Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Dressed for rain.

I hate rain. Observe the difference half an hour can make.

That is, apart from the water and slush that makes two-wheeler riders single-file into the higher ground in the middle of the road. Heavy rain also forces two-wheeler riders off the roads, who wait for a reliable sign of weakness to invade again.

And so peak-traffic hour on Bannerghatta road is stretched all the way to 11 PM, while it ends at 9 in the rest of the city.

I’m finding myself unusually energetic these days, but short on time. I have a bunch of geek project ideas, but they’ll each take 5-10 hours to execute, and I don’t have that. I used to go on long walks, but the rains have turned my walking route into slush. I could go to a fancy gym, but I don’t have that kind of money (still recovering from the cost of the phone). I could go dancing, but I don’t have a dance partner, and dance floors are stag-unfriendly.

I’m sitting here listening to high-energy pop music and hopping in my chair, and it’s not helping with my work at all.

Suggestions, anyone?

Geek gathering at Mahiti. Notice all of us have paper below optical mice.

They don’t work on glossy surfaces like polished wood, don’t work on non-textured surfaces, don’t work when there’s a large amount of incidental light. Every time I want to use mine, I have to go hunting for a piece of scrap printed paper. Plain paper won’t do either if there’s too much light, like from an open window.

I still use one though because it’s better than a trackpad, and it’s maintenance free.

I’m out for a midnight walk. The dogs around here aren’t very pleased with my disturbing the peace. Bannerghatta road is rarely this peaceful.

My home audio setup: this cordless headphone set transmits over FM to the audio system across the hall, which uses wiring within the walls to feed speakers in the four corners of the room. Current problems: the transmission is in mono and is very low power, so there’s some amount of background noise. I intend to switch to Philips’s infrared headphones, but I’ll have to rip apart out the electronics from the headphones to make the receiver. Future project, for when I have some spare time and cash, and Kishore’s free enough to do the actual grunt work with the electronics (not one of my skills).


And yes, those are mud pots the rear-surround speakers are sitting in. That was Kishore’s idea. Sadly the wiring linking them is a bit loose, so they’re frequently not playing anything.

…you come home and find your first floor* room covered with water that slipped in through the tiny gap between the balcony door and the doorsill.

* For the Yankees: in India floors are counted starting at zero.

A few more images inches and that shop floor will be underwater. But business continues for this hawker come water or slush.

Coffee Day is going to be the Indian Starbucks. Rivals Barista and Qwicky’s are a long way off.

The view from rashmiprasad‘s desk. I originally posted this last week, but it didn’t make it through. Hutch’s GPRS service dies frequently. I guess this is why it’s so cheap.

Remember a few months ago when Reliance and Tata cut up the roads to lay fibre-optic cable? Now these metal rods are rising from their graves all over Bannerghatta road.

For once, instead of saving the world, America accepts its role in destroying it. Perhaps the only redeeming scene in the movie is when Mexico shuts off the border to keep out American refugees.

In the spirit of flashmobs, we should call such phenomena flash-lj-meets.

Vibin is getting married July 8th.

You can’t miss the signs. Standing at this spot I can see twelve of this astrologer’s boards. He has the crossing completely surrounded.

Is Rahul the bike or its owner?

When there’s no candlelight, there’s always a cellular dinner.

Just thought I’d let you know that most of my pictures—and posts—go into jacemobile these days. The moblog’s agenda has stabilised: mostly funny sights, a few others when I want to record the moment.

Request For Comments on RFC.

Who wants to grab LinuxKumar.net?

The auto-focus mechanism in a modern camera (digital or film) uses a matrix sensor to examine the sharpness of the image coming out of the lens. Focus is adjusted to get the sharpest image possible.

Now, since the lens knows what focal length is required to get an object into focus, it presumably also knows the approximate distance to the object.

Take a device armed with this knowledge, throw in a GPS unit, digital compass and two dual-axis accelerometers (to measure tilt), and you have a device that knows the location of whatever you are looking at. Add a digital map, point your device at a nearby building, and it’ll tell you the name of the building and who occupies it. Imagine how useful such a device would be to a tourist, city surveyor or, (replacing GPS with a small-scale triangulation system,) museum visitor.

In other news, I went into Kishore’s room to verify technical details before posting here and he pointed at the circuit board he was soldering. On it were two dual-axis accelerometers mounted perpendicular to each other. That board is going to perform auto-pilot duties on his Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, which already has a video transmitter and GPS unit. Imagine video tagged with location information.

The number of things one can learn by dining at a self-serve restaurant across the street from a financial institute’s call centre!

Vehicles piled up below Hosur road flyover for shelter from the rain. I’m thoroughly drenched. Thankfully, my bag proved to be sufficiently waterproof and the laptop is safe. Since the monsoon has now set in for certain, I’m picking up a rain coat on the way home.