Sharada Prasad

The mobile service providers now have the greatest possible challenge ever – competing with the tariff. So do subscribers – choosing the best tariff and the widest coverage. Now both are possible with the help of dual SIM phones.

Recently MTS launched its operations in Karnataka. The tariff is so attractive that I shifted to a new technology – CDMA. But I now carry two phones – MTS for outgoing voice calls and Idea for SMS. This combination will help me get the money I invested on the new CDMA phone (which was 1.1k) in just 3 months.

Going forward, the best option is to buy handsets with multiple SIM support options. Karbonn KC555 is one good option, if you want dual GSM/GSM or GSM/CDMA option. Plan your tariff such that you can divide your STD, local and SMS between the two different networks and get the most out of money.

Another new challenge would be posed to the service providers when TRAI allows subscribers to retain the mobile number while switching the service providers. Many people stick to a service provider even though they may not be happy with the service for one reason – change of mobile number. This scenario is going to change very soon.

Throughout my education, my focus was just on understanding problems for the sake of exams. I never pursued problems as an exercise to stimulate my mind and seek a path to find real solutions.

In last few years I have felt a pressing need to re-learn mathematics with a different perspective – look at Mathematics as set of ideas and not as set of formulae. I must admit that I am now in love with Mathematics. Same has happened with Physics too.

Here are few things you can do to understand Mathematics better.

1. Get a good understanding of history of Mathematics. The Greek and Babylonian inventions, which took several centuries to mature, are covered in high schools. But if you understand the context, you will appreciate what a breakthrough that idea was when it was invented. Several problems lingered for few hundred years before getting solved. It took almost 2000 years for calculus to answer the questions of change and motion. So what is the most effective way to quickly learn history of Mathematics? – Watch “The Story of Mathematics” by “Marcus Du Sautoy”
2. Get a good idea of the ideas. Yes. Mathematics is all about ideas. How did  they originate? A very enjoyable way of doing this is to read two books – “What is Mathematics” by Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins and Ian Stewart and Mathematics – From the birth of numbers, Jan Gullberg
3. Start solving interesting problems. You can find many places on the net to do so. One example is – http://projecteuler.net/

Try this new path. I assure you that mathematics will never be your nightmare but favourite pastime.

Today my 1TB Seagate 7200rpm Barracuda hard drive crashed. It was a hardware failure. If you can detect the disc in the BIOS, you can use some or the other software to recover the data. If it does not get detected in the BIOS, there are options, but costly ones. The best part is, now Ubuntu 9.10 has a built-in utility to warn you against disc failure – Palimpsest. I ignored the warning

I lost close to 970GB worth of data. Many of my favourite documentaries, teaching company video courses, television series and TED videos are gone.

I was shattered. But not to the extent of getting depressed. I lost a camera worth 1.5lakhs on the road, last year. I am used to such losses now

But there was something else that really made me ignore my loss. This morning I was at St. John’s donating blood for my mother friends who has been diagnosed with blood cancer. When I met the family, I could see the loss they were anticipating in their eyes. I know that I always buy my camera back one day, download all the data on the internet and fill my hard disk again. But losing a family member is just huge. Certain things can never come back.

One more addition to our fleet of cycles – BSA Foldman foldable (folding) bicycle. Checkout the photos and videos as of now. I will come up with a review in about a month or two.

Assembling the cycle:

Folding the cycle:

BSA Foldman Photos on flickr

[flickr-photoset:id=72157622651055442,size=s]

I must admit that I did not know about Richard Feynman till recently. I am ashamed to call myself a Physics buff. But if you love Physics, you should not miss buying “The Feynman Lectures on Physics” series.

The lecture series is a compilation of lectures delivered by Feynman at Caltech between 1961 and 63. There are audio recording of the lectures too. The Indian version is pretty cheap (published by Pearson eduction). The set of three books cost around Rs.700 after 20% discount.
ISBN Number: 9788131721698, 9788131721704 and 9788131721667

I also picked up a book on butterflies. Butterflies? Yes. Butterfiles. Many birders have been inspiring me and I am now fascinated with butterflies too. If you are too, then don’t miss “The Book of Indian Butterflies” published by Bombay Natural History Society. It costs Rs.1200 after 20% discount at Tata Book House, IISc, Bangalore. ISBN Number: 9780195696202

I now need to get the problem solving supplement for the Feynman lectures (ISBN – 9788131725559)

It has been close to four months since I got my new Rockrider 5.3. Overall, I am happy with the bike.

The bike is smooth, disc brakes are helping me a lot on the muddy roads I have in my locality. I loved the shifters. They are very smooth and precise. Saddle is pretty comfortable. Frame is good. Front fork is awesome – 100mm with lockout. Handle bar grip could have been a little better.

The main problem thing which I experienced was – lower handle bar. Also, the distance between the seat-post and the stem is little more that a Trek or a Merida. This puts good amount of pressure on my forearms and my back bends considerably. I had backache problems for first few weeks. My brother, who also has a Rockrider 5.3, has backache issue. We spoke to the people at Decathlon about the low handle bar. It was not of any help. Recently on a bngbirds birding day, I met one other person with similar problem. Even Rockrider 5.2 has the same issue.

Disc brakes are not as great as I had thought of them to be. V-Brakes are much better than mechanical disc brakes (not hydraulic brakes). But the major advantage is, you can do without perfect truing of wheels and also not worry about muddy roads. In case of v-brakes, the mud gets between the brake shoe and the rim and wears it off.

The cycle does not come with front and rear reflectors. Decathlon should consider including these considering the safety of the rider. Even the wheels have only one reflector. The attached bell is not that great. Re-aligning the wheels to the disc brake pads is important. Sometimes the discs can brush the pads.

Decathlon mirrors are not good. Don’t go for them. Decathlon fenders are nice, much better than the Bontrager ones we had.

Rockrider Kenda tyres could have had a different tread design. Bontrager tyres on the Trek give you a very smooth feeling as compared to the Kenda tyres of RR.

Pedals are little flaky and the reflectors fell off within few days.

RR 5.3 is a very good value for the money if you are buying it directly from Decathlon for 20k. If you are planning to buy it from a retailer for 23k, I suggest you to go for a Merida or Trek.

You can view the photographs of Rockrider 5.3 here on Flickr – [flickr-photoset:id=72157620534154603,size=s]

Last Saturday Thej told me that many people listen to audio books at 2x speed. I just could not believe him. 1x itself is difficult for me to understand. 2x? Noway.

[img_assist|nid=282|title=Transcend MP850|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=150|height=272]I started with 1.14x on Monday. I was pretty comfortable with the speed. Yesterday I tried 1.33x (the max speed in my Transcend MP850 music player), I could not miss a word. So this means 33% savings in time. I can now listen to 33% more books. Since the words are faster, my brain now concentrates better. Thanks a lot Thej, for this tip. 1.33x is an optimal speed. I doubt whether I can listen to audio books at 2x speed.

I listen to the courses from the teaching company. I don’t recommend people to listen to audio books when they drive in heavy traffic. Even listening to radio can be distracting, especially while changing channels. I keep a low profile on Bangalore’s roads and manage with listening to books on my way to office.

One of the key things in improving your listening capabilities in traffic is to [img_assist|nid=283|title=Creative EP630 Earphones|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=290|height=290]use ‘Noise Isolating earphones’, if not the costly ‘Noise cancelling earphones’. I use Creative EP630. Such earphones are crucial since as audio book listeners we have to focus on almost every spoken word.

‘Cycling + Audio books = New Sharada Prasad’. ‘Sharada Prasad’ is a variable and can be replaced by any other name – the equation would still hold true.

From today Nikon D300 will be history. It was released two years back around same time of the year. I remember the pain people had to go through after pre-ordering their cameras. I had to wait till Feb 2008 to lay my hands on my camera. I got mine from Crutchfield.

Today, just two days after the release of D300s – a much improved version of D300, Amazon and other major retailers are shipping it out under ’1-day’ expedited shipping. D300 costed me $1812 with shipping. Today D300s costs you $1800 while the price of D300 is around $1700. I wonder who would buy those D300 still lingering in the market.

In few days, a new version of legendary Nikon 18-200mm VR lens will be out. It costs $100 more than its previous version.

Business always runs in this auto mode of making things obsolete – whether we like it or not.

My first devanagari language was Hindi. I was in third standard then. I used to take classes in Chitradurga from a lady called ‘Radha’. Since the scripts of Hindi and Sanskrit are same, I started taking classes in Sanskrit when I was in fifth standard. But the focus then was more on passing the exams and earning the certificates and not appreciating the language as such.

Hindi became a very handy language since we had tenants from north India. With the advent of TV and national programs, I was the only person in the family, apart from my mother, who could translate Ramayan and Mahabharat for the rest in our neighbourhood.

Hindi was ubiquitous. I started watching Hindi movies and buying Hindi audio cassettes.

In high-school I took Sanskrit as my first language. The language was relayively easy because of my early exposure. But usage of Hindi was more practical. So soon after my 12th, I lost touch with Sanskrit. But my association with Hindi continued.

Hindi was my trump card when I went around India on my motorcycle last year. It helped me during most part of my journey (except in North east and south India).

My fascination for languages made me dabble my hands in German and French. But as my love for languages spread to Spanish and Arabic (I know none of these well), I decided to revisit Sanskrit. This time I want to learn this language for its beauty and not for certificates.

I found Samskrita Bharati as the best place to start. It is well known as Aksharam in the Girinagar area of Bangalore. The correspondence course allows me to learn the language with good amount of flexibility. Samskrita Bharati also organizes a 10 day workshop on ‘spoken Sanskrit’. There are other options too. Check this link – http://www.samskritabharati.org/sb/learn-samskritam

I and my family members registed for ‘Pravesha’ course yesterday. If you are comforatble with Sanskrit, you can give multiple exams, if timings don’t overlap. Most common option is, giving ‘Pravesha’ in the morning and ‘Parichaya’ in the evening.

I am planning to visit Mattur, Karnataka, the only village where Sanskrit still the native language, sometime in November.