Ignited Minds

Online shopping

2010-05-07T05:18:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to find out what are the online shopping portals in India. I have resolved to buy as much online as possible.www.homeshop18.comshopping.indiatimes.comwww.naaptol.comwww.ebay.inwww.retailsdirect.comwww.futurebazaar.comwww.infibeam.comwww.indiaplaza.inshopping.rediff.comwww.onlinedeals.inWhat do you think is the best online shopping portal in India?

Open Source SCADA tools

2010-04-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

The following are some Open Source Web based SCADA tools. Web based SCADAs are cool because you get to do the process visualization through a browser. So it works irrespective of the machine or the environment and you don't need to install any software into the client machine.1. PVbrowser2. Mango Open source M2M3. Open SCADA4. VISUALSome more are here.Nice book on architecture of Web Based SCADA

OpenWRT hacks

2009-02-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

Off late Art of Livng and my work at BARC have consumed me quite a bit and theres hardly any time left for hacking or blogging. I would say today after almost a month, I could steal quite some time to stick my head out and see whats happening around. The world has been as good and interesting. For example this thing called OpenWRT rocks. I was fed up with the Linksys and DLink routers not

Ratan Tatas Vision

2009-02-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

As Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group of companies, observed in an interview with The Times of London: "A bunch of entrepreneurs could establish an assembly operation and Tata Motors would train their people, would oversee their quality assurance and they would become satellite assembly operations for us. So we would create entrepreneurs across the country that would produce the car (Tata

Quiz -1

2009-01-03T01:29:00.000-08:00

I wrote this letter to a professor. Who am I and who is the professor I am writing to?I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of 20 pounds per annum. I am now about 26 years of age. I have had no university education... being inexperienced I would very highly value any advice you give me.

PAN IIT 2008

2008-12-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have reached Chennai to attend the PAN IIT 2008 Global Conference at IIT Madras. My brothers place here has BSNL unlimited internet connection @512kbps. Its 2:30 AM and I am still glued to the PC. My brother has bought this book by Nandan Nilekani " Imagining India" and we are excited to get it autographed by Nilekani himself at the venue. This

Local trains jump

2008-11-14T04:32:00.000-08:00

Its a well known fact that the local trains in Mumbai run on DC or AC from the wires hanging on the top. But theres always a single conductor. The return path for the current is through the track because the wheels touch the track. This is how the current flows into the ground. But the problem comes when due to track irregularities the train jumps and gets disconnected with the track. For this

Its my birthday today

2008-11-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

This is interesting:I have lived for 1. 10,227 days2. 883,612,800 seconds3. 14,726,880 minutes4. 245,448 hours 5.1461 weeksTaken from timeanddate.com

Please use twitter

2008-11-02T02:47:00.000-08:00

Twitter has made me lazy. Now its time for micro-blogging. Found this thing called http://instructables.com. Beautiful, I had once thought about this idea.Follow MIT techreview on twitter. Thats mind blowing.

Tools that I have been using

2008-11-02T02:24:00.000-08:00

1. Scribe fire for writing blogs2. Twitbin and twitter bar for posting3. Vakow for sending SMS to friends (somebody write a extension)4. Jeteye for writng notes5. Chatzilla for IRC6. Picasa for Photographs7. Download helper for youtube8. Delicious and Digg for bookmarking9. Jamendo for music10. pidgin is my messenger11. PIM is my address book12, Thunderbird my mail client13. kwallet my password

CERNs LHC will be up and running tomorrow

2008-09-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

The world's largest and perhaps the most exciting experiment ever to be conducted is going to start tomorrow. At CERN, in Geneva, on 10th Sept, the first beam of protons will start circulating in the ring at the Large Hadron Collider .. in about a month, beams will travel in opposite directions, smashing particles against each other, and (hopefully) mimicking conditions in the Big Bang !http:

Web 2.0

2008-08-16T04:25:00.000-07:00

See the cloud tags that I have recently added for my labels on blogger. Tagging is the essence of any social networking application. And social networking is the essence of all Web 2.0 (W2) applications. If you have been using Delicious or Digg for sometime now, you know what I am talking about. Prior to W2, information on the web didn't have a subjective touch. If you searched for something,

OLPC India Day

2008-07-27T01:40:00.001-07:00

PAN IIT 2008

2008-07-21T12:17:00.001-07:00

1. Discovered Pyra today, the original people who started the blogger wayback in 2001. The idea initially was called "Web enabled Internet log pages".http://pyra.com2. The PAN IIT global conference this year will be held between 19th to 21st Dec 08 at IITM. The list of speakers include L N Mittal, C K Pralhad,FM P Chidambaram,Bob McDonald,Carlos Ghosn and Stephen Cohen. I dont know most of these

Tell two jokes and get into BARC

2008-07-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Johnny, usually a naughty school kid is looking out of the window when the teacher is in the class. The teacher says 'Johny, why are you looking at the monkeys outside when I am there in the class".My friend Nagaraj and me were discussing at office that in BARC selection interview they should ask the candidate to tell two jokes. Thats when this joke came to his mind. People coming to BARC are

MIT: Whats that all about.

2008-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

This young guy on the bylanes of Chembur is accompanied by his two young good looking female friends. The guy boasts of applying to US universities for his MS. The girls say "Thats awesome". They ask "But where are you applying". The guy says I am applying for MIT, the topmost US university. To this the girls ask him "Whats MIT". The guy confidently says "Michigan Institute Technology."

Welcome to Science Commons

2008-06-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

"Shortly after a large-scale clinical trial in 1955, the first inactivated polio vaccine was being injected into tens of millions of people around the world - possibly the most successful pharmaceutical product launch in history. Asked why he had not obtained a patent on the phenomenally successful vaccine, Jonas Salk reportedly replied, "That would be like patenting the sun." A few decades later

Great innovations in India

2008-06-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

I was looking for free SMS service for quite some time. I found so many lousy services around. But recently I discovered 160by2 which has very strong model. The user sends a maximum of 80words SMS and 160by2 adds 80 words of advertisements so that the users SMS cost is subsidised. The site gets its name from this 80:80 break up. The ads will be context based. Brilliant idea. They have made a

The World is not Ours, we borrow it from our children.

2008-06-07T01:25:00.000-07:00

I had never realised this. It took me some time to realise the wisdom hidden in this quote. I had to change. The world has to change. How can we misuse something that we have borrowed from our children?

India Rising

2008-06-07T01:22:00.000-07:00

This was something that I had written long back after a journey from Mumbai to Bhubaneswar.Train journeys are often thought provoking.Living in Mumbai, I often see the positive side of everything; plenty of job opportunities, young people (in ITES sector) getting sky rocketting salaries,a general sense of enterprise in everything that everybody does and well to do lifestyles. But the fact is that

My ICTP, Italy trip of 2006: When I look back now..

2008-06-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

Trieste is called the "pearl of Adriatic".The Grignano Bay is a small part of the Gulf of Trieste in the Adriatic Sea. The view of The Grignano Bay from the Adriatico Guest House, ICTP. People who taught us at ICTP. From right to left are Paul Bartholdi(Switzerland), Abhaya Induruwa(United Kingdom), Oleixy(Ukraine),Jim Wetherwilt(Istanbul, Turkey),Carlos Kavka (Argentina)and Pablo Santamarina (

FSF foundation meets the IT Ministry

2008-05-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

The FSF India Chief, Dr. Nagarjuna recently met the Minister of IT and Secretary, IT. They have put forth the following demands.1. Release all the softwares developed at Govt. labs with copy left licenses.2. Publishing all government websites under a particular inter operable format.3. Sorting out Indian Font encoding problems.4. Advertising applications that use open standards.5. Place for FSFI

Khurshed Batliwala aka BAWA

2008-04-24T19:26:00.000-07:00

Off late I have been following Bawas blog very religiously. For those who dont know Bawa, he is a very senior Art of Living teacher. He is also the Program Director of WAYE (World Alliance for Youth Empowerment). He calls himself a teacher for life. He has a formula for everybody."First Learn and Then Teach and Then Teach to Teach. This keeps you fresh all your life." He is also a great pianist

Open Access

2008-04-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

Some good links about Open Access1. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=5185482. plos.org3.http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Devidutta Pattnaik

2008-03-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today I am reminded od Dr. Devidutta Pattnaik as his new book called "The Pregnant King" is advertised in Sunday Times. You had to be at the India Young Leaders Forum at the Art of Living Headquarters where I heard him for the first time. He was simply mind blowing when he presented "Vishnu in the Boardroom" where he said that CEO has to be like Vishnu. He brought beautiful instances from

Document Freedom Day

2008-03-22T05:20:00.000-07:00

The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation. It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general. The DFD is supported by a large group of organisations and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS, Esoma, Free Software Foundations

ooxml vs odf

2008-03-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

me: are u following the ooxml and odf issue? Kamaleshwar: yeah.. somewhat.. not very thoroughly though,... congrats for the win btw.. i am glad it was voted out..ps: ooxml was voted out by BIS... http://tinyurl.com/2ubsnhme: same feelings here.. Kamaleshwar: k.. me: I was following odf some months back..but then lost track.. Kamaleshwar: k...its really sad that the most influential corporations

Personal Fabricators

2008-03-21T05:11:00.000-07:00

"Personal Fabricators" is a word coined by Neil Gershenfield at MIT. Neil heads the Centre for Bits and Atoms at MIT and takes a very poplular course called "How to make almost everything".

Virtualisation to make OS irrelevant

2008-02-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

I run OpenSuse 10.3 at Office and wanted to use QNX RTOS on the same system. I found the solution in VMWare. I searched for some Virtualisation ware and found some Virtual Machine Ware for Linux. Tried running QNX using that. Recently I have been nominated to attend a two day workshop on Virtualisation at IIT Bombay. So this interest spurred inside me to write about Virtualisation.The total

Lead India Campaign

2007-12-22T19:18:00.000-08:00

Hence forth i have thought of doing micro-blogging. Twitter.com introduced microblogging which is better that blogging.Lead India Contest's punch line " Tum Chalo to Hindustan Chale" is quite good and effective. They have understood the problem. We need people who can tale initiative. I saw the campaign video where small child attempts to remove a tree which has fallen on the road creating a

Do we have community pencils?

2007-10-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

The OLPC: One Laptop Per Child project endeavors to give laptops to children in developing countries at 100$. The idea was first proposed by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte in the World Economic Forum at Davos. Nicholas Negroponte has written a book called "Being Digtal" which would be an interesting material to read. When asked why laptops are required and why not have community computers. The

Millennium Development Goals

2007-10-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

I have been reading the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report 2006. MDGs were drafted in a meeting of representatives from 189 countries in 2000. The state representatives established a vision for a better world by year 2015: a world with decreased poverty and hunger, greater survival prospects for infants and their mothers, better educated children, equal opportunities for women, a

I will wear it this way for the rest of my life.

2007-10-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

InspirationLance Armstrong, the American cyclist suffered from testicular cancer when he was just 25. In his autobiography "It's not about the bike", he describes how he recovered from the illness. One paragraph in the book caught my attention.Sometimes I think the biggest thing cancer did was knock down a wall in me. Before cancer I defined myself purely in terms of winner or loser, but I don't

19th Sept 2007

2007-09-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

1. Open Source Software Resource Centre http://www.ossrc.org.in2. Public Library of Science http://www.plos.org3. National Resource Center for Free/Open Source Software http://nrcfoss.org.in4. Gnowledge http://www.gnowledge.org5. Anna University: KB Chandrasekhar Center http://www.au-kbc.org

Applications based on ODF

2007-09-18T19:53:00.001-07:00

The ODF (Open Document Format) has published a list of applications that use the ODF format.Word processors : (.odt)IBM WorkplaceKWordNeoOffice WriterOpenOffice.org WriterStarOffice WriterTextMakerWritelySpreadsheet documents (.ods)IBM WorkplaceKPresenterNeoOffice ImpressOpenOffice.org Impress StarOffice ImpressPresentation documents (.odp)KPresenterOpenOffice.org Impress 2.0NeoOffice 1.2

How a campus should be?

2007-09-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

Starting from my engineering days, I have stayed in big campuses and building sophisticated networked campuses has been always a dream. Now the locality where I stay is also like a big campus with some 2000 computers on a Local Area Network. The place where I work is also like a big campus with some 5 to 10K computers on the LAN. I have had many ideas about how a networked community should be. In

The most wonderful way to be happy

2007-06-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

If not anything else my recent foray into the “Art of Living Foundation” (which lays a great emphasis on happyness*) has forced me to find out what could be the best way to be happy. They say service without any doership is what makes us happy. I came across this beautiful story that emphasizes that.http://www.deeshaa.org/the-man-who-planted-trees/ This story appeared in Atanu Deys blog called

Public -Private partnerships

2007-06-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

This article shows my recent foray into "Economics"."Social inclusiveness does not only mean setting up village schools and hospitals to demonstrate corporate responsibility. The private sector cannot get away by setting up a few schools or hospitals for the poor. Public-private partnerships can only turn into a 'win-win' situation when both partners measure up at the time of need."http://

The Future

2007-05-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

The future. Will it be the best of times - when genetic engineering and "miracle" drugs and neural implants eradicate cancer, HIV, blindness, quadriplegia ans world hunger? Or will it be the worst of times- when irresponsible combustion of fossil fuels and smart bombs and neuroweapons lead to irreversible global climate change and new scourges of war, devastation, disease and famine? Will instant

Future Robots

2007-05-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

An interesting lecture on "Future Robots" introduces me to this book by Hans Moravec called "ROBOT: Mere machine to Transcendent Mind". In this book Moravec talks about the work of Dunbar who had reported that there is a definite brain size to primate group size ratio for every species. That essentially means species always tend to stay in a certain size of gorup depending on their brain sizes.

Little India

2007-03-03T04:45:00.000-08:00

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.".....Richard FeynmanI spent the first half of the day playing cricket. With so

Widening the Gateway to India

2007-02-26T17:08:00.000-08:00

India got connected to the CERN LHC (International Large Hadron Collider Project) computing grid recently. This grid is called the WLCG (Worldwide LHC Computing Grid). This will give Indian researchers the same level of access to Large Hadron Collider particle physics experiments as researchers in European or North American countries. India will have two ‘Tier-2’ sites. One site in Mumbai at the

We shouldnot miss this train

2007-02-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

"We cannot afford to miss this train" were the remarks of this old professor from IIT Kanpur who works in the area of Nano finishing. He emphasized that more and more youngsters should opt for nanotechnology as a career option. We have already missed the pulse of industrial revolution. But we shouldnot miss the nanotechnoology train. The day long seminar at BARC touched all areas of

Open Source Hardware

2006-11-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

I had this opportunity to visit the microprocessor laboratory at ICTP, Italy. This lab is the result of the collaboration between ICTP ( the International Centre for Theoritical Physics) and the INFN (the Italian body for Nuclear Research). What was interesting to see were the boards that were meant to act as Oscilloscopes and Signal generators. These baords had this 125MSPS ADCs with FPGA for

Engineering Tomorrow

2006-09-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

Last few days I have been reading this book from the IEEE press:Engineering Tomorrow: Experts envision the Next Technology. This is a must read for all technology enthusiasts. In this book fifty scientists and engineers envision technology's potential for the 21st Century. These experts are mostly nobel laureates and break through inventors of the past. The book emphasizes on the social

Shoulders of Giants

2006-08-06T02:33:00.000-07:00

The concept of the "knowledge driven economy" (KDE) or "the new economy" is used to describe an economy in which the generation and the exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. It is about the more effective use of all types of knowledge and creativity in all manner of economic activity.I have now become a veteran of 50 odd train

Water

2006-05-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

Monsoons will soon arrive and with it will come several food and water borne diseases. I have started looking for an appropriate water filter. This membrane based water filter designed in our own BARC seems the most suitable.The filter has the following advantages over various other devices:1. It needs no electricity for operation.2. Unlike the case of commercial water filter, this doesnt require

SGGS Nostalgia

2006-05-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

"The mobile phone is becoming a key portable lifestyle support system - an electronic Swiss Army Knife"Chief Technology Officer of Symbian.I am very bad at predicting things. I first saw "YOU TUBE" almost six months back. I couldnt imagine that it would become so popular so early. In a span of six months time it has become an everyday issue like orkut. This and few other videos created and posted

Kartick left for the US

2006-05-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Kartik, a friend for the last twenty years, left for US and I had to see him off at the airport. And the reward-a bagful of interesting books that he had munched on and didn't need them any more. He is an avid reader. Very rarely people of his age and occupation read anything other than self help. Very rarely do we find software engineers reading International Terrorism, International

Dear Parikh Sahab

2005-11-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

Man lives for two things: money and the higher purpose. For me the higher purpose comes from writing books"..Chetan Bhagat, author of FPS,what not to do at IIT.Parikh Sahab has no hairs on his head. Pass out of the 1971 batch from IIT Mumbai, Parikh Sahab now runs a SME (Small and Medium Scale Enterprises) which makes PCBs for organisations like BARC. These are few people whose work has

Science Education: Long live Prof.Naralikar

2005-09-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

"In the days to come machines will use the Internet more than humans. Imagine your refrigerator talking to your microwave oven"Living in Mumbai is a privelege. You get to see so many people.I was in ninth standard when I read a story by Prof. Jayant Naralikar in our English text book.Today I happened to hear him at the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education. He was there to talk on his days as

Where the mind is without fear

2005-07-23T00:14:00.000-07:00

Few days back, I was undergoing a Doppler color sonography wherein they were trying to find out if I have a vein blockage. Seeing the Doppler apparatus, I was drawn back to the days I spent at the Christian Medical College (CMC) at Vellore. My aunt (Kakima in Bengali) was to undergo a spine surgery. I was very much impressed by the modus operandi of CMC and wanted to write an article.CMC is one

Annus Mirabilis: The Miracle Year

2005-07-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

In the year 1905, 26 year young Albert Einstein published five revolutionary papers which were to change the course of physics in the coming years. The year 1905 was called the "MIRACLE Year" or "Annus Mirabilis". To commemorate this, the year 2005 is being celebrated world wide as the " International Year of Physics" or the "World Year of Physics".In India various scientific organisations are

Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson Disease

2004-12-15T22:48:00.000-08:00

Deep Brain stimulation (DBS) is a procedure done by neurosurgeons as a treatment of Parkinson Disease. Dr.Paresh Doshi at Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai has done such a procedure.For more information on PD, visit: www.parkinsonsdiseasesurgery.net.The cost at Jaslok varies according to the financial situation of the patient and ranges between Rs3.5 lakhs and Rs8 lakhs.

Start Doing Things

2004-12-05T03:47:00.000-08:00

When I was a school boy,teachers at my school encouraged us to take up projects and do different things .I remember making electronic door bells,radio transmitters etc.That was great fun.I now work with a scientific community and I earnestly feel that whatever I have achieved till date is because of what I have done in my past.Be it mending those small electric bulb holders or repairing bicycles

MY first blog post

2004-12-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

"In 2161 the United Federation of Planets will be founded by the Andorians, Humans, Tellarites, and Vulcans. Their headquarters will be in Paris, Earth while the military and exploration corps, Starfleet, will be based in San Francisco, California, Earth (Sector 001, in the Alpha Quadrant). Oddly enough this is precisely where the United Nations was founded on October 24, 1945. So you see, it