Talking Lens

Mr. Ranganathan, Meera's maternal grandfather is a Tamil pundit. He has taught Tamil and few other subjects at school for over thirty years. He also took a large number of tuition classes after school hours, not only to support his meagre income but also to help needy students. He has an avid interest in politics and likes to read a lot. But unfortunately he has lost his eyesight - most of it actually. He can barely recognize people. Reading is close to impossible.

One reason of course is age - he is in his nineties. Apart from that he has another complication. He damaged one of his eyes at a very young age and has been forced to use the power of one eye for most of his working life. That has put lot of strain on the eye and eventually led to the current situation.

Last year when I met him, I realized that I wanted to help him read. One of the ideas that came to my mind that time was to build a "talking lens" - something that he can use to point to a newspaper or book and it will read out the text. This, of course, would be useful for other visually impaired people as well.

Alternatives exist of course -
a. Buy him audio books (expensive ?)
b. Teach him Braille (too old and is there much reading material available widely ?)

Both these don't really solve the newspaper problem. He does watch TV but is not very satified with the quality of the content presented there. His wife could read to him for some time. But she herself is having heart problems and whatever time she gets from doing household chores, she probably wants to take some rest.
All of Mr. Ranganathan's children and grandchildren have their own lives to look after - so they don't have much time to spend with him.

The ascii diagram below depicts the system I have in mind -

 +----------------------+            +----------------------+
 |"Lens" - OCR component|...........>|"Talker" - text2speech|
 +----------------------+            +----------------------+
                                                |
                                                |
                                                |
                                                |
                                                V
                                         +------------+
                                         |Audio Output|
                                         +------------+

While the components like OCR and text2speech are available, the challenge is to build a compact and portable device, just like a normal lens, which does all these
things in an integrated manner. Probably someone has built such a thing - I just have to search better. Support for Indian languages, for both OCR and the text2speech may be another challenge.

Nonetheless, another interesting thing to pursue with some spare time at hand. I wish I could build one of these and give it to Mr. Ranganathan one of these days.

Metapost Munnar Trip

The html file was dated November 28 2000

The header in the file had the following note -

Oct 21-23 2000, the CT team went to Munnar. This is an account of some of
the events on that trip. This was sent out in 2 parts through e-mail to the
ctgrp mailing alias and was liked by many.

The Munnar Trip

Bus comes at 4pm. Madamouiselles,Monsuiers and materials all aboard by 4.15pm.
Well, almost everyone except the 2 Dinesh's were in. While Dinesh
Goyal was at his elusive best, Dinesh Kumar was busy with the sysadmin world.
While Soms was successful in pulling the later from his worldly matters,
the former, like those onsite, has to remain content in reading this account.
The bus started Munnar-wards at 4:30pm. Once the Bangalore traffic was left
behind, the Cheif Entertainment Officer (CEO) of CT was summoned to get his
act together. Nishanth, as ready as ever, obliged us with some of his now
well known and much liked mimickery performances. Filmstars and CT team members
were mimicked to a good deal of perfection. There were the occasional shouts
of "That's not me" or "When did I do that ?" but overall everyone enjoyed.

Yours truly (YT) was'nt fully part of all this merriment and preferred
to reflect on Life in general. So when Smita suggested Antakshari, YT opined
that some food be diverted to his stomach so as to deprive his thoughts.
Everyone then feasted on cold samosas. After the snack break, Antakshari
commenced and progressed with the usual enthusiasm and arguments associated
with the game. Soon songs beginning with Na and Ha became scarce (imagine
even Nanna Munna Rahi hoon was sung !!) with even 'The Database' (Yamini)
returning null results for queries on songs beginning with these letters.
So we decided to call it a day for Antakshari and relax our stressd out
vocal chords and gray cells. Dinner stop was made at a hotel which called itself
"Sri Sarvana Bhavana" in Dharmapuri. Well the food was quite unlike what some
of us have had in its namesakes in Chennai. Anyway, this was'nt the time to
worry about such small matters. Munnar was still quite some way to go ;
Dharmapuri Sarvana Bhavans's can be dealt with later. Off we all went...

A word or two about the bus and its supposed driver. A fluoroscent
yellow Sharma travels 18-seater - a bus that David Dhawan would surely
consider using if he makes a "Driver No. 1" or something. And the driver
seemed to belong to the
its-travelling-that-is-important-not-reaching-somewhere school of thought.
Between Salem and Coimbatore he stopped the bus every few metres to ask
by-standers and tea-shop owners if road on which we were moving would have
Coimbatore at the end of it. After gathering votes, enough to win the Salem
legislative assembly seat, the driver decided to reduce some of his inherent
bias for the brake pedal and shift that to the gas pedal. The team meanwhile
was napping away to glory. Soundest Sleeper award was shared by Smita and
Yamini (later they earned the 'Sleeping Beauties' title too). Mamatha was'nt
getting any sleep and she decided to count sleeping heads instead of sheeps,
for a change. Oh, and all this with the 'wonderful' music system that the bus
boasted off at its loudest (the bus also had a 14 inch TV and fans for every
seat. The fan was allegedly a Flex feature the license for which had expired
which explained why they were'nt functional). Well, if you could call
5 buttons, 3 knobs, 1 slot and some speakers playing back some
approximation to the original signals as a music system. It also made YT
wonder if he had done the right thing in buying those cassettes with his
'khoon-pasine-ki-kamai'.

The road did end in Coimbatore. RangaPS rued the fact that he was'nt
awake when the bus passed his alma mater. Soms was pestering RangaPS for a
coffee shop. "What, good coffee shop open at 2:30am in the morning ? Are you
crazy ?" replied our Tamil Pulavar (TP). The team had some light snacks with
the its-never-too-early-for-breakfast spirit once we passed the Kerala-TN
border. Morning came and with it some really stunning greenery greeter our
sleepy eyes. A welcome change from the hazy green trees visible among
concrete structures in 'Nammu Bangluru'. Stop for morning duties and some
'chaya' was made in ?? . Mali decided that tea is for the lesser mortals and
he wanted something stronger to restore his shaken spirits - so he went off to
a bar-cum-restaurant. Whether he simply visited the restroom or had a quick
sip or two of the 'colored water' available there, still remains unknown.
Our driver, meanwhile fresh from the victory of the Salem seat, repeated his
performance in Kerala too. The team started second round of Antakshari. Couple
of songs beginning with Na and Ha were the surprise of the show. Around
11-30am we reached our destination - Sterling Resorts which was about 22 km
from the main Munnar town. To be fair, the driver did a wonderful job -
driving 19hrs is no joke and all of us were safe with all bones intact.

The manager of the resort turned out to be an interesting character.
"Ladies and Gentelmen", he addressed us. "You could'nt have at come at a more
appropriate time of the year. Not a drop of rain to be expected. No need for
any winter clothing; you can move around in normal clothes" proclaimed our
copybook salesman. "What about view from our rooms ?" asked someone.
"Every window has a valley under it" was the prompt answer. We could'nt
reconcile all this with the manager himself sporting a half sleeve woollen
jacket and people moving around with umbrellas in hand. Anyway we all
freshened up and got ready for what was to be a culinary shock. It came in the
form of tomato soup for lunch. That day it was proved beyong a trace of doubt
that even simple things like tomato soups can be made to taste like the worst
of swills. Some of the guys who finished their bowl of soup (mind you,
purely out of sheer hunger) would be recommended for the Red and White
Bravery awards. Rasam was the saving grace and the we all satisfied our
hunger.

Much as would have liked to stretch our legs and take a nap after
lunch, we also knew that time was not something we had in our hands. So it was
decided to go for some sight-seeing and shopping. Making a sensible decision
of giving rest to our weary driver, we hired a couple of jeeps for the trip.
The jeep drivers turned out to be some sort of local Schumachers. They covered
the 22km stretch to Munnar town in less than half an hour !! The pros used the
steering as some sort of joystick for video games. 'The Database' also had a
large stock of Surd jokes, some of which she dished out during the trip. First
stop was at the ?? Dam. The team went for a whirlwind tour of the dam waters
on the speed boats available for rent there. Next stop was at what was called
the 'Echo Point'. Now one of the jeeps had reached there earlier and people in
that group claimed that you can shout at any volume and you'll get an echo.
That sounds odd, does'nt it ? ( The other odd thing was that this echo point
was at an altitude of a hill top but more at the base of a hill). So some of
us spoke at normal volumes and true enough some sound came back after a delay.
Sometime later a beaming Mali came out of the bushes and the secret of this
amazing phenonmenon was revealed to the world at large. The team had some
spicy pineapple and group snaps were taken.

Back to main Munnar town for shopping, we decided to have some tea and
tiffin. Another of those Saravana Bhavana's was located and some of us ordered
food. YT and Nasir (the Nature Lover) were'nt feeling upto having anything but
still decided to split a plate of idlis. So we summoned the waiter and asked
a plate of idli by 2. The waiter looked offended and refused to lay down the
plaintain leaves and later clean them up just for the sake of 1 idly each. He
said that they run out of idlis. We decided to have a good laugh.
Anything in general and nothing in particular was the kind of answer one got
when asked about what exactly the shoppers wanted to buy. Anway it was around
7-30pm when the shoppers were sure that the shopkeepers of Munnar had nothing
more to hide from them and they had seen-it-all if not bought-it-all. And as
always the true fun in shopping is not buying yourself but making others buy.

Back for dinner, the historic tomato soup was looming large in our
minds as we trudged warily for the buffet. The sweet corn soup turned out to be
much much better. Again satisfaction of hunger was the primary motivation for
completing the dinner. BONFIRE !!! we shouted after food. "Planned for
tomorrow" said the hotel people. There seemed to be some communication gap
among the hotel junta , but we stood firm and demaned a bonfire right then.
The manager was forced to entertain our demand and a fire was soon ready on
the lawns.

Dance is an evolved art form. However, this would'nt have been the
first thing that would have come to the mind of even a casual observer of the
bonfire bash. With the musical beats and our steps going off in tangential
directions, it would have quite a site. But the main thing was the spirit
behind the effort - nothing can be taken away for that. Of course, there were
notable exceptions - Nishanth, Smita, Ravi Kiran. Nasir was grace personified.
Rest can be put in the also-danced category. Once the fire went out (both the
literal and the metaphorical) the team settled down to play Dumb Charades.
Movies were the obvious choice for the domain. Ben Hur to Jurrasic Park,
Aradhana to Aakrosh; old and new alike were given to enact.
Among the lighter moments was Mali showing a battle scene , swinging an
imaginary sword (movie : Kurukshetra) which some people saw as someone playing
table tennis !! Towards the end it became a game of guessing the name of the
hero and heroine and finally the movie name.
Dinesh Kumar wanted to become healthier, wealthier and wiser and decided to
go to bed real early. Or maybe he had an appointment with his wife in that
wonderful world of dreams and he did'nt want to be late for that. Who knows ?
The rest, meanwhilte decided to call it a (long) day and retired for the
night. Not before planning to go for trekking early next morning which did
sound preposterous to many.

When YT opened his eyes next morning and looked at his watch it showed
5:30. But when he looked out of his window it was too bright and sunny for
that time of the day. On closer observation, he found that his watch had
stopped. It was 6.30 already. YT then woke up Dinesh and Soms who woke up
cursing RangaPS who had'nt allowed him to switch on the room heater saying
"If you have come so far, enjoy the weather man". It was clear that everyone
won't be up and trekking soon and so a quick game of bat-ball was commenced.
The Guide who was to accompany us took some time in coming during which we
finished breakfast and did some cycling on the sloping roads within the resort.

There are two kinds of people - those who trek 6Km and come back and
others who trek 3Km and come back. That's what one would have said when (s)he
would have been at the scene where the Guide arrived. The main trekking
attraction was upto Devikulam lake and according to him the distance to the
lake was 6Km ( he also added that one would'nt feel that distance). When some
people protested, he suggested another spot which was about 3Km but not as
interesting as the former place. Here's where our world got divided into two.
The 6Km group prevailed and the team set out for Devikulam lake following the
Guide. It was a long trek along a narrow trail, going through dense bushes,
winding up through steep slopes. After about an hour's walking we reached a
tiny waterfall. The water was quite shallow before falling off. We decided
to cool off a bit. Slowly, we started behaving like a herd of elephants -
splashing water on one another. Soon everyone was made to offer themselves
for a splash session. Even the Guide was not spared. The Guide turned out to
be a real sport - immersing himeself in the water on his own. The Lake was
only a little distance away, but only some of us went to see what turned out
to be a breathtaking sight. Mother Nature does'nt make them any more
beautiful. Stuff that picture postcards are made of. The water of the lake was
sweet (for those who dared to taste it). Soaked to the bones, we all started
our trek back.

It is at these times that one realizes the joy of being comfortably
dry. And the Hot'n'Sour soup given during the lunch did'nt taste half as bad.
After lunch, it was time to check out of the resort. Feedback ledger was
brought to us. Nasir and Co. wrote out couple of pages of complaints, the
praise being given to the Manager for his attitude. We were back into the
hands of our Driver who by now had a good 2 days rest. We were hoping for a
better deal from him on the way back. Well, the Driver did show some of his
old touch by losing his way and then executing what looked like his favourite
manouerve in driving school - the U-Turn. But overall he did'nt mess up much
and we all reached back where we stared by about 8.00 am. Oh! and those who
were wondering about the 'confession' session that took place the night before
in the bus on the way back, YT has decided to steer clear of the sensitive
matters disclosed there and instead refers the interested and curious readers
to the respective autobiographies (if and when they are written).

So yet another journey came to an end.

But Life still goes on.

Four lanes of misery

Yet another day. The same story repeats on these city roads. I am one such road. Countless vehicles seem to be using to reach somewhere. But many a times they are just stuck in the same place. There is a semblance of progress once in a while but it takes quite sometime before everyone has moved forward a bit. The situation is much like the nation's itself is what I gather from conversations of some occupants of a vehicle plying on me.

There are vehicles of all shapes and sizes. The ones on two wheels seem to be moving like ants around the giant old trees that were once along my sides. Vehicles on the left lanes seem to be moving the fast inspite of being the wrong lanes to overtake. Again a reflection of the state of the nation itself is what I gather from few other travellers using me.

All these vehicles make an awful lot of noise as well. Most of the noise is supposed to be coming from their 'horns'. Kind of funny since some of the cattle that occasionally manage to come over me also have these things called 'horns' but they never made any noise apart from their usual bovine chatter.

The whole procession looks like a giant millipede heaving itself across a vast expansive desert. Just because the tail section can see the head moving forward, it becomes impatient and starts using its 'horns', conveniently forgetting that there is still a middle section that has to move as well before it gets a chance ! How silly.

"Oh Traveller" I bemoaned, " I seem to be leading you all somewhere but I never seem to reach anywhere. I feel miserable".

"Oh Road ! is that you ?" replied the travellers in chorus.
"We never knew you had feelings and not just potholes" wondered the travellers.

The travellers continued in chorus -

"The misery is equally ours - all the four lanes of it."
"We all seem to be taking the road to somwhere but actually go nowhere !"

ज़हन-ए-ज़ोर

खूब कही आपने मिर्ज़ा आपका है वाकई "अंदाज़े-बयाँ-और"
अब समझने में लगेंगे हमें उम्र बारह, उस पर ज़हन-ए-ज़ोर

MetaPost Vertical Wit

The date on the text file containing this ascii art was June 20 2001.

The context ? I was struggling to bring a travel story (a nomadic nugget :) to close and had this idea of having an ascii art comic strip which I decided to lay out vertically and call 'Vertical Wit' (instead of Horizontal Humour ? :) This was the first and last strip that was done - vertical for sure but not much wit. Of course the characters were 'copy-pasted' from the web - only the text was typed by me.

Probably when I get some more time, I should revive this.
Which reminds me - saw this library called libasciiart or something of that sort on a linux box. Probably a program that generates these strips from some sort of description ... or maybe it just pulls out random text from the web and uses them ...

Hmmm ... sounds interesting ...

Vertical Wit

VV I T
E
R
T
I
C
A
L


     Do all stories need to have an
     end ? Can't they just trail off
   |________________________________|
       O
        O
         O_      `,
              ' ')#
              |/  ?
              | o )\
              /__/\ \____     _____
              /   \_/    \   |\____\
             / < _____ _> \  | |   |
      ------/___/  ,___/___\-| |   |
             /  |\/ |         \|_"_|
         \  /_______|            (_____
          '


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Maybe I'll organize a suggest an
    ending contest. Or maybe ...
   |________________________________|
       O
        O
         O_      `,
              ' ')#
              |/  ?
              | o )\
              /__/\ \____     _____
              /   \_/    \   |\____\
             / < _____ _> \  | |   |
      ------/___/  ,___/___\-| |   |
             /  |\/ |         \|_"_|
         \  /_______|            (_____
          '


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


                 `,    ... And they all lived
              ' ')#      happily ever after.
              |/  ?   |________________________|
              | o )\            /
              /__/\ \____     _____
              /   \_/    \   |\____\
             / < _____ _> \  | |   |
      ------/___/  ,___/___\-| |   |
             /  |\/ |         \|_"_|
         \  /=======|            (_____
          '

MetaPost Ode

The date on the html file is Oct 13 2001. I think I wrote it around that time.
Of course, I was onsite then.

So one feature that can help is if one can back post blogs on past dates. Not sure if is supported by this or any other blogging software.

Ode to the Onsite Employee

Everyone comes here
For 3 or 6 months or an year

You may have a different visa
Bottom line is cent is dearer than a paisa
But change of scene is surely a treat
So we brave the cold, beat the heat.

Overcome the jet lag and start running the race
That is already moving at a very maddening pace.
Bugs to be resolved, milestones to be met
Complete features whose requirements have'nt been set.

Breakfast is nothing or maybe some cereals
Dinner with movies or TV serials
If you are lucky, you go to a team lunch
Else you just follow the bunch.

Groceries from Pick'n'Save and IGS
Eating outside ? Sometimes yes.
But mostly it is cooking at home
Cuisines from Rawalpindi to Rome.

Weekends may be a differnt story
If you are in office, it is not quite hunky-dory.
Shop at Kenosha till the car dickies bend
Or sit at home and sigh as it comes to an end.


Not driving is considered a handicap
If you do, you run into mishaps.
Jumping signals, hits or speed tickets
Landing ourselves on sticky wickets.

Calling home once a week
Choosing our words as we speak.
Telling them things, how it is
And then it is home that we start to miss.

Staying in Residence Inn, Meadows or Extended Stay
Longing for another sunny day.
Passions keep us going - Rasam, Mountain Dew
Money, Tennis, books to name a few.

And then it is time to go back
After 3 or 6 months or an year
Taking memories, photos and cordless phones
Back to our home, sweet homes
Only to return the next year.

MetaPost Meeting

The rhyme on meeting was bourne out of countless hours spent in them.
The opening lines have an obvious inspiration from Shakespeare's lines -

" ... a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ..."

The spirit of the rhyme is probably inspired by the following quotation that I came across sometime back -

Chyrsanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell.

Meta MetaPost

MetaPost - Post that talk about other posts. Like metadata, metaclass etc.

So this is a meta metapost - post on metaposts.

I have decided to use metaposts to explain the background for some of the posts. This one is to explain the concept itself.

MetaPost - Tolerance

The rant on tolerance was triggered by an column that I read in The Hindu on Aug 12 2007. I decided to respond with a contribution to the same section in the newspaper. So spent some in diligently writing down my thoughts. Then composed an email and sent it out to the email id provided. A response came back the same evening regretting the fact that they could not use it.

I was trying to figure out the reasons for the rejection. Further questioning on the email id seems futile as noone has responded so far.

Probably they did not find the quality upto the mark. Or it was too critical of the original column. Another likely reason was thrown up when I saw the last Sunday's edition - another reader had contributed a column responding to the same article. That probably settles the issue.
Anyway my first contribution to a newspaper column ends in a little bit of a disappointment.

But it does end up on this blog - so hopefully someone other than me will also get to read it :-)

A meeting by any other name

A meeting by any other name would still be as boring
Careful ! lest they catch you snoring.

Stand-ups are worth a sit-out
Execution controls are like boxing bouts

Skip levels are at best skipped
One-on-ones are tough to be slipped

All hands do not expect presence of your mind
All these meetings - just part of the daily grind ?

Dilberts, Wallys, Tinas or Asoks,
On all of us are Mr. Adam's jokes

A meeting by any other name would still be boring
Be careful ! Lest they catch you reading this outpouring !

Jai Blogger

I breathe my first in the blogosphere. A sample of the promised "rants and chants" is already posted. While all this can be classified as a splurge, it might seem strange to label it as sporadic. Well it is the intial flurry and most of the stuff that you see is simply a result of a batch upload - things I had written down earlier.

I was looking around for a good multilingual blog and settled down on this as I already had a Google account (one less username/password to remember you see)। The transliteration was pretty neat and helped me get the Hindi verses online pretty quickly. There does seem to be an issue with the rendering of unicode fonts on some browsers - so you may not be able to see it correctly

The existential question remains still remains. Both for this blog and life.
Yet to find a reasonably satifying answer (both life and this blog)

So why Jai blogger, as some of you may wonder. No, it is not named after a popular Java package also found in the classpath of some of our programs.
Something along the lines of Hail Blogger is what Jai Blogger translates to in English.
Being fond of acronymns (especially TLAs - Three letter acronymns) and their endless possibilities, JAI also stands for Just Another Indian (Blogger) !

तो बोलो "जय ब्लॉगर"
"ब्लोग्गिंग जिंदाबाद"

Tolerance - a dwindling virtue

Mahatma Gandhi was voted as India's greatest icon in a recent survey. While this result of statistical sampling is
mildly reassuring, a more pertinent question to ask could have been on the lines of how many of us understand Gandhiji's principles
let alone follow them. While it is too subjective a question to ask in a survey, it nonetheless warrants some serious thought.
Tolerance, one of the main principles that Gandhiji promoted, is vanishing as fast as the ozone layer. This has resulted
in "warming up" of people's attitudes. In schools we are taught that all religions preach tolerance towards others. Yet certain
sections of the society have conveniently used their interpretation of religion to justify indiscriminate acts of violence.

"Unity in Diversity" has simply become a catch-phrase which does its rounds in our midst during independence and republic day
celebrations. The unfortunate reality is that every aspect of this diversity, be it language, religious beliefs or caste to name
a few, are being used to divide us and satisfy the power hunger of some. With globalisation, we are also seeing a new element of diversity being defined on the basis
of financial status that seems to be adding to the existing challenge of maintaining unity. We seem to be defining ever reducing boundaries
of identity and similarity. First it was division into states based on linguistic differences and now we are seeing demands of
sub-division within these states for various other reasons. This is leading us to a point where the sum of parts is not even
making up the whole.
An example, somewhat trivial, of the dwindling tolerance amongst us can be found in a recent article in a national daily.
The author of this column was peeved at "stray comments" from a visiting friend about a radio station playing songs
in a local language and an innocuous question from a migrant labourer wondering why nobody spoke in the national language.
Both these instances were quoted as amounting to disrespect to the language of the particular state and we were requested
to "blend in" when living in other states. Surely there have been more serious instances of disrespect being shown to
a particular language. The radio station is probably playing songs in the local language, not only to attract local
audiences, but also because if they aired programme or songs in other languages, some lingual chauvinists would
prevent broadcasting of that channel itself ! And the poor migrant labourer probably not a polyglot, as some of the more
educated and travelled amongst us are, is having a difficult time in daily transactions in the native language.
Again, more serious attempts to homogenise regions of the country can be easily recalled from our recent history.
If we cannot tolerate differences between people of various states within the same country, how can we expect a fair
treatment when we travel to foreign lands in search of greener pastures ?
Tolerance is possibly the only virtue that can help all of us to not only accept the myriad diversities that exist in this glorious
country but also find effective and inclusive means of making India, as a whole, a great nation. We should promote this
virtue, even if it is in the form of "Gandhi-giri", at all levels. Our great scientists should probably invent "tolerance drops" to be
administered as part of our child immunisation programme to impart this important virtue in all our future generations !

इश्क और मुश्क छुपाये नहीं छुपते

ना कभी इश्क किया हमने , ना मुश्क लगाया अपने आप पर
अब सिर्फ ये किस्सा छुपाना बाक़ी है ||

मकसद ए जिन्दगी

मक़सद-ए-जिन्दगी ढूँढने में कहीँ ये उम्र ना बीत जाये
ना कोई मक़सद मिले या मंज़िल तो कम-स-कम ये उम्र ही बीत जाये ||