Nat Geo programs sucks

I really mean it. I had a couple of such bad experiences with Nat Geo. They do not really produce the program up to their hype. It is not about the content they present but the way the program is produced. It really sucks :-(

Nat Geo Investigates:
Slot: Weekdays @ 10 pm
The much hyped series is about Nat Geo investigating and throwing some light on the complicated investigations of major/critical accidents or incidents.

This program runs for an hour with commercial breaks in between. And after each break they recap the incidents from zero. I bet if you turn on to the program even on the last minute you should be able to catch up the crux of the investigation. They drag the program with no contents to cover up the entire slot.
They dilute the entire contents though they use advanced graphics and other technologies to re-enact the incidents.

Nat Geo Mission Udaan:
Slot: Sundays @ 10pm
From their website:
"Bombing orders, strategy meetings, top secret briefings. Everything that happens behind the closed doors of the IAF is about to be thrown open. Hear directly from the Marshal of the IAF as he tells you, in his own words, what it takes to keep the IAF fighting fit. ThereÂ’s only one show in the world that can show you all this. Nat Geo, in association with the Indian Air Force, presents Mission Udaan. A unique reality series that will take you right into the heart of the IAF."

On their first show yesterday they didn't keep up their words. I got really frustrated. I am a bit excited about planes and jets. Given a chance I wish I could know more about IAF, its operations and the jets. Nat Geo opened the show with a footage from Kargil and how the IAF helped Army to recapture the peaks. That is the end of it.

Then they showed the history of IAF and pre-independence existence. The one hour show went on without telling us about the current status of IAF and their capabilities. The program then took us to the selection of cadres which Nat Geo has organized in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and their process.

Does this program stick to the statement that is given?
I feel it is not worth tuning to Nat Geo any more.

ON@CC

One night @ Call Center is the novel that I read over the last week. It is by Chetan Bhagat, his second novel after the bestseller Fivepoint Someone novel. It is good to see an Indian writer writing novels targeting Indian readers and printed & published by an Indian publishing house (Ruppa & Co). The reason that I say that the novel targets Indian readers is because the story line is much more what you see around you.

In terms of my personal review, I feel that ON@CC has not made that good impact on me as Fivepoint Someone did. I think the following are the reasons
1. The author picks the same personal narrative style used in his previous novel. He tells the story through the character.
2. The qualities of the hero is as same as the one in Fivepoint Someone. An average guy who lacks self-confidence.
3. The hero-in fills the same quarters of the story as characterized in the previous novel. The hero and hero-in goes for dates and have physical relationships.
4. Finally the hero recognizes his potential gains confidence.

At the outset the storyline feels one and the same.
The usage of simple and less complicated words makes much sense for the Indian public as the majority are not that well articulated. The less confusing plot also adds up the point.

Birthday

It is my 27th Birthday. The day break passed on smoothly without much fanfare which use to happen in college days. I guess all of us are growing up so no more bumps. Got a whole lot of wishes from friends in all circles.

Bangalore Traffic

I was not used to bangalore traffic until recently. My office use to reside pretty close (2-3 kms) to my residence and I do not cross major roads or traffic signals. When people complained about traffic snarls and crumbling infrastructure, it made very little sense to me. Though I understand their concerns, it wasn't pain in the butt for me.

Now I need to do a long (8-9 kms) daily commute to the office. And I go through Koramangala inner ring road, Domlur junction and Airport Road. All these roads are pretty congested during the peak hours and now I really feel the pain in the butt. On an average with average traffic the commute takes about 25 mins. The same commute during peak hours jumps twice that is, takes 50 - 60 mins.

I do see a lot many ways to improve the traffic congestion.
1. Sync-up the traffic signals
2. Place bus-stops at less congested places (Only in bangalore I have seen bus-stops immediately after a turn which adds up to the traffic woes)
3. Put proper medians along the road
4. Construct Fly-overs for congested junctions

The incessant rains has done enough damage to road surfaces. Take a look of the potholes that has been left in the city roads from bangalorepothole site.

Natwar in bench

You might be aware of the recent news about Volcker report and its repercussions. Natwar Singh has been striped off his external affairs portfolio, which literally means that he is in bench now.

Gmail down

It seems that GMail is suffering. I have never noticed this long down time period for GMail. I guess something majorly got messed up. I see lot of people also reporting the same.

CellOne Plan 100 for Central/State govt employees

Quiet a novel and useful way to catch market.

BSNL CellOne has introduced a cheap post paid plan for Central/State government employess "Plan 100".
With monthly rental of 100 Rs and rest other deposits and connection charges waived off, this is quiet a good plan to opt for low call volume government servants. This will rake up the number of mobile connections that BSNL CellOne will own.

Logistical failure of movie halls in Erode

Last weekend I along with my parents and brother went for a movie (Ghajini, the latest release in Tamil staring Surya and Asin) in Erode. It is very rare that we go out for a movie. One reason being that my parents are not movie buffs (they like to peacefully relax at home munching snacks in the evening).

So the evening unfolded as myself and my brother went ahead to book tickets for the movie. The movie hall doesn't have a booking. Second major logistical failure is that the tickets doesn't have seat number. So after getting the ticket you have rush to the hall to secure your seats. Pathetic :-). This rule is same for all class of tickets right from second, first class and even for Balcony.

One good thing is that TamilNadu government has banned smoking and spitting in movie halls. So the canteen no more sell Cigarettes, Paans and Gutkas. Way to go!

Ganguly hate site

Ganguly has gone to an extent of attracting a hate site in his name. Hate sites are very rare in India.
www.ihateganguly.com

Wi-fi access in Legend Koramangala

Just had been to the restaurant Legend in Koramangala. I am bit astonished to see that the restaurant being Wi-Fi enabled. It is free of cost. Carry your Wi-fi enabled laptop, get hooked to 512 kbps connection, carry on with your business while munching your lunch/tiffon.

Gmail Auto save feature

Gmail has a new Auto save feature. It is a boon. I use to loose mail contents that I had typed because of combination of enabling keyboard shortcuts and auto refresh of gmail.

Most of the time when I am mid-way typing the mail, a refresh would take the focus away from the TextField and Gmail web app responds to the keyboard enteries as shortcuts discarding the mail contents that I had typed.

The auto save feature saves a draft every few minustes and I will not be loosing contents badly as I was.

CCD advisory notice from Canon, Sony,...

Close on the heels of Canon's advisory notice to customers on faulty CCD in their camera's many other digital camera manufacturers have also provided advisory notices.

Canon
Sony
Fuji
Konica - Minolta
Olympus

Canon Customer Service responsiveness

As I posted earlier about my camera problem, I had been in touch with the Canon Service Center representatives in India. They are polite and responsive. Approchable through email and you get prompt replies. They have adviced me to give my camera for repair to M/s Deendhayal camera & co in bangalore.

I am keeping my fingers crossed till I receive my camera back with free CCD replacement or repair.

Darshan of Lord Muruga

Was on vacation over last week (12 to 16 Oct). Made a dashing trip to Palani hills to salvage the pilgrimage desire of my parents. The new addition to Palani is the Rope car facility (as I posted earlier, no photos due to faulty camera). Rope car makes the trek up the hill easier. It is the same one you see in movies that hangs and moves across valleys. The winch car is still operational, but used less as it is not that efficient in handling crowd.

The rope car is quiet fast as it takes 3 mins for one way ride and can carry 4 people. You have to shell out Rs 15 per head for the one way trip. Rest other things are as usual. Since this time there were less number of devotees, the place seemed a bit neat than I expected.

I had two good dharshans of lord Muruga.

Exporting RSS subscriptions using OPML

By now most of us would have got to know that Google has released RSS Reader beta. As usual I wished I could give it a try. I had been using bloglines for the past 6 months or so and wanted to checkout what google has in its store to offer.

Both bloglines and google offers you to export and import your subscriptions using OPML. Oh heavens..What a cool way to migrate things across products. I realized the power of open standards.

It will be really beneficial if even other competitive products start supporting open standards.

Combo pack

During shopping in large shops/malls you always come across combo pack or offer. Say for instance you can get three tees for some money rather than picking them individually. Price wise it always makes sense, since it gets you the best offer, but on the choice wise you are fooled.

Out of the three tees, I am damn sure that one will be useless (bright red / maroon/ yellow color simply which you can not wear). What a trick these marketing guys play with you? They rip your money by getting you a simply useless offer.

Canon Powershot A70 imaging problem

What to say... it is a pure coincidence.

I own a Canon Powershot A70 digital camera bought on Aug 2003 from US. It is pretty good in performance and quality of pictures. Over a past couple of months it showed me some signs of problem. Intermittently it failed to powerup properly, in the shooting mode, I will see blank screen on the lcd.

I guessed that it could be a problem related to Ni-MH recharagable batteries. After doing some research on the Ni-MH battery lives, I found that Ni-MH batteries do get crystallized over the period of use. Then I came to a logical conclusion that the batteries need to be replaced. I bought a new set of Energizer Ni-MH batteries for use.

Even after using the new set of batteries the intermittent problem still remained. Today when I powered on my camera in shooting mode, I saw a blurred image appearing through the lcd. That seemed to me as if the CCD has worn out. The photos that I took also came distorted.

When I started checking my bloglines today morning, I found from dpreview that Canon has advised users about the same problem that I am facing. They are offering a free service. But am I eligible is the million dollar question?

Since I bought this camera from Amazon through net shopping, I do not have a receipt for the same. I do have the order information and Voucher from Amazon. But still will it be a valid proof. I am planning to give it a try by calling their customer care.

Will update more as I go through this.

Sleep Deprivation

I had been under sleep deprivation for the past couple of days due to some pressing work. Over these days the deprivation had a detrimental effect on my concetration and energy. I felt dousy all through the day and over the end of day I had very little concetration left with me. This made me to miss a couple of important points.

Bangalored

Krish gives a new meaning of being bangalored in his blog post. Read through it.

Form factor

As per Moore's law, every 18 months computing power doubles. I found a similar empirical formula on the form factor. Every 24 months the form factor decreases by 2 folds.

Here are some comparisons...

Canon Powershot A 70 camera (bought in Aug 2003) - uses 4 AA size batteries
Canon Powershot SD 300 (bought in Sep 2005) - uses Lithium ion battery

Both cameras roughly has the same set of features, but the form factor has decreased by a factor of 2. Even in this case I could say it decreased by a factor of 3 or 4.

Similarly the CF card
SanDisk 256 MB CF card - bought in Aug 2003
SanDisk 512 MD SD card - bought in Sep 2005

Both has form factor difference of similar calibre.

Apple iPod Mini
Apple iPod Nano

iPod nano has really flattened everything that Mini had. Nano even had a special flattened pin for USB connectivity.