for the life of I, what’s with me

i get a pair of Olympus binocs (10×50 DPS I). then go to a star party at Hosahalli, a village 60kms from B’lore, have a ball with the stars, stay awake almost all the night. my binocs hold up pretty well against the night sky (i can see upto 7.5 magnitude).

i get 29.5 out of 40 marks in my french language test.

i go to the Jog falls again. this time, i leave no stones unturned. bathe under the curtain of water on the right. then go to the very base of the falls on the left (called Raja i think).

have to change 8 buses to get to my hometown, where we celebrate the Ganapathi festival. all that travelling gives me a chance to catch up on reading.

Pluto (a puny rock somewhere) loses planetary status. what are people complaining about! fewer things to memorise at school.

i plan a trek to Sikkim in Oct!

turns out that the surface of the sun is actually quite rocky & solid. (dunno if that is a hoax though).

i am falling in love with colors. can’t get enough of them. (ok, details later)

i design a logo for dreamroutes. these wikis need all the love you can give.

(at first glance this might seem like a peek into a deranged mind, which it indeed is. (dunno why we typed this) (us.. we like playing with brackets.. and our masters’ minds.. stop.. where is our precious!))

the ring

wrought in the fire of the primordial earth. the selfish gene. double helixed. with a will of its own. shapes the hearts and minds of men, and corrupts them, with equal skill. the more you try to escape it, the more it pulls you back. oh! to go back to the mountains, and destroy it, in the land where it was forged…

i can hardly wait.

jog falls

6 of us. train to shimoga. tea at 5.30 am in shimoga station. empty station, with a Tim Burton-ish feel to it. very very queer train to Talguppa. some bizzare contraption, born out of a hideous mind. it’s a modified bus (actually two buses joined together), that runs on tracks. stops at all road crossings for road vehicles to pass by. how bizarre, how bizzare! at every crossing, the train stops, the guard gets down and opens the gate, then the train moves past the gate and stops, the guard gets in again, and the train moves on. we spend 4 hours in this little circus. to restore sanity we play “antakshari”. French Beard (FB) sang dozens of songs (with complete lyrics and dramatics) and even sung some qawaalis.

then jog falls. team treks down to the bottom. pharaoh, BLD and FB push forward, to the very base of the waterfall, about ten meters away from the rocky wall behind the fall. here the fury of the water-drops and mists is mind boggling. we can barely open our eyes in the streaming rain and gusts of mist. we catch glimpses of the waterfall once in a while, though.

we are just about to head back, when FB finds a great chasm in the rocks, which protects us from the mists. and this is where we get the best view of the waterfall, down under. the thing doesn’t look tall visually; you can only feel it’s might. time gets dilated. the water appears to drop in slow motion; breaks into smaller and smaller rivulets, and then into foam, and then fountains of mists, and the mist whirls around us from all directions. surely we will savour that memory for the rest of our respective lives.

while climbing back up, i notice another little waterfall (well, little compared to the great Jog), and we three head there to take a bath. this place was just ..um.. lovely. there was a little niche, where you could sit and very forceful water would fall around you. oooh! nothing can beat this. we come back to bangalore the same day.

Fed up with Orkut

I can’t bear to see such a good service going to the dogs. Why can’t Google gather it’s massive funds & technical talents to clean up it’s act.

This lady had posted several use-case improvements long back. They are all easy to implement and yet none of them have been implemented so far! I liked the “graduated friends” scheme a lot. There are so many people whom you would like to add as an acquaintance, and promote to friend only later.

Here is a list of technical improvements I can think of,

• Media
  • Personal Photo albums – more number of photos, integrate with Google Picassa
  • Image posting in threads/forums
    Granted, some of these improvements can make life more difficult (think pornography, harassment, etc), but that’s not a technical problem. It exists even now, and should be addressed with manual intervention.
• Design
  • Themes, Color schemes. God, even I can teach my 4 year old cousin to write CSS. And oh, it can potentially reduce server load too.
  • Placement of Ads. The less said the better
• Forums
  • Multiple moderators
  • Email notifications / RSS feeds for new posts
  • Longer topic(s) view (the default view shows only 5 topics! yuk!?)
  • Threaded view for messages

The latest irritant is a “word verification” feature that is extremely annoying. It refuses to go off, even though the word is typed correctly. (either that, or I have lost my vision completely).

The list of improvements can go on and on. But what’s the point! Orkut is Google’s step child.

.wanton lack of direction.

.telescopes.
good & steady progress with mirror grinding. it’s tiring work, but it’s fun to see something take shape in my hands.

then, a friend lent me a somewhat old telescope & a 20 mm eyepiece for my viewing pleasure. it’s a 6″ f/7, which means i get about 50x magnification. i was able to see the Moon, Jupiter (and what i think was Europa), and some stars.

i will have to wait for more clear skies though, to see other objects.

.rafting.
did some rafting in Sitanadi with Adreno. grade 2 rapids. nothing great, but it was fun. slightly steep price of about Rs 900.

then we went for a trek to Koodlu teertha. scenery was awesome. had too much adventure (of the wrong kind) as usual along the way. crossed a really fast n gushing river, and then got stuck on the other side. a friend who tried to cross to my side, got washed off, but thankfully did’nt get hurt. we both ended up on the same side. he tried to cross-back twice, but got washed away again. we spent the night on the other side, amidst snakes, leeches, and what not. couldn’t complete the trek. so next day, were back.

.other odd bits.
i dunno how effective the much touted electric cars are.. are they really efficient and green? what about the electricity generation plants.. don’t they pollute the environment? (apart from the hydro-electric projects, that is).

but anyway, here are some new leads,
Tesla Motors and an article on them. apparently our own home-brewn Reva isn’t that well known to the foreign junta yet.