Thursday, January 27, 2011

Republic day celebrations - Grayshott Apartments, Chennai - Part 2

Chennai has changed - From a time when it was only Vandemataram , a few skits and the National Anthem, we had a very interesting multi-cultural republic day function (Can''t believe this is Chennai - A few decades back Chennai did not have apartments or associations as well!)

Here are the videos
Video 3


Video 4


Video 5


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Mylapore Tank Float Festival 2011 - Theppam - Part 2 - Photo essay

Mylapore Tank Float Festival 2011 - Theppam (Kapaleeswar Temple) - Part 2  - Photo essay


Lights of the night - Reflections on the mylapore tank look so beautiful
From 2011_Mylapore_Float_Festival


An ad for a Puncture shop on a tyre - New media
From 2011_Mylapore_Float_Festival

Mylapore analytics - Predictions for every problem
From 2011_Mylapore_Float_Festival

Awe
From

Colors of the night - seen through the centuries
From 2011_Mylapore_Float_Festival

Nikon D5000 Lens : f/1.8 35mm AF-S

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Monday, January 24, 2011

Mylapore Tank Float Festival 2011 - Theppam - Part 1

Mylapore Tank Float Festival 2011 - Theppam (Kapaleeswar Temple) - Part 1

The Mylapore Tank outside Kapali festival hosts the float festival (Theppam or Teppam in Tamil) in January every year.

Its usuually fun to go for this and the Aruvathi Moovar. This time it was on 21 Jan 2011 and we were there at 8 PM to see it in all glory.

I find that over 30 years, somethings have changed - The mamas and mamis come from Cognizant, Infosys, or some BPO versus TVS, Ashok Leyland or Amalgamations. The lights are neon lights versus dull serial lights or oil lamps / petro max lamps

But somethings haven't changed (luckily) - some mamis are still in Nine yards, families still bring the children for this slow moving entertainment, the flloat is still manually tugged and above all there is still a crowd for this.

See my next post for pictures

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Sunday, January 16, 2011

XBOX 4GB Console with Kinect - unboxing and Review - First time gamers experience (Tried a Vs. PS3 also)

Me and my son as taken playing Kinect adventures games (Yes! I am wearing a Veshti and attempting on Pongal day)


Wow! Just one word - I shopped at Croma and tried PS3 too. PS3 is no match as family entertainment to XBOX Kinect in my view

Unboxing experience in India - XBox 360 4GB Console Kinect :

  • The 220 V transformer box strikes you as huge. 
  • You need a 15 Amp Plug socket too. Most people will have only a 3 pin 5 amp power socket and will have to hunt for the 15 Amp to 5 Amp converter plug first
  • Batteries for the Wireless controller are included though.
  • Normal AV cord is included. I thinks its worthwhile getting the HDMI cable (I did not buy it though - yet)
  • The slim is NOT-SO slim XBOX
  • Kinect Adventures is included in the box

Gaming and interface

  • Takes a bit of time to setup the wireless and theou have interface XBOX Live, but fairly straightforward
  • We have only 6~7 ft in front of  the controller , so ideal for 1 player and at a stretch 2 player
  • The Game takes photographs that can be uploaded (It goes to Kinect Share website)
  • Each game is quite tiring - both my son and me were sweating at the end of 15~20 mins of play
  • Setup windows media center on my home laptop and streamed pictures to the XBOX wirelessly. Easy to setup but the interface (in general) sucks. Maybe because my home laptop is outdated.
  • Overall - kinect is next generation ready - feels incredibly like an extension of you, rather than an independant game controller. I found the PS3 quite painful, inaccurate to configure and adding one more "black" controller to my already cluttered living room. If you have kids and are looking at the Box in your family living. room, the X-Box is great. My wife too got interested in the exercise DVD for Kinect - a tough customer for anything digital, as she does not fall for technology for its own sake.


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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The 80-20 rule: Can we explain this using physical phenomenon

We have all experienced the 80 20 rule. I am reading the book by Richard Koch - 80/20 principle and wondered, while there is a lot of merit in 20% causes resulting in 80% of the results, can we explain this relatively statistical empirical phenomenon.

We have always known that nature is balanced to a point of equilibrium by a minimum (simplified) natural forces. There are countless examples - Yin and yang, Demand and Supply curves and so on.

In business too, we are familiar with matrices that we use to balance and prioritise. Examples, effort Vs return matrix, marketshare vs. customers. As one guru once said, any matrix is useful if one of the axis is a representation of necessity and the other axis is a representation of achievability.

This is where my theory comes in to say that result is always at minimum a quadratic ,and where there are more than 2 forces a multi-variate. This explains the non-linearity and the 80-20 principle or the 4-64 principles.

While post-facto this physical explanation of the 80-20 principle seems simplistic, I see it explaining the reason to use the 80-20 with care especially in identifying relationships and underlying causal forces


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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Kutchery season updates from Mylapore fine arts 2010 - Music Festival Chennai

Just a short log of Mylapore club concerts I attended

13 Dec 10 - Neyveli Santhanagopalan + Pineapple pudding
14 Dec 10 - S Ramachandran + Gajjar Halwa
18 Dec 10 - TV Sankaranarayanan + Asoka Halwa
24 Dec 10 - TN Seshagopalan + Usili Kozhakkattai
25 Dec 10 - U Srinivas + Aapam
26 Dec 10 - Sudha Raghunathan + Stomach Upset (No eating out rule enforced)
29 Dec 10 - Vishaka Hari (+ Parathas from Home)

Just in case you are worndering, Meenambigai caterers does a wonderful job at Mylapore fine arts and deserve a special mention! In fact, it is one of the SOPs of attending the concerts!!!!



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