a good thing. They also have a really nice section at the end of the mag reviewing all the models sold in India with nice one-liners:

About the Maruti Suzuki Gypsy: A mountain goat off the road, but a pig on it: it's crude, rides like it's on gravel and safety is quite appalling. Save it for the farmhouse.

About the Mahindra Scorpio: "Dont be fooled by:" The steering wheel - it's not connected to anything.

About the Reva: "Alternate Drives:" Golf cart, bicycle, joining Greenpeace.

So, should you buy it? If you like cars and everything gas-guzzling, you have to. This issue was a steal as they had a best of TopGear DVD thrown in for free, yipeeee....

technorati tags: auto India top-gear

Walmart's faster

Its amazing how fast and well coordinated some companies are, even while responding to events such as natural disasters. This article details how Walmart was able to was able to move food, water, generators and other goods to areas hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita faster than the federal government.

What I find surprising about is the understanding and planning Walmart seems to have put into dealing with the aftermath of Katrina Rita. Maybe privatization does work, but then again, it all depends on who's taking over.

Flock

I had written a comparison between Opera and Firefox a long time ago, here's an update on the new (or at least future) king of the hill. Its Flock, a new browser that promises to change the ay your browse, or at the very least make you think again about your browsing habits. You will find reviews of Flock all over the web, here are a couple (1, 2). The download page at Flock has a big warning - "Sure you can handle it? Don't say we didn't warn ya'", go ahead ignore the warning and give it a try. I have had no trouble so far and I dont anticipate any.

What I can tell you is that its really good. If you use del.icio.us, Flickr and also blog using Blogspot, its probably the best thing around. A word of caution, it doesnt seem to work with other blogging sites for now and is probably pretty unstable, I just havent seen anything negative so far (WinXP SP2). Fun fun fun...

Simputer for Bangalore traffic cops

Here's an interesting development. Bangalore traffic cops now have a handheld Simputer using which they can track past traffic offences of a vehicle instantly and fine you for all of them instantly. They also claim it makes the system more transparent. Probably does for fining offenders, but what about making the cops more honest. Bangalore has some of the most corrupt policemen I have ever seen, everything from avoiding a larger fine for a traffic offence to registering an FIR needs a bribe.

I'm sure this wont stop the cops from taking that Rs.50 or 100 to let you go. I wonder if you can make all the old fines go away and how much that would cost :)

My bus ride home

I recently took the brave step of riding home by a bus. It may not sound daunting but travelling 20km across bangalore on a not so major route can be a pain as I discovered. This blog is not really a crib about how bad my journey was, its more of a empathetic note for all the other folk who have to travel across Blore by buses everyday.

• My journey started at NCBS, where I took bus 1, one of the shuttles into the city (they go to IISc). I got off at Mekhri circle and this ride was for free :)

• There I got onto BMTC bus 2, a 284 that took me the short distance of one bus-stop to Rajmahal-Guthalli, the ride cost me Rs. 3. So far so good, but this where things started to slow down.

• I had two options for buses at this point, one that took me straight home and others involving more bus-changes. The bus straight home never did turn-up. After waiting for nearly an hour, and watching a hundred buses going to KR Market and Majestic, I finally got a 101 to Shivajinagar, I had given up hope on a direct bus by now.

• From Shivajinagar, it was a 132B to CMH Road, I didnt have the patience to wait for a direct bus to Domlur.

• From CMH road, a final ride on a 201 to Domlur, where the conductor charged me a rupee less, didnt issue a ticket and pocketed the rest of the money (Rs. 4), and quick walk home :)

The whole journey involved 5 buses, cost me Rs. 25 and took 2 hrs. Had I taken a rick, this would have cost about Rs. 125 and would have taken less than an hour. Had I travelled by motorcycle (as I do everyday), it costs about Rs. 25 and takes about 45 minutes. The thing that surprised me was the following, I left NCBS armed with all the bus numbers and timings from the BMTC website, but it made no difference. While waiting at the different bus-stops, I got the impression that the timings were a sham. Given the trouble and time involved, why would anyone in Bangalore use public transport, unless you were poor/cheap and had enough time to kill? No wonder the city is choking with traffic...

Marrybrown - Dont Go There

We recently ate at a Marrybrown, its a McDonald clone from Malaysia that has sprung up in Blore. The only reason why I'm choosing to waste a blog on it is because of how irritated I am with the place.

The restaurant as such is okay in terms of ambience and it even has a kids play area :) but thats where the fun stops. The service was slow and poor, most importantly the quantities were atrocious, even a saharan desert ant would find it hard to fill its stomach on the portions they serve. To add insult to injury the food isnt great either. We spent a fair bit of money, and came away hungry and unhappy.

So to sum it up again, dont eat at Marrybrown ever, they are the biggest con job this side of the Arabian sea.

Still here

A quick update post. I am still here in India and we will probably be here for the next few weeks/couple of months. Will update when our plans get finalized. Hopefully soon...

Update

Hi folks, here's the latest on our move. It looks like we will be moving in the first week of June. Our visa appointment moved forward and so have our plans :) Will keep you posted on developments as they happen.

Google Gulp

Quench your thirst for knowledge with Google Gulp:

Think a DNA scanner embedded in the lip of your bottle reading all 3 gigabytes of your base pair genetic data in a fraction of a second, fine-tuning your individual hormonal cocktail in real time using our patented Auto-Drink™ technology, and slamming a truckload of electrolytic neurotransmitter smart-drug stimulants past the blood-brain barrier to achieve maximum optimization of your soon-to-be-grateful cerebral cortex. Plus, it's low in carbs! And with flavors ranging from Beta Carroty to Glutamate Grape, you'll never run out of ways to quench your thirst for knowledge.

Neural Thoughts

I have started a new blog along with some friends of mine (most of whom know a lot more neuroscience than I do). Do take a look if you are curious about what kind of research goes on.. and kind of what I work on.

Mind reading... Literally

New research on controlling devices using only using thought seems to be holding our real promise. The field of brain machine interface devices has been around for a few years now, but it seems to be getting more mainstream with some really exciting advances in recent years. Now, they have gotten to point where a quadraplegic patient can now control some functions on a computer and a robotic hand with only thought :)

It works by recording from 50 to 150 neurons in the brain and interpreting their activity into control of a device. The interpretation is usually done by an intermediate artificial neural network or algorithm. For all of this to work, some amount of training is required both for the person and the neural network. As the technology is still premature, there is a long way to go in terms of development.

Who knows, one day we will get to point where anything can be controlled by plugging it into your brain-gate... look ma, no hands ;)

Nikon D50 Entry-Level DSLR

Nikon seems to be thinking of releasing a new entry level D50 digital SLR, the details were apparently leaked on Nikon Japan site by mistake. The resolution is supposed to be 6MP and probably a sub $1000 price. In any case, there is reason to hope if you were looking to upgrade to a DSLR on a budget.

"A Directory Of Programs Designed For USB Drives"

Here's a list of some of the interesting programs/things you can do with you on your USB pen-drive. Linux OS on a USB drive has been around for a while now, the rest of the list is pretty cool. More reasons to buy that USB drive :)

Natural yoghurt beats bad breath

Natural yoghurt beats bad breath: Its a good thing you dont get anything but "curd" here in India. I hate to say it but it makes you wonder what else we are missing out on as traditional foods/technologies die out.

A ricky strategy

I have had it with ricks in Bangalore. We get back sleepy and tired yesterday, when the rick-driver says "Saar, 10 rupees extra kodee". I refused and frowned, not surprisingly, but that got me thinking..

Next time a rick-driver asks me for more money, I'm going to smile and ask him for a rebate, after all I chose to hire his rick over 5 others, so shouldn't he be paying me something back :) We'll see how this one goes :)

Murdeshwar - Our beach holiday

We are back from Murdeshwar. This was an impulsive trip decided at the last minute. This trip had many firsts for us, it was the first time w've taken T on such a long bus journey (12hrs), the first time since we've had T that we've made an impulsive trip on short notice.. hopefully we can do more of these now :) Murdeshwar is a small sleepy coastal town with a fantastic beach.



You can find the rest of the photos here. The beach is about 2 kms long, wonderful fine sand and a gentle slope... you can walk about 50-100 feet into the water before the depth becomes too much to wade in. We stayed at the RNS residency, we had a great view of the entire beach from our balcony. The main attraction in Murdeshwar are the beach and the Shiva statue/temple. The statue temple is probably worth visiting if you are the religious type, I saw all I needed to see from the road...

There are a couple of eating joints off the beach - the overpriced 'Naveen beach Resort' where you get fish curry for Rs.115 and a Sunshine restaurant where you can get fish fry for Rs.15. We tried the former and hated it as it was a total ripoff. We also tried Hotel Vaibhav, a 10 min walk down the mainroad, which was great food and value. We spent most of our time at the beach or at the hotel, where T and I were the only ones in the pool :)

We left murdeshwar with a nice warm feeling, all in all a great holiday, though I have a feeling we got lucky.

Killer Lakes

If you're wondering what that means, do read the write-up by yours truly. Was inspired by a Horizon episode on the BBC.

Cubbon Park

T and I visited Cubbon park yesterday as we were by ourselves for the day. Cubbon park is one of the oldest public parks in Bangalore. The bit I remember going to most often is the BalBhavan, its main attraction being the Toy train - Putani Express. I had been reluctant to go for a while now as the last time I visited, it felt a bit rundown and very dirty. With T's penchant for mud and dirt, I wasnt sure it was a good idea.

In retrospect, I'm glad I was persuaded to give it another shot. It has changed a lot and for the better. The toy train is the same old rickety clackety thing and still as enjoyable as ever if you're a kid, T enjoyed it thorougly. They also have a fair bit of kiddy playground thingy's - jungle-gyms, see-saws, slides - the usual and tucked away to the back - a really nice set of play-units that I havent seen in Blore until now. All in all, good stuff.

For Tanay, the best part was not the park - but the aquarium next door. Most of us forget its there and with good reason. Its dingy and poorly lit, feels like a crypt - but T loved it (part of a current fascination with fishes). This btw was probably the first time we pottered off by ourselves without a care in the world (by bike, no bag and other kiddy paraphernalia). Hint of things to come I hope.

The old Indian attitude

Ever since the story about Sudan 1 contamination in chillies from India has broken, the food industry has been in a tizzy with over 300 different food preparations being recalled from marketshelves. Well, at least they are soing something about it.

In a typical reaction (I dont know if this is typically Indian or typically Congress-I), the Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath brushed aside the charges. I've heard two versions of his defence, if you can call it that - it never happened, its all a conspiracy to setup artificial trade barriers or it never happened, "we have very stringent norms about colouring agents, chillies supplied to the European Union did not have any carcinogenic (cancer causing) substances".

I could not crib about this enough, why not come clean and say that mistakes have been made. Its a lot more reassuring as a victim to know that there a realization that mistakes have been made and steps are being taken to avoid repetitions. When there is no will to even recognize the problem, forget about fixing the system, who will believe us or buy from us? India may be a big contributor to the international spice trade, but I would be surprised if things stayed that way.

Global Warming Is Real

For anybody who cares and especially for anyone who knows GWBush, Global Warming Is Real......

Gigapixels - WOW

Take a look at these gigapixel images were taken with a custom camera made from bits and pieces of decommissioned Cold War hardware!! The images are taken with ultra-high resolution (4000dpi) film plates (9-inch-by-18-inch) and digitally scanned by ultra-high resolution scanners (6um resolution) giving the final gigapixel resolution image. Each image fills a DVD.

Just to give you a sense of scale of this, a full resolution print of these images can be as large as billboards with no loss of resolution or graining. 'Oceanside Pier' and 'People watching'
are two other incredible images in the same gallery that illustrate the resolution and contrast this photography has.

Incredible stuff.....

RSS feeds for my blog

I have enabled RSS feeds on my blog for anyone who might want it. You can find the link to the feed here.

The Aviator & Howard Hughes

I saw The Aviator a couple of days ago and that got me thinking. Howard Hughes is an almost iconic name in biology/medical research as the Howard Hughes Medical Institiute is very well known and being a HHMI investigator is something everone aspires to be.

Knowing all this, it was strange to see this strange obsessive-compulsive man on screen. I was having a hard time putting the two ends together. Anyway, I searched the net and there's a decent biography of his life at Wikipedia and this article at famous-texans gives you the lowdown, especially all the spy-politics that you dont find in the movie.

It seems scientific research can have very strange origins indeed.

An interesting take on personal computing

Below is an excerpt from Salon.com's Hallelujah, the Mac is back -

'When discussing the PC business, an important thing to remember is that nothing's quite settled yet. The personal computer is a young product, and the PCs we have today are not the PCs we'll have forever. David Gelernter, the Yale computer scientist, raised parts of this argument in December in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, published on the occasion of IBM's sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo, a Chinese firm. Gelernter lamented that sale; it indicated, he wrote, that IBM no longer saw potential for the greatness of the PC, and that this "is a shame, even a tragedy -- because the modern PC is in fact a primitive, infuriating nuisance. If the U.S. technology industry actually believes that the PC has grown up and settled down, it is out of touch with reality -- and the consequences could be dangerous to America's economic health."

A conversation with Gelernter is an eye-opening experience. As modern computer users, we go through our lives resigned to mediocrity; this is true of Windows users, but it's even true, he says, of Apple users. The computer can be so much more than the systems we have today. Gelernter wants machines that are 'transparent,' that are more like appliances than fancy gadgets, machines that put your data, your information, before their own idiosyncrasies. 'I don't care about the machine, I care about my documents,' he says. It shouldn't matter which computer he goes to in his house, or whether the machine he's on is new or old; he should get access to his life on any machine. And why should anybody spend any time at all 'securing' your machine from outside threats, he wonders. Why can't the machine do this for you? 'Most people don't want to spend their time to download the latest thing to deal with the latest disaster to strike,' he points out. Would we deal with such tediousness for other products we use on a daily basis? 'Would anyone ever say, "Hey, my brakes don't work but that's O.K., I can just download a new anti-lock braking system." No; you wouldn't use a car in which the brakes didn't work. Yet we put up with computers all the time in which key functions just stop working, and, routinely, we are OK with that."

If only all our wishes would come true, but this piece also points out so well how far behind the computer technology really is. I sometimes find that hard to remember...

Hide Your iPod, Here Comes Bill

Wired News has this very interesting and rather funny story on how one of the most common accessories at Microsoft is the Apple i-Pod :)

My First Wild Tiger Sighting

I saw my first wild tiger at Bandipur, I was ontop of the safari RTV, sitting about 15 feet off the ground when I saw something walking across the path. I was about to ask our guide what that was when he shouted "Tiger, stop the vehicle, quiet...".

The tiger was about 50 feet away and hadn't noticed us. He sauntered across the path seemingly lost in his own thoughts and then, he noticed us. He stopped and turned his head, giving us one of the dirtiest looks I have ever got, for the longest time. Then he vanished into the lantana, just like that.

I had prayed that I would see a tiger, but never thought I would, on my first safari into a jungle :). Its strange in some ways as the next day, we saw nothing - almost no wildlife. I guess I can complain about not getting a good photograph of the tiger though :).

Bandipur Photos

Photos from our Bandipur trip can be found here. Yes, I did see a tiger and I tried to get a photo. That valiant attempt was spoilt by poor light and a shaky hand :(. If anyone wants a blurry photo of a tiger walking away, let me know.

The tree frog that eats bats

Here's a really bizzare story from the BBC. That must be one big tree frog.

Off to Bandipur

We are off to Bandipur tomorrow morning. I hope we get to see a tiger :) in the wild. From what I hear, its pretty unlikely but you never never know. I am currently trying desperately hard to finish writing my thesis. I'm happy to take off for the weekend, to be getting a much needed break from it all.

I should be back at blogging early next week.

Wildlife and natural parks in Karnataka

Here's a list of some of the the wildlife related things you can do in Karnataka.

We are going to Jungle Lodges later this week. Jungle Lodges is a Karnataka goverment enterprise that runs a number of resorts all over Karnataka. They are all supposed to be pretty good, the tarrifs are a bit steep (1650-2500 Rs./day/person), especially if you're on a budget.

I also found this fairly vague site run by the Karnataka forest department that has a ton of information on all the forest areas in Karnataka that you can go to for treks. The only problem is that the site is short on detials of how you can go about this. They do have a lot of information for birdwatchers.

There seem to be a number of resorts around Bandipur and BR Hills that offer both a place to stay and safaris into the parks. I found two such resorts - Bushbetta and Tusker Trails.

Ullal Beach

Ullal Beach - nice and clean and very few people for most of the day

Mangalore Trip

Had gone to Mangalore - place called Summer Sands for a neural coding conference last week. Summer sands itself is fairly quaint and a bit rustic. The resort is on Ullal Beach which is very nice (rough seas though). The conference was really good, learnt a lot, especially about what I dont know. There were talks on Vision, models/algorithms for learning and cognition.

Good stuff and great food. I mention the food as my last meal there will be hard to forget :), there were 7 kinds of seafood - mussels, prawn, squid and four kinds of fish. I dont think I will ever have a meal like that again.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Watched the "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", horrible movie. It has a really lame plot/story set around the 1940's, about a mad german scientist who creates a rocket-ship noah's ark and wants to destroy the world.... need I say more? I watched the movie as it got some press for its special effects, the movie was mostly made using animations. The special effects are pretty good but its nowhere near enough to rescue the movie.

All in all, bad movie with a worse story, they do have the odd interesting concept thrown in, but please avoid otherwise.

India as an economic power

A lot has been said about where India stands as an economic power in the world and I'm guessing there are better people than me to opine on this. My curiosity was sparked by an article in the ET, which suggested that India had the fifth largest economy in the world at $2.6 trillion. On searching the web, turns out there are more places that suggest similar things. Its pretty staggering if you think about it, we are richer/more powerful than almost any country with 3 exceptions - the US, China, Japan. No more colonial mentality of thinking of western countries that are as big as some Indian states as 'rich countries'.

Except for one little hitch. Turns out that if you look at more reliable sources like the World Bank, we are about $590 billion in size and about 12th in world rankings. According to me, that's still great and wonderful. In these tsunami-ridden days, there is fresh fodder for thought, as probably for the first time in the history of India, we have refused all foreign aid. We are in fact offering some aid to smaller countries like Sri Lanka.

I'm not commenting on the merits of that decision but merely pointing out that as an Indian, I feel like the country finally has some kind of economic feet/grounding of its own based on which it can not only take care of its own but is capable of helping others. Pretty cool....

Your transgenic flourescent aquarium

Glo-fish is an innovatively named company that sells transgenic flourescent zebrafish. These fish were originally developed to act Pollution Indicators. Add that to your list of wierd things that can be bought on the internet.

BTW, ordinary zebrafish are work-fish of the developmental biology world. Its used as a 'model organism', as it is mostly transparent throughout its development making it ideal for genetic studies that affect cellular and tissue structure.

I'm Back

Ok folks, sorry about the long absence. After a week-long bout of fever and tension over my thesis seminar, I'm finally back on my feet and running. The thesis seminar went off very well and it was well recieved.

ps. Its Dr. B from now :)