Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

This fellow soared in through my window, landed on the couch, gave me the stare, and vamoosed before I could reach for the camera. Then I found him doing stretching exercises on the bar.

I’m seeing speckles in my images. The size varies depending on the aperture size. I’ll take this to mean that the dust is on the lens, not on the CCD. I cleaned both ends of the lens, but it’s still there. Could this mean the dust is inside the lens?

Could do with some adjustment to the white balance, don’t you think? Done. There’s dirt on my lens.

Shivanahalli is a small hamlet 34km south of Bangalore. The Ramakrishna mission has a local branch (with it’s own website!) that runs a free elementary school for kids in the neighbourhood. These nursery level kids found my bike’s helmet lock fascinating. They wanted to try on my helmet, but couldn’t figure out how it was attached to the bike.

The school has a library and computer lab, both amazingly well stocked with books and CDs, two hand-looms and a power-loom that students use to weave fabric for sale, and an astronomy observatory with a 6-inch telescope.

The resident head, whose office has only two walls with trees for the third, says the surrounding jungle is good for bird watching. He said he can send someone along as a guide. I’m planning to go back there next Saturday and spend a day with the kids. Anyone want to come along?

Photography day with sriniram and sunson.

Three men in a rickshaw.

So the clever schmucks who are digging up my area to create a covered drain have decided to leave no space for vehicles to pass through. When taking my bike out in the morning, I asked one of the diggers how I was to get it across. He said “what do I know” (in Kannada). The neighbours didn’t take out any of their vehicles. Now they are marooned for a week until the concrete on the drain sets. Of course, the drain diggers have cleverly topped their drains half a foot above road level (on the lanes completed so far), making it incredibly difficult for vehicles to turn into them.

vinit, the lucky bum, has a penthouse apartment with an uninterrupted view of the Vidhana Soudha. But Mr Vijay Mallya is ensuring his luck doesn’t last much longer, courtesy the new UB City buildings. The Vidhana Soudha is already lost on the horizon between the two uprisings.

Who wants a “piece” of the action?

Kishore found this in a restroom somewhere. I think at Honeywell.

Imagine a desk job that involves sitting in the loo, watching people piss ten feet from you. Imagine doing this all day, every day of the week.

Private screening via the ventilator.

In today’s installment of Banglore road madness, here is a bus with three rear wheels. Sorry about the poor pictures. I was riding one-handed.

The view from the trenches.

What happens when you let girls near programmers’ computers.

Price list outside a chicken shop that’s closed for the night. For a moment I thought this was an ad for a kindergarten school.

If they made a gangster movie starring stray dogs, here is the lead cast. At least 15 were engaged in a face-off when I arrived. They dispersed at the sight of the camera.

Instructions for using a faucet at Woody’s in Jayanagar. People need instructions that say you don’t have to do anything?

We found this bus abandoned in JP Nagar, lights on and blinking. The lane’s blocked because the other half has been dug up. Only two wheelers can squeeze past. Naturally, there’s a queue and lots of honking.

I’ve been going nuts with Skype all of today. Spent an hour talking to sriniram and significant parts with various others around the country and beyond. The voice quality is amazing. No speakerphone has given me this quality. Some of the connections were poor, but the other side said they could hear me clearly. I guess it’s bandwidth dependant.

I’m not using a headset. I’m speaking into the microphone built into my laptop, and listening on attached speakers positioned just behind. There is no feedback. Either Skype is doing an excellent job of filtering out feedback, or my hardware is doing it. I think it’s Skype, because the remote side can hear other sounds playing out of my speakers.

It’s amazing to be able to just speak into my screen and go about using the computer like always. No holding an instrument to the ear, no adjusting a headset to ensure it’s positioned right, no worrying about background noise cutting off the remote side like with a regular speakerphone.

I’m very impressed.

Look carefully at the long one in the middle. It says “Bloody-Merry” ice-cream. Maybe they should call it the vampire special.