Railing

Spring and Summer Spent For Others,
While Fall Days Lead To My Wintertime.

Firestone's Liberia Crisis

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T20 - an Architechtural Innovation

Soporific, easy going and devoid of continuous ROB(rush of blood) factor. Difficult of imagine a popular game with these characteristics in the world. Cricket was a game which exhibited all the above mentioned characterstics, while managing to be the extremely popular in some parts of the world.

T20 changed all that. Cricket is now exciting, agile and full of ROB. This format is sure to take cricket to a newer level as it will surely find takers in countries like US, EU and elsewhere where investing 7 hrs for one ODI was just asking for too much. The overall sustenance of Excitement throughout the innings of the game is one thing which is new for many Indian sports fan who have been fed on usual doses of long cricket matches.

T20 is a perfect example of how architechtural innovation can uproot a long standing institution. The essence of an architectural innovation is the reconfiguration of an established system to link together existing components in a new way. In the past we have seen how architechtural innnovation has changed the rules of the game of business. A classic example is Xerox, who had to reinvent itself to meet the threat from Japan's Ricoh and Canon Xerox used to lease huge photocopiers ,which were extremely cosly to buy,to its clients and had a huge sales force to sell the lease to its customers. Ricoh and Canon made small copiers which were cheaper and hence could be bought easily by customers. Over 15years the market share of US copiers fell from 80% to 13%. Ricoh and Canon simply made small changes in the technology to create smaller copiers. Nothing radical as such, still a huge impact.

T20 has done a similar thing to cricket. While the play remains essentially the same, format has been changed which has made it such an exciting game to watch.

Inspite of restricted scope, cricket is probably the most technology intensive sport. Use of high frame rate cameras, using technology to take decisions, use of hawk eye etc. has indeed lended a charm to the game. This will go down very well with the audience in the developed country.Hope T20 cricket worldcup 2020 sees 32 participating teams.

Obscure Units of measurement

Found this interesting post on wired....

Gou (180 milliliters — better known as a rice cup for an electric cooker), pack year (cigarette consumption based on one pack a day for a year), nibble (typically four bits of binary code, or half a byte), score (20 of something), hand (4 inches of horse height), twip (1/20 of a typesetting point), thrave (24 sheaves of wheat), shake (10 nanoseconds), mickey (ratio of computer mouse movement to onscreen cursor movement), jansky (strength of radio signals from space), butt (two hogsheads, or about 126 gallons, of booze), smoot (a measure of length developed by some MIT students, equal to 5 feet, 7 inches — the height of one Oliver R. Smoot).

URL -> http://www.wired.com/culture/education/magazine/15-09/st_units

Barcamp Mumbai 2

Its Crazy. Its Super-Charged. And above all its Geeky. No Fancy Food, No Session Pre-scheduling, No Cushioned Chairs, No Publicity, No Chief Guests, No VIPs, No Special Treatments, No Entry Fees ....Basically everything thats not a feature of a regular conferences.

Welcome to the Silicon Valley phenomenon - Barcamp - The Un-Conference. Barcamps are the meeting grounds for the techies and entrepreneurs alike, where they share their whacky ideas about latest technology, business plans, crazy tech etc. Barcamp has gradually become a centre for innovation and entrepreneurship.

BarCamp does not have any predefined slots or speakers. Anyone can be a speaker and bitch about anything by registering on the spot.

Bar Camp Mumbai 2 or BCM2 is being hosted by Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay on 13th Oct 2007.

If you have a story to tell, a few cribs to share or if you just want to look around for a few crazy people like you be there. I promise you it will be an experience to remember.

Please confirm your participation by adding your name to the participant table at BCM2 wiki (Use edit page button)


Links - ToI - Review of Indian Unconferences

White Beauty

Taken at the DMAS,Manali garden

Orange riot

Thats top view of my kissan orange juice bottle !!

Nite Time beauty

Nite time view outside my room...

(do see the enlarged one)

THE CONE!!!

The Cone in front of my hostel

Bangalore sunset

I captured two sunsets from my house's terrace.

Fireball

Hide and Seek

Ahemdabad Trip

We went to Ahemdabad for the STFC project that a few guys from SJMSOM, IIT Bombay are doing. This was a tour intended to familiarise ourselves with the working of STFC factory and rural distribution. Here are some pics from the tour.

Time flew by!!

Macro of a flower in STFC garden

I love the effect of one blurred and the other focussed leaf

The expression on the face of the kid is priceless!

Hiranandani Travail

Fountain at one of the junctions at Hiranandani

A Mobile fruit shop at Hiranandani

Guess whts this

My lovely tooth paste

Check these out

Finally a Macro Shot!! Unfortunately had to do with Tushar : (

This one is from the Utsav restaurant. A bit out of focus. But is looking good :)

Life review :)

After yet another disappointing result in the exams i was left with nothing to do for the whole day and i started wondering how can i make the best use of the next 1.25 yrs that I have to spend in IIT. Lots of things came to my mind and I thot that I can certainly jot down a few points here that will keep a tab on my progress. So here we go -
1. Photography - This is the latest craze. Thanks to Amar, who sent me a wonderful canon A710IS from US I have been really smitten by this bug. By the end of my stay Iwant to be decent photographer, well versed with the basic photography fundamentals, so that I can make the best use of the DSLR that I am going to buy once I start earning again :D
2. Photoshop - Another liking I developed here at IIT. Want to be good at photo retouching and morphing techniques.
3. Swimming - Just filled up the swimming pool form. Some form of excercise + fun. I am a beginner in swimming. Hope to be a decent swimmer by the end of my academic life.
4. Tennis - Again a beginner tag for this. Haven't picked up the racket since last 6 months. Plan to match Sania soon (the last match featuring Sania made me feel that probably i can aim to beat her in another year or so)
5. Movies - Once an athiest when it came to movies i am a devoted movie bhakt now. Lots of interesting movies to see. Hopefully I will be able to cover most of talked about movies. The progress on this front atleast is good.
6. Skating - This one came out of the blue. Serendipity u may say. Someone recently mailed about the skating course being conducted here. I latched on to the opportunity and the classes are beginning soon.
7. B Plan - The one closest to my heart. With the help of my friends, I want to come up with one decent b plan atleast.
8. Just Plan - The life has no planning as of now. Everything is just done as it comes. The only time I was organised and planned was my official work. Want to bring some planning into my daily life also.
9. IPR - Nopes not the one related to Microsoft :D.. Interpersonal relationship. Have to improve here if I am to do something useful in life :D.

Ofcourse studies dont feature in the list and I have no intentions of bringing it into the list. Have had enough of it.

As of now itna hi gyaan lets see how things turn up.

When I get high

Pic from the arrangement at Grand Hyatt

Looking up to the future

Took the pic at one of the restaurants.

Sys Conti 2007 Pics

For other photographs click here

With my new Canon 710 IS I took some pics of the Systems Continuum 2007. Tried to experiment with angles and camera settings. Finally a few came out decently.

Media Reports on Sysconti - Pagalguy and Cool Avenues

It was a welcome change from all the contis (SOM lingo for continuums) in the past. This one was real value added seminar. The panelists gave real insights into the SME strategies in the IT services sector. The paper presentation and workshop was good if not great. But the address by Shri FC Kohli was the showstealer. He brought to fore many pertinent arguments about the state of Indian IT services. I will update the details when our college magazine "L!VE" is released. They will surely cover the events in detail.

PadmaBhushan FC Kohli is also referred to as the "Father of the Indian IT Industry". He pioneered IT services in the mid sixties with the formation of TCS. His vision can be gauged from the very fact that the words 'Consultancy' and 'Services' were non very prevalent then in 1965. TCS in 1970s was working on cutting edge technology. It actually linked Tata Power with Tarapore nuclear reactor. These were real breakthroughs then. Just goes to show the mettle of this man.

For me personally the greatest moment of pride was the presentation that I gave to Shri FC Kohli updating him with the progress that we have made with the Consumer Court project that we have undertaken, which is being championed by Prof Atanu Ghosh at the request of Kohli Saab. He was very interested and promised us all help . Recently his wife herself called us and asked us to meet her after exams to see how we can go about it. More about the project in some other post. This was followed by lunch which was again a first time concept for any conti .it e was indeed a very successful initiative and provided ideal platform to network and talk to all the speakers.

All in all Sys Conti 2007 was a huge hit and personally a very satisfactory one. Hope all the contis are able to emulate its success.

Orange day

Friends with umbrellas and goodies from Connect Singapore

Outside my window

Movies Masti

One of the new indulgence that I have gotten into, here at SJMSOM, IITB is watching movies. Thanks to the gigabit LAN here. I thot it would be a good idea to maintain a list of movies that i have watched over my stay here. This would be pretty useful sometime in future, while retrospecting on how the time wasted on these movies could have been effectively used for a greater good. Note the list is only of the recommended movies. Actual no. of movies watched is much higher.

So here it goes:

1. Shawshank Redemption.
2. Devil's Advocate.
3. Thank you for smoking
4. Reservoir Dogs
5. Saw
6. Pirates of the Carribean, The dead man's chest.
7. Casino Royale
8. Final Destination
9. Happy Feet
10. Finding Nemo
11. Ice Age 2
12. Schindler's List
13. 12 Angry Men
14. Seven Samurais (English subtitled version of original Japanese movie)
15. The Usual Suspects
16. The Raiders of the Lost Ark
17. Good Fellas
18. Silence of the Lambs
19. Hannibal
20. The Departed
21. Forest Gump
22. Enemy at the Gates
23. Primal Fear
24. In Pursuit of Happyness
25. Water
26. The Last King of Scotland
27. Seven
28. The Namesake
29. Notes on a scandal
30. The Green Mile
31. Back to the future 1
32. The City of Gods
    
33. Shrek 3
34. The Vertical Limit
35. Ocean's 13
36. The Prestige
37. The Illusionist
38. Toy Story 1
39. Toy Story 2
40. Monster Inc
41. Ratatouille
42. American Gangster
43. The Incredibles
44. Mr. Brooks
45. Requiem for a dream
46. Sin City
47. School of Rock
48. Hotel Rawanda
49. Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
50. Run Lola Run
51. American Beauty
52. Sea Biscuit
    
53. American History X
54. The Bee Movie
55. When Harry Met Sally
56. Pan's labyrinth
57. Atonement
58. Letters from Iwo Jima
59. The Golden Compass
60. The Lives of Others
61. Crash
62. Syriana
63. Into The wild
64. Emperor's new groove
65. Dead poet's society
66. Road to El-Dorado
67. Kung-Fu Panda
68. Dark Knight
    

Hindi

1. Dor
2. Khosla ka Ghosla
3. Pyar ke Side Effects
4. Katha
5. Gunda
6. Black Friday
7. Metro
8. The Guide
9. Taare Zameen Par
10. Johnny Gaddar
11. Mithya
12. Aamir
    

STARS this Semester!!

Its that time of the year when SJMSOM, at IIT Bombay gears to play host to the gliterrati of the Indian society. Leadership lecture series, a unique compulsory course for 2nd year MBA students of SJMSOM provides a special platform to interact with successful leaders in various walks of life. Each time a leader visits IITB, a group of student is assigned to study him. The group then exclusively gets to interact with him and has to submit a report on the leadership traits and insights about his personality as a part of the course. This year Prof. Atanu , the coordinator for the course, has yet again managed to get together an extremely accomplished and interesting set of people.

For details about current previous Leadership Lecture Series click here

Guru - All hype or some substance??

It was a class gathering after a long time. The new SOMA body had been formed and the elected representatives had thrown a party - actually they jst sponsored the movie Guru at HUMA Adlabs, the shady yet the nearest mall from IITBombay. Reviews had been good and I had huge expectations from Abhishek and ManiRatnam duo. Gulzar for lyrics was added topping on the family size hot jalapeno cheese pizza. The media was murmurring about Guru being the biopic of Late Dhiru Bhai Ambani. That added to my excitement. All in all I was confident that I was in for a great treat.
The result was however less than satisfactory. Mani Ratnam has filmed the movie in a typical south indian manner, with absolutely no Gujrati feel in village or dialogues or music all of which reselmbled South India more than Gujrat. The story was also very much sweet and it seemed that Mani Ratnam didnot want the screen play to deviate much from a typical rags to riches story. Whatever little the hero did had large implications and saw immediate success. Be it the ease with which an article led to the resignation of the leader of thread business or the ease with which an IAS officer was made to take back his orders is all very naive to be believed. No failure on his part was ever shown except that ever dragging court proceedings which I felt was done poorly. I couldnot believe that a sentimental speech by Guru bhai could let him off the hook so easily. Subplots were weak and arbit to say the least.

Most of the second half could have been used to show struggles in life of the protagonist and a few useless songs could have been left out. All through the movie I kept on recounting how well the movie The Aviator was made and how well did the director bring out the struggles in the rags to riches life of Howard Huges. The court scene in Aviator is one of the best that i have ever watched. Long time to go before any Indian Director reaches that level.

Mithun does a small cameo which is not befitting his capability. Abhishek looks more like Amitabh in his dialog delivery and acting than he has ever before.

According to me a movie which should have made x on box office will gross 2x because of the following reasons (mentioned in the order of the decreasing effect) :
1. Ash Abhishek love affair is brewing hot in India.
2. People were always tracking and looking for Dhirubhai Ambani in Guru Kant Desai (the protagonist). According to me this might even be the no. 1 reason. This was a smart marketing gimmick by the producers.
3. Abhishek's best acting till date.
4. A very strong star cast.
5. Mani Ratnam's flawless direction and technically perfect filming.
6. A R Rehman's music.

Racism Charges - A manifestation of attention seeking behaviour?

As the power shift across the globe happens towards the coloured countries, many complex soft issues are coming to forefront. Globalisation has resulted in increased interactions among hitherto excommunicated communities. Therefore people are probably taking time to understand each other and accept each other as equals and shed the historical notion of racial superiority. For example a British would really find it difficult to accept an Indian as an equal, though his actions may indicate otherwise. It's a result of deep rooted historical baggage and it will take time before the prosperity and power does a reasonable shifts to countries like India for them to be acknowledged as more than an underdog.

This underdog status is doing us more harm than good. It makes us more complacent in lesser time with lesser achievements. We fail to recognise that we are being elevated to a star status because people never expected us to do anything and we are, contrary to no expectations, are doing a few things right. We are very low in the Human Development Index and probably every other social index apart from SENSEX and GDP growth parameter, both of which doesnot necessarily mean a great life for the citizens of India (See my previous blog for details).
This zeal to be accepted into the upstream class of nations has resulted into hypersensitivity. If we dont have mettle clamour and unsettle. We find every small issue, blow it up and clamour and unsettle the biggies and in the end declare ourselves victorious. This is same as the self declared victories of Al Qaida. This attention seeking childish behaviour has resulted into many a racist attacks and indictments.

Shilpa shetty in a recent episode of Big Brother, a very popular Channel 4 show in UK, was called a 'dog' and an 'Indian'. Both are being used to prove that she was racially abused. I really find no sense in it. First of all calling her a dog shows a serious gap in understanding of gender on the part of the caller and she indeed is an Indian. So where is racism in the picture. Also there is every chance that the controversy might be a manufactured one, as it has potential to give cheap publicity to the show not only in UK but across the world.Herchelle Gibbs proclaimed the pakistani spectators as 'Bloody Animals'. Again I find it difficult to elicit any kind of racial connotation from the phrase. Ok it isnot a great thing to say but common, in a heated match things get much worse and the less said about it the better. Moreover Herschelle Gibbs himself is of coloured origin. So why would he abuse his own people, so to say. Again the attention seeking couloured world jumped to the occassion of flexing its muscle and make a issue out of nothing. We perhaps have made ourselves a butt of ridicule by being over sensitive. It gets us nothing but low self esteem.

In this age when Indians and other coloured people are rising to historical successes do we even need to care about racism. The rise itself is a slap on the face of the racists. The best way to disarm the remaining racists in the world is to ignore, just like we ignore a barking dog. Do we argue with it and ask him to take his bark back? Even if it does it gains us nothing except wasted time.

My grandfather used to tell me an interesting story about his childhood. His lower caste friends used to touch the food of brahmin guys while they were gulping down the tasty meal. The brahmin guys would immediately leave eating and rush back home to take bath, while his muslim friends would enjoy the meals. The sikh guys were smarter, they used to move the Kada once over periphery of the plate , while reciting the holy name and thus consecrating the food again. Thus sikh guys were unperturbed by the naughtiness of their muslim friends. We perhaps need to do the same thing. (Please not that this anecdote was used just as an illustration, it is not meant to hurt any sentiments, if at all.) A racial comment should be met with a smile over the ignorance of the abuser and without wasting any time we should continue towards the larger goals. If we donot learn to do that we might end up getting easily deflected from our meals ending up wasting water for taking baths.
(Pic from -> http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/01_2007/shilpalead248.jpg)