barber - barbaric

I usually have my hair cut in my native place (after I moved to Chennai; very difficult to communicate for me where to trim and how much to trim in Tamil) - some times in Vizag too.


This time when i was in Vizag I went to a saloon nearby and was waiting for my turn (on Sunday). Next to the saloon couple of butcher shops were selling meat. Because of more demand, the meat was finished in no time. At this point, a boy of aged around 12-15 years of age was killing the chicken & lamb in a barbaric way. I couldn't see it and didn't want to explain - it is barbaric and savage killing. whatever is the reason - irrespective of hunger or taste for meat. it is cruel and couldn't stop myself to slap that bastard - didn't do it and didn't want to singled out at that point. Coincidentally a temple (Durga goddess) is just opposite to the butcher shop.


In another situation during lunch at office - one of my colleague is favoring to allow beef meat or any animal (who are willing to eat) meat to fill the gap.

I don't want to argue as i have no answers - this is the only place :)


/Srinivas

a tip on pivot charts

when plotting bar charts using pivot tables, it is little difficult to hide/delete unwanted rows:

for example the below pivot chart shows some data for years 2012 and 2013 spreading over months. But it is not important to show the data for future months - or other wise any month which is not important. If we try to delete a row for a month let us Jan or Feb of 2013, in pivot chart or table, Jan or Feb of 2012 will go out of the bar chart.

To get the correct representation, go to pivotTableOptions->Display-> select "Classic pivot table layout"

The table will be shown in expanded form with years and months. copy the pivot table data and paste into another sheet (only values). Delete the unwanted rows. and plot a bar chart . Then you will get like this: for example, i dont want to represent the data of Sep 2012, and March to Dec of 2013.

September 2012,, and March to Dec of 2013 are not shown in the above chart.

This is one easy way of getting bar chart when we wanted to show data with zero values.

I faced lot of issues to get this done, in the mean time i had to do some image manipulation. but this one is clean.

child hood memories

Some child hood memories:

Until higher secondary education, i had no specific interest in watching particular movies or songs.. of course one reason is we had no television in my home - it happened like that. So, to me and to my family very little interest over movies or entertainment. but some part of this is compensated by reading some novels, books, engaged in playing activities.

During my school days, we used to have tut ions after the school hours - one girl of my class will never come on time (our homes are near-by and used to go all-together). We had to wait at her home until she finished watching some of her favorite movie trailers - one such movie is "Gulabi". the movie has great songs, i realized very lately. Myself and my friends were so frustrated waiting  for her and could not find out why she is so obsessed with the movie and songs of that movie - i missed those moments, whatever is the reason first impression is the best one.


the other similar situation had happened with the movie - Gitanjali by Mani ratnam. During those days our neighbors bring VCD's and play during Sundays. Of all movies myself and my sister request my neighbor girl(we call her "akka" - elder sister) to play "Jagadeka veerudu athiloka sundari" - one of the greatest movie of all time in Telugu industry, a nice movie to watch by children at all times. But she used to play Gitanjali several times. i had to watch this movie "Gitanjali" with patience so that she will play the other one after she is bored with "Gitanjali" . no action, and the movie is very dull to my brain. I could not follow one song in "Gitanjali" - "ohh priya priya" - my brain is so small and absolutely no idea why the song is so sad and is so different from the context. Anyways, again this is another nice moment and missed great first experiences of such movies and songs in my child hood. of course age and exposure (circumstances) make difference.

Now, i am a different person :)

Working with Pi

Few months ago, i bought Raspberry pi (mini computer without limbs :) ).

With lot of struggle, especially in Chennai ( i stay in Chennai), where there is no proper internet connection, difficult to get needful accessories, finally made some thing work using this tiny device.

Although the intent is nice, but in reality the accessories and availability in India is very difficult, also very pricey.

This tiny device is a mini computer + micro controller with no real time clock.

Primary information:

1. Raspberry Pi Model B 512MB RAM. Costs 2750/- from Element 14

2. The device has only two USB ports and can not drive external devices (except keyboard and mice) - so one has to buy a Powered USB hub, costs Rs 1000+.

3. The device clocks at 700MHz and ram is very little 512MB/256MB. So processing power especially browsing and playing multimedia files (of course the purpose is not do this) is very slow. On top of that Memory read/write speed is less, it will be very much sluggish to use. So again with a good reading speeds, one has to shell out some Rs. 500 -1000.

4. Now, if some body wants to use with the device with wi-fi, (very few devices are recommended) again one more thousand is required to buy a working wi-fi adapter. I have purchased Dlink DWA-131 (recommended to use even without using Powered USB hub). Also, i have tested with my Belkin Wireless G adapter with powered hub, it works.

Al-together atleast INR 7000/- is required to get started working on it. Of course this can be minimized if people are available to work in groups!  ( i did not mention about the display).

Now coming to the main part, most of the communities are targeting for multimedia & programming, but again some are focusing on education and the projects with raspberry pi are very nice . I am trying to build some interesting things which stimulate children.

How nasty it is !

Some thing to chill out !

without much delay, i received raspberry pi today (ordered few more). I failed to do much with beagle boards as they demand specific display (dvi-d), but not keeping them dead. But i wanted to do some interesting good things with raspberry pi instead of focusing on robotics.

The other good thing is my motorola defy power adapter is best suitable to power-up the raspberry pi. Specs say the laptop USB cannot drive (500mA) the pi as it needs relatively higher current (700-1200 mA).  That is good. Every time i used to buy power adapter for every board.


btw, i almost ready to buy raspberry pi boards on ebay. But waiting for couple of days gave me a big price saving. Element14 charged 3k including tax and shipping charges.

will have to see how long my interest sustains on this. :)

/Srinivas