tv serials....

When I look back for memories related to tv serials...  mostly I see cartoons.  :-)

I was never interested in popular serials of time like Hamlog or later Ramayan
The ones I used to like were giant robot, HE-MAN, duck tales, Fireball XL5.among the cartoons and then chitrahaar,laurel & Hardy, surabhi  among others.
the options being so small in numbers, we could not afford to miss ;-)

So Sunday morning 9:00 I would be ready in front of tv for morning dose of Mickey,&HE-MAN and duck tales.
Then I would go out to play only to return at 12:00 for "Fun Time".

All these cartoons have played a big role in making me a big enthusiast in science and technology I believe. It all starts with the giant robot, but there were others too like the vehicle used by HE-MAN that had a unique sliding+ rotating mechanism to take it forward instead of wheels or the way fireball XL5 used to take off, in a horizontal direction rather than vertical take off by conventional rockets.

They seemed so logical within boundaries of their world.  This is one thing I generally don't like about today's cartoons, they just seem to exaggerate things just for sake of creating a funny scene. there is neither logic nor touch of real world.
Original episodes of Tom and Jerry are best example of this, watch "Yankee Doodle Mouse " episode.

Since the programs were few,  there was an excitement to watch....  I do not get that feeling anymore in channel surfing  :-(

A tv to remember

Few days back, around 1:00 night.
I had just come from office and was having dinner.
Parallelly channel surfing was on. All of a sudden i saw that one of the channel was showing that familier old screen of vertical stripes of various colours. An indicator that the channel is off the air.

I just could not believe it. I just stared at it for a couple of minutes in sheer amusement. In the age of 24x7 channels i never expected to see those stripes. Sure enough it was some regional Doordarshan.

Those stripes brought up so many childhood memories when TV used to be a prized posession.
Black and white tv's , tv's with wooden shutter doors and lock. Those knobs for changing channels and volume.
Days when number of channels used to be 12 or 16. Someone would proudly say that their tv has 20 channels. But in the end there were only 2 channels to watch.

Sometimes the picture would be disturbed and then someone would go and tweak a small knob at the backside of the tv. Or worst case scenario would be to go to the rooftop and rotate the antenna.

Another thing was related to colour tv's. With most of the tv's being black and white, a colour tv was an object of desire. And i remember one of my uncles putting up a coloured glass on black and white tv to make it a "colour tv"

Along with tv came all those fvourate programs that form an important part of my childhood memories.
But i think i will put up a separate post.

Rooting out corruption....beyond Anna Hajaare...

Anna Hajare's campaign for lokpal bill seem to have settled down a little. A few protests and lot of politics.
But is that all?
Will the lokpal will be able to curb all the corruption? I doubt.

It will be effective if at all against only one type of corruption where the official demands the bribe from unwilling citizen. But is that the only type of corruption that prevail in the country?
There is another scenario where corruption is mutual.
For example when a contractor pays bribe to an engineer to pass quality checks on his low quality work.
I believe that the common laws of demand and supply that govern other markets, govern this bribe market too.

Every coin has 2 sides.... they accept and demand more bribes because we pay them. But why we pay it?
Two - three major reasons.... we ourselves are doing something illegal or unethical...or we do not have patience for the normal course of system to complete.... or just to show our power and influence that we can bend the system.

This last point has become sort of fashion in society. Following rules has become a sign of lesser souls and since this has become a sort of social norm everybody tries to break the rule whenever possible.
We try to jump the signal , not to wear the helmet and then try to bribe the traffic police.
Many times we just want to short circuit the process. How many times we break the queue for bus or for railway ticket etc? Many times people just do it without feeling anything wrong about it.
As long as these things have social acceptance, we can never root out corruption.

I remember one add of tata tea which targeted corruption, it said, "woh khaate hain kyoki hum khilaate hain". How true!
No doubt sometimes we get trapped by these corrupt people who take advantage of we being in need and then we have no option but to heed. Like TC in long distance train or the cooking gas distribution agents etc.
But even there i feel it is our fault if we give in even without protesting or complaining to respective authorities.

Anna's campaign is just one side of the coin.
The way we behave and react forms the other side.

My digital problem

Just installed Ubuntu 11.4 shall test it for a few days and then move on from 10.4...

While burning the ISO to CD i thought how fast this technology changes. A new version every now and then. You have to keep upgrading or risk being obsolete.

This is not much of a problem as far as upgrade of OS is concerned... but a serious problem when it comes to storage media :-(
Today I was able to write to a CD ... but will I be able to do it 10 years down the line? I may not be. Forget writing...will i be able to read my existing CDs?
Even that is doubtful with advent of blue ray technology.
A am already unable to read old floppy disks from my college days.

Analog stuff has got advantages here for its all open to see...understand and reconstruct.

If We can find 1000 year old book...we can still read it if we know the language. In case we are unable to understand then still we can keep it till discovery of some Rosetta stone that will help us understand the content. But the content itself is not gone.
Now imagine if a CD or DVD from today's age is somehow found a 1000 years later... will the content be there? I doubt. Now even if it is there, it is not in human readable format. So practically it is as good as lost. Only that knowledge will survive which someone bothered to transfer from one storage type to another as the older types become obsolete...
Another thing is the life of storage.
CD has its own lifespan due to its chemical composition. All the magnetic storages too have limited life for retaining content. I guess around 20-30 years... but that is too short of lifespan when compared to human history.

Another point is that all these magnetic storages are again vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse bombs...single bomb can make all the electronic devices in the area useless by coping out any instructions / data stored in magnetic storage
Internet seem to be one answer but again that is based on same electronic components...and so in my opinion subject to same risks...

My question is simple...will it be able to survive data for a thousand years...that too in a way that can be read and attempted to be interpreted by the inhabitants of this planet.....? :-)

End of chavanni....alias chaarane....alias 25 paise.

Effective 1st july... 25 paise coins officially went out of circulation.
of course they were out unofficially long ago with even beggers refusing to accept them.

To me it marks end of an era. of course this is not the first set of coins to go out... 5,10and 20 paise coin also went out of circulation since my birth... but they did not matter that much since they had already lost  their value by the time i got some currency in my tiny hands...

Most revered memory for 25 paise so far is the parle kisme chocolate... in red wrapper. other things include small packet of papermints... and sugar candies...5 for 25 paise :-)

For years I have been hearing from my father and many others from the grandpa generation about how a lot lot many things could be purchased in a single rupee... and entire household would run on mere 100 rupees and so on... now I also have something to say about 25 paise to my daughter :-)

One interesting thing is that still fractions of a rupee are recognised  with names of their colonial era equivalents. chavanni in hindi or charane in marathi both refer to "4 aana".
Back from the days when a rupee was made up of "16 aana". Its still common to say "16 aana sach"  meaning complete truth. or a movie " aamdani atthani kharcha rupiah" referring again to "8 aana".
or the referance to "chavanni kam hain" when indicating that someone is stupid.

Even when out of official circulation.... chavanni will definately remain part of our collective wisdom and memories in man ways.

From Patni to iGate-Patni

Somehow my fate seem to be tied up with take overs....
This is third time I find myself associated with an organisation where some merger/acquisition process is going on...

First time it was at ABN AMRO take over by RBS... I was onsite at ABN that time.

second time it was the Lehman brother's take over by Barkley's and Nomura for respective regions .... i was part of Lehman brothers at that time...

And this is third time now that I have become a part of Patni which has just been taken over by iGate.

This time it looked to be a lot more smooth transition. No major impact for employes apart from few policies and email address. No stress or anxiety especially.

Lehman brothers transition was full of stress and uncertanity. To an extent where everyone was asked to be ready with plan B just in case.
ABN was also smooth as such but I had observed a lot of uneasiness and anxiety among the employees regarding their future.

This Patni takeover also gives me a feeling of life coming to full cycle. Look at it this way,
N.R.Narayana Murthy was employee of Patni. He moves on from patni to start Infosys.
Phaneesh Murthy was employee of Infosys who moved on and later joined iGate as CEO.
Under his leadership iGate took over Patni where NRN had started off....
the cycle completes :-)

Something a little out of context but still....
I just read an interview of Mr. Phaneesh Murthy where he stressed on strategy of having small but cohesive teams.

This reminds me of the battle strategy used by Napoleon Bonaparte where he used to win battles by achieving local superiority (e.g. battle of Austerlitz ).
He would use small teams to hold the enemy forces and then send a strong and swift Calvary or other army unit to join those local forces and defeat the enemy forces by achieving local superiority...
then those units would move on and repeat same at next location...this way they could beat enemy forces significantly larger in size....
Being the latest entrant in the billion dollar club.... can we do the same and win over biggies already in there? Just a random thought...

Unsung heros...

Since past few days there are constant news about the nuclear disaster at Fukushima power plant. They generally talk about a 50 member team that had stayed back and is trying to avert the complete meltdown of the refractors

I was overwhelmed by the story. It is something similar to the duty of a soldier... you know that you may not come out alive but still you go into the war... they too know that they may not come out alive and even if they do, they would be suffering for rest of their life.....

now, It is hardly any days.... world cup has taken over the news headlines.... all those heroes are already a history

It remind me of two movie dialogues.... one from Troy..... "history remember kings.... not soldiers....." very true in this case.... same like 26/11 heroes in Mumbai....

Another one is from movie Saving Private Ryan where Tom Hanks says something like 'for every soldier died in war there are at 10 or 100 countrymen saved....' this one also so much true....

What makes people think on these lines?
They will to fight till the very end... sometimes called esprit de corps...  may be from the cultural background...may be the same dedication has made Japan progress so much.
This again I feel would go cutting across geographies and civilisations....

Even Mahabharata says that if sacrifice of a member for family..... of a family for a village or of a village is required in interest of the state then it should be done....

but does that mean that just after they are needed.... they should be forgotten?
forget the rewards, they or their families may times are seen struggling even for basic necessities....

why would then a practical man risk his own life for sake of people whom he may not even know and who may not not even recognise his efforts....
but still it happens.... still we see so many social activists who take up the causes of society and fight for them....it has happened throughout the history and will continue to happen...

because no king can win even a battle single handed without his soldiers. ultimately it is because of these silent soldiers that the wars are ultimately won and societies flourish... and advance...