Karthikeyan

So the ban on Ghajini has been lifted? The Hindi version is a remake of Tamil version. And the Tamil version is remake of ‘memento’, Chistopher Nolan (Remember ‘The Dark Knight’?) directed that movie. Now the tamil version is not so straight from memento either.  Infact one particular section in that movie is taken from the french movie ‘Amelie’. I am pretty much sure that the hindi version of ghajini is ditto of the tamil version. But lets see. By the way, watch out for the scene where she helps some kids cross a road block  by swinging them on a gate nearby. That is taken from amelie. I am sure that scene is there, though the Hindi version is not yet out. Lets see.

I am fed of this crap.

The trek was awesome! Started on 14th night and reached Hornadu the next day early morning. The roads got lots of twists and turns. So many curves that some of the more stable guys puked. Hornadu has the Annapoorneshwari temple. Just like the Kollur temple stop when going to Kodachadri. We had breakfast there at the temple. The deity name implied that we should have breakfast there! From there went to kalasa and then to Balagal by bus. From Balagal, we decided to take a seven kilometere walk to mullodi. We had earlier planned to take a jeep, but the guy asked for 450 rupees. That makes it over 50 rupees per liter. Phew. Though we were seven, we decided otherwise. One should reach mullodi before 4 pm, if you take the same means of transport as we did.

We stayed at a house that was very close to a big stream were we could bathe. From there on, the kudremukh peak was 12 km. So it was a 24 km in a day trek. We trekked on 15th. No leeches this time since there was no rain for 2 weeks. Hence the journey was close to what we had in Mulainagiri. But the view that we got here was awesome. Along the route, one crosses several mountains of considerable height. But when you sit at the Kudremukh peak and look down, those same peaks look tiny, hiding behind the clouds. My head did spin a bit. We chose to sit as close to the edge as we can and it was like hanging from a rope at 1458 meters above sea level. I need to do a bungee jump an sky dive soon.

Calvin and Hobbes.. that kid is ultra smart!

Sometime back, I used to have tough time tracing the caller functions for a given function in the kernel. A colleague of mine had this simple way of doing it. Just create a null pointer exception at the called function and look at the kernel dump stack trace. You get what you want, i.e. the function that called this one. Not that its a great idea, but the fact is that its simple. It is right there and you don’t see it. Why make things complicated than they actually are?

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HAPPY DIWALI PEOPLE!!

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Some works (books here) show what thinking different is about. They surely make you think from a different angle. What can be more valuable?

1) ‘Hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy’ (which I stopped reading midway, since it changed my thoughts to an extent that I thought I should stop it unless it makes me go crazy and for the good of people arround me, apart from another incident). Seriously. Pan galactic gargle blasters, nutrient content in a towel and about whales appearing out of thin air became a regular joke from my side among guys who had never read the book. I would try to explain to them what its all about and laugh it out. I secretly knew they would kill me some time. They didn’t because suddenly, for no reason, I stopped reading the book. Read the book and come back and read my previous sentence . If you have read “The foundation series” by Isaac Asimov, then nothing like it. You will love HGTG more.

2) “Fooled by randomness”. A book that Rakesh bought but never read and I sneaked in to finish. Get me some more books dude, keep up the good work.

Lady fortuna plays quite an important role in one’s life. I thought I was all alone when I used to shout how lucky I was and I could have been a zero otherwise. I can recall plenty of incidents when I was just so plain lucky. The author goes on to show how luck plays an important role in our lives, how probabilty is misused and misinterpreted, about survivorship bias and more than that, what can one do about it! I won’t elaborate on the “what can you do” section. Watch out for that section, it has just two paragraphs and will get you. It puts in simple terms, in all the randomness and chaos that afflicts us, his advice on going through life. He seems to hate giving advice. He makes an exception in those two paragraphs. There was no long sermon in that book. Great!

I got hold of ten years of ‘calvin and hobbes’ series. Cool stuff to read during a break.

And next weekend I am off to kudhremukh. Trek time! More leeches! More conquests! Yeah!

In my home in Chennai, I noticed a very peculiar incident. I will have to describe the scenario first.

The balcony in my home looks straight at an open area. This area is about 800-1000 square feet. This place is not yet occupied since the whole plot is a well. Yes, you read me right. It is a huge dry well. This is a weird case in my locality, since in Chennai, people occupy whatever space they can to build a house. The owners of the plots surrounding the area have built walls arround it.

An year back when I had come home, I noticed, a puppy stuck in that area. It would try to jump over the wall  throughout the day, but could not. In the night, it would spend hours crying, before it slept (And letting us sleep). It soon grew up and jumped the wall and escaped to freedom. My mom and neighbours were pretty much happy about this. Feeling a sense of greatness at having helped a life? Or simply happy for that dog?

This time, I heard some noises in that plot and to my shock, found that there are arround 4 puppys in there. What the heck? I asked my mom about this and she said, it is the same dog that was stuck here last year that has given birth to them. And she pointed ” What a stupid dog to come back to this cage and give birth”.

On a second thought, I don’t think that anyone (I mean ANYONE) is so stupid. Last year, I remember my mom keeping a wooden plank against the inside of the boundary wall so that it could escape. But the dog woudn’t. So she and the neighbours resorted to feeding it everyday. I think, that is exactly the reason it is back. The best place for its kids to stay would be inside the closed walls. A safehouse were you get food everyday, protection from the streets and yeah when you grow up, jump the wall and face the streets. Got to face the streets spread the genes right?

I have been reading this book, “The Selfish Gene” By Richard Dawkins and hence the last sentence in the paragraph above. Its worth a read. Its rare to get books that can put complex scientific subjects in layman terms and still be accepted among the scientific community as well. One must read this book.

And yeah, what a bitch!

Ugli Aur Pagli is a copy (ditto) of the korean movie ‘my sassy girl’. The original version is an awesome one. The korean movie is available in youtube. Get it from here.

Its worth it. Enjoy!

I tried getting my grandma to listen to heavy metal! YEY.

She asked if the guy has stomach ache. I couldn’t control my laughter. I said that it was a song, and then she started laughing and said “It seems, he will really get stomach ache”.

For godsmack’s serenity, she asked if that was a devil’s song!

Olympics

It was heart warming to see honest bunch of lads doing well in the international stage. New guys doing great get my attention, since the media has not yet pounced on them and there ego is under check, thanks to there devotion to there ‘gurus’ and there game.

A commentator in one of the TV news channels says, ” if Jamaica can do it, then why can’t india” . I don’t know if she knew the facts, she should go to this page and see that Jamaica had been winning athletics medals for a long time. It has total 53 medals out of which one is from cycling and the rest from athletics. But I guess her motive was just to motivate. Good if youngsters get motivated.

The recent trekking trip was to Kodachadri.

This guy has already written about it (A lot of it). I will use it as an excuse to prevent writing redundant information (He won’t mind! He wants hits… so he would be even more happier if you leave comments there too. Make someone happy ). And yeah I was there with him to shivanasamudhra.

A trek in the western ghats takes a different shape when its raining.

It gets slippery and plenty of leeches breed in damp areas. Wiki says so and we witnessed it. But, one can not rest on the way since anytime you stop you know 10 more are sticking to you. Mixing tobacco and oil and smearing it helped.

But then, it is only when you reach a point where you stop bothering about them sucking your blood that you will be free from them. It helps to just stand there see one sucking the juice out of you. You get used to it. But there is always that fear that creeps in when it rolls towards you. I had total 4 attached to me. And right now, even after week, its still itching in the bite zone.

In the next trek, I will try to ignore them, and just focus on the climb. Someone said its more psychological than any real problem. A mosquito but bigger in size?

But reaching the top was worth everything.

We also tried to go to arisanagundi falls. We ignored the “no trekking” board. Four guys had already decided to go back midway. The trail was getting thinner along the way. The journey came to a halt when we saw a huge spider with its web sprawling right across the fading trail. We turned back right there. If there is this huge a spider when the trail was starting to fade. Wonder what else would have been further.

Overall it was a unique experience. It was good introductory trek with leeches.Preparing for tougher ones. Kodachadri is definitely worth a visit.

Kollur temple is famous. My parents had been there when I was not at all there in this world.
It was similar to guruvayur. We got up early morning and gave the temple a visit. The chief minister of karnataka (Mr. Yediyurappa) was paying a visit the same day. I saw him in the temple. In fact, I was standing right in his way and was trying to identify him, when a guard came and shoved me out of the way.

Kodachadri and kollur is a good combination. Not fully a trek. But quite a journey.

I did some experiments some time back on Icache. Putting down something one can try easily and yeah, its fun!

First of all, get the Icache size of your processor. You can get it by running dmidecode in your linux box (Yeah, I am assuming you are using linux). Example: `dmidecode | grep -B 20 way`.

Next see the associativity of your cache. On my system, its 4 way and the output looks something like this:

Operational Mode: Write Back
Location: Internal
Installed Size: 32 KB
Maximum Size: 32 KB
Associativity: 4-way Set-associative

So each address of my cache can be mapped simultaneously to four addresses in RAM at 32K fixed offsets.
As the topic says, lets thrash the cache. For that, we need to make sure that our instructions are aligned such that every 32Kth location in the memory is accessed. The following code does it for 1-way cache. Writing for 4-way would be lengthy and redudant code. So chose 1-way.

func5(){
func6();
}
temp3(){
asm(”.space 32*1024 \n”);
}
func4(){
func5();
}

Here asm(”.space 32*1024 \n”) makes sure that function func4 is spaced at 32K from func5. Run`nm | grep func` to get the addresses. Call func4 in a large loop and time the whole code. Now remove temp3 and look at the execution time. It takes a lot less time than that with temp3 (Increase the number of times the function is called to see the effect ). Mine is 4-way, So I need eight such functions spaced apart to start the thrash! The fun here is to see it happening after getting to read about it in books. Seeing it work is exhilarating. Try it and yeah…..Happy thrashing!

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Yeah, this also gives the ideal ‘what not to do’ for writing code.

Went to Bheemeshwari fishing camp a week back. One can find enough info about that place in net. Stayed at the jungles and lodges resorts. Writing down what is there and what not to expect from it.

First of all, this place is along the banks of cauvery some 100 Kms south of bangalore. One basically skims along the edges of the jungle at Bheemeshwari.

What you get:

1) You get to see crocodiles! Yeah, at some respectable distance. One should get a binocular to this place. I don’t have any.

2) The resort is good. You get two types of accomodation. A tent house and log hut. Tent house come at Rs. 1900 and Log huts at Rs. 2500 a night. Log huts are air conditioned and you get typical 3 – 4 star accomodation. Whereas tents have more of a camping feel to them. No air-conditioning, but with the jungle surrounding you and the climate being cold enough, I thought one does not need any AC.

3) Food is great! The barbecue they arranged for the evening was awesome.

What it is not:

1) If you thought you get to learn something about fishing there. Forget it. We did everything there except proper fishing. The reason the authorities gave us was that it was off season. We did not get any fancy fishing rod, but hey, one would expect some tips from someone. I wandered to get some native guy here to tell about where to fish and what to do. I just found a guy fishing in some remote corner along the bank. I went up to him and asked which place is good. He said anywhere deep enough is good. Asked him what would be good bait (All naive questions). He said its all luck and patience. He also said that when the sun is up, one can find many fishes. I don’t know how true that is but the next day when the sun was up I could see lots of fishes along the bank. They were quite big and eating the tadpoles. But by that time we were ready to leave.

Who is it for?

For those who don’t prefer much activity and just would drool arround along the banks.

Who is it not for..

If you are the kind of person willing to learn something and would prefer some activity, its not for you. We ended up playing volleyball for sometime, which we can do somewhere else too. One does not have to go to a fishing camp to do that.

I would prefer the honnemaradu trip and mulainagiri trek which I did months back. In Honnemaradu, one gets to learn to row a coracle, learn canoeing and yeah, jump into water and be there for hours!

If I want to relax at a natural place surrounded by greeenery, without bothering about anything and also be close to bangalore. I will choose this place.

So, if you are going to this place. Then be prepared to relax without any care in the world and enjoy the light acitivity that you get to do there.

An incident:

I slept at around 3 am and got up at 5am to go fishing. I woke another guy up and it was me alone and I was determined that I would get at least one. I sat there with patience for 1 hour but in vain. I got up and went back to my tent and noticed that the door was closed from inside. I did not want to disturb my roomy sleeping. It was a simple lock where you just drop the latch to a loop. And I being the smart*** type, slid my key chain arround the corner and pushed the latch up and opened the door. It was still dark at 6 am there and I went into the room. I just moved forward towards the table and where I had kept my luggage. I could see none of my luggage there and stood there scratching my head, when i heard some movement in the bed nearby and a woman’s voice said “Good morning”. It was more of a morning wish. I turned arround still thinking, what the heck? I suddenly realized that I got into my neighbours tent! (Though the tents are far apart, I guess my tiredness got me). They were a couple and were foreigners. But before they could utter any other word. I lifted my hand up saying ” Oh my god, I’m sorry” and stepped out of the tent and closed the door from outside. I kept saying to myself “damn..damn”. After sometime I could hardly stop laughing at that incident. Even now! And I must say the lady had a good sense of humour.
I will post the pictures of the place soon (Not the barging in picure , I don’t have any of that). More of a barge in camp than a fishing camp for me though.