Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Presenting the coated-paper banana leaf, complete with ridges where the leaf’s skeleton would be. Technology catching up with tradition?

In Hyderabad. I’m told this is a common spelling these days. It would be clever in a place requesting a queue, but in a hotel?

Thanks to sidcarter, I have a working Rio Carbon again. My disk in his Carbon. I took Khader out to dinner at Shiok in exchange. Kishore’s going to do final surgery tomorrow to mix the best parts (Khader’s case is slightly dented, mine isn’t). A happy end to a sad story. :-)

What joy! This week’s dating section has no girls looking for guys. The much anticipated event has finally happened. Isn’t it curious that while dating services struggle to work in this country, matrimonial services are such a huge success? Or is it just that it sucks because it’s run by IndiaTimes, which has an outstanding track record for lousy websites?

Riding a rickshaw. The suspension’s so terrible that every ounce of loose fat in my body is getting shaken vigorously. Didn’t expect to be reminded of my poor exercise habits in this manner. Didn’t expect the roads to be this terrible either.

I’ve attempted several things over the years. Some have been successful, and some have not. OgleTech is one of the latter. Maybe it will be back some day with a real sense of purpose and accompanying drive, and maybe it won’t. Don’t hold your breath.

The domain will be taken offline shortly, after we’ve moved the meagre contents elsewhere and fixed links from around the web. I’d rather see the site offline than left lying around stillborn.

Curious about the name? It came up in 2001, when sumod and I were discussing names for the various sections of Chip magazine (later renamed Digit), for the annual revision. I came up with “Oggle Tech” for the section on drool-worthy technology, especially gadgets. Sumod loved the name but disagreed on the spelling (he was right; I thought “Ogle” didn’t have the same punch). We took the list to Gourav Jaswal with much delight, but he discarded the name without as much as a second glance. The section eventually came to be known as the rather tame “Drool Maal”.

Years passed but the name stuck in my mind. I no longer liked the idea of dedicating pages to drool-worthy gear. That isn’t how geeks do it. Geeks build their own gear. Geeks abuse their gear. Geeks respect gear that survives heavy use, not gear that looks good but doesn’t work.

And so in June 2004, irq2 and I cooked up OgleTech.com as a site for weathered tech and techies, as a site to describe the gear we actually use, of what has survived long term use, of what we actually depend on versus what we drool over.

As you’ve probably noticed, half the web is dedicated to exactly this. OgleTech was destined stillborn, and destiny has come out trumps. The name “OgleTech” itself doesn’t help. When you start with saying “Look at me, I’m so cool,” it’s a pretty hard act to deliver on.

We live and we learn. Maybe one day we’ll learn what to do with it. I’m still in love with the name.

For now, rest in peace, OgleTech.

Blah.

Take away car service. Nice concept.

In finding happiness, I lost my voice.
And out of the resulting discontent, a new voice struggles with its first words.

Despite this, the facility served water in plastic cups. Who is “you”? The facility, the party renting it out, or the individual invitee?

One department of the government insists all vehicles must have registration numbers in “English numerals”. Another department of the government fails to comply. So much for internal coordination.

I’m back home now and finally able to catch up with ten days of email and LJ. Asia Source was great. It’s going to take me ages to follow up on all the leads.

To start with, Ethan Zuckerman held a brief session on blogging (that I unfortunately missed) where he described Technorati. I’ve been aware of Technorati for a while but not been interested since it seemed like some kind of a mutual back-patting club. Ethan convinced me to look again, so I got myself an account.

The sign-up process requires that I make a post with this link: Technorati Profile.

The Unknowns played here yesterday and were excellent as usual. I was rather unsuccessful at trying to get a single picture that captured the mood of the show, and in the frustration, took to shooting in continuous mode and made a stop-motion video. 263 frames at ~3fps, 5.9 MB, accelerated to play for about a minute.

See the video »

For the geeks, here’s how it’s done (condensed from

Read on...

So this dude just walked over my laptop… and it survived, despite the terrible crunch. I don’t know whether to be thankful for the titanium casing, or for that I was reaching for his foot to pry it off before he could raise the other.

In other news, my battery lasts barely over an hour now. I need a new battery. And more RAM and a bigger disk. And a faster processor, USB 2.0, internal Bluetooth, 802.11g, … and the list keeps growing. It’s starting to look like I should save a few months and get a new PowerBook instead of upgrading this one in parts.

Asia Source is being simultaneously an uplifting and a humbling experience. Another two days to go. I’m going to miss being in the company of these people in such a wonderful setting.

Like it says. The tea’s excellent.

The irony of a Do Not Litter notice staring at you out of a litter can.

So this train’s stopped squat in the middle of a crossing. The gates have been closed for over ten minutes, and people are visibly agitated. What do some enterprising pedestrians do? They walk up to the train, get on it, off the other side, and out the barrier, on their way again. (Update) The train’s gone, but barriers are still down. Third train in 15 minutes is here, and this one has stopped too. Bah!