India - winding up
Announcement: before I get overwhelmed with preparations, I will confirm that we fly out of Bangalore this coming Friday 21st November. This means that until the 6th December, when we arrive back in Australia, Alex will be busy doing Japan 
This evening we dined in style with the guys from INTEC Bangalore.
INTEC send off
This is us sat at Ruchi’s (18/1 Cambridge Road, Ulsoor, Bangalore - 560 008 Phone: 41320435), which also served commendably as our local takeaway. We indulged in many more curries than I can now possibly name or remember. A great way for us to say goodbye to southern Indian cuisine.
I would like again to say a special thank you to Vinay for his taking up a whole weekend escorting us around Mysore and making Akira’s time there special. And you did get your “low five” out of Taiga at last!
And of course many thanks to Vasantha for inviting us to your home last weekend and treating us to some great Indian home cooking. It was also a treat to see our first major Hindu temple, the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) in Bangalore. This is their biggest temple complex in the world, and if you still don’t get it, they are the people in orange who dance and chant to the Hindu god Krishna (Hare Krishna!).
It has been an incredible stay and we would love to return sometime! We certainly all feel sad that we are having to make our last goodbyes 
.
Up, up and away
Yes we shall be flying yet again. This thought excited a few neurons and I checked my image library for an interesting visual aside. Back in the UK my wife thought it would be fun to scare the living **** out of me. I must say that it was one of the most exciting things I have ever done. The initial flight, before I took the controls that is, was really quite terrifying - sat in a glass bubble and rising over the fir trees. Of course, once I took control and all my efforts were focused (on those 3 controls), there was no looking back - well, except when I had those controls of course 
Trying to look cool
Sensing that the end is nigh
Planning a) new wife b) new underwear?
Irasshaimase!
My days in Bangalore are fast coming to an end. It now feels like home to both myself and my family. But when I first arrived, being driven from the airport to the city, I was wondering where we had landed. Let me tell you more.
Even at the brand new airport, the roads were pitted. Tractors approached us on our side of the dual carriageway. Road lanes were merely decoration if they were there at all. Road rules, well they were obviously different. For the whole trip both my wife and I tried to resolve, in our own private thoughts, whether or not we had made a mistake. All those exotic photographs of people traveling on foot, or even a whole family on a motorbike, well we were now in that picture. The strange site of people urinating on the road side, oh my, is it all like this? To cap it off, when we first arrived at our flat we were greeted by the sounds of our local mosque and its call to prayer permeating the air. When I walked into the kitchen, our neighbours who I could see through our kitchen window were in flowing white robes. Oh boy, sensory overload!
With the 3 months that I have been away from Japan, I have once again regained that innocent excitement about traveling to somewhere new. Bangalore and India is now commonplace. And it is of revisiting Japan that I am now focused.
Though it is years since my first Japan visit, my senses were equally quite overloaded. No, not in the same way, but by the alien world in which I had arrived.
My wife doesn’t like the word Orient. She does not see that she is from the east, let alone the far east. Look at a map - Japan is in the centre - which in Japan it is. It is just a technicality that zero degrees longitude is elsewhere.
I can’t imagine the experience for those first westerners arriving in Japan. If my history is correct, in 1542 some Portuguese shipwrecked on the coast of Japan. And it was the next year that the first official Portuguese trading fleet arrived.
Japan can still provide me with that initial buzz, the anticipation of the exotic, of things even now only partially understood. Maybe the simplest of examples will convey some of that alien world that I sought and once found. For many people, the first visit to a shop will have them wondering in what way they are being greeted. いらっしゃいませ (Irasshaimase)! Not just once, but many times, and if they are ladies it will be in high pitched minnie mouse voices. No, they won’t stop at just one greeting. And you’d better watch out - if it’s a multi store outlet then get ready to cringe! To my fellow travellers, here’s a toast “To travel and all that it brings”
ADDENDUM: Thank you for the request to add that which I had forgotten . Actually I wanted readers to wonder and check - the beginnings of every great travel adventure! Nonetheless, in a shop, irasshaimase means “Welcome!”.
I wager that he hates keyboards!
Sometimes one comes across the most impressive individuals. Usually I am astounded by their wit or their intelligence. For a change, I was impressed by their stature. No, not within my profession (yes, IEEE believe that software engineers are professionals) but just how damn tall they were.
Oh boy!
FYI This photo was taken at Krishnarajasagar Dam (Mysore), where this guy was working the crowd. When I tried to find out who he was I came up with nothing. It was suggested to me, when we were there, that he had been hired to entertain the crowd, but he was also making a tidy sum out of posing for pictures.
Hey, honey?
When I need inspiration, I leave my notebook and head out to look around and discover. It’s amazing what detail one can miss whilst in a rush. This is one of those lucky finds. Outside our Indian apartment there is a lot of wildlife. Now considering that we are virtually in the centre of Bangalore, this is quite amazing. You might recall our visiting monkeys. Well, I had spotted a strange shape in the trees and really had no idea what I was looking at. A few days later, by lucky coincidence, the newspaper made it quite clear.
So, borrowing my wife’s camera I’ve snapped our busy neighbours. My smartphone is totally lacking in the optical zoom department (and the digital zoom is seriously flawed), so I now feel the need to acquire a real camera. Handy it is that in one week we head to Japan! And the best cameras? Yes all Japanese - Nikon, Canon, Sony… Any digital camera recommendations?
Wallet phones
Wallet Phones
Just a short while ago I mentioned C-Mode vending machines in Japan and the efforts by VISA, Nokia and Google to do, in effect, the same as what Japanese Wallet phones already can.
And so, this fresh article at Reuters reassures me that others out there are aware of how far behind we are in this respect. I am somewhat surprised that it took this long to make news, considering I blogged it on Oct 7th, over a month ago, and it would not be NEWS to anyone who regularly visits or, of course, lives in Japan.
Well in about 9 days, and after 3 months in Bangalore, India, I too will be back in Japan, for yet another stay of 2 weeks. This should give me time to appreciate and research more of the technology that I see whilst on the ground.
Returning to the the Reuters story, it is impressive that their researchers dug up that “more than 50 million, or about half of all cell phone users, already carry phones capable of serving as wallets”. This is quite incredible. But then, as I have pointed out about fibre optic internet access (FTTH), technology take up in Japan is unparalleled.
If you are an IT business “mover and shaker”, please read the Reuters story and think carefully of the investment opportunities resulting from a forecast like “Some 700 million people worldwide are expected to own such (wallet) phones by 2013″. I know that I for one will be further expanding my phone market knowledge and technology skills. Here’s looking forward to a phone enabled vending machine on every corner (and you will just have to visit Japan if you want to know what I mean ).
Going the extra mile!
Now do we fit in?
No, this is not a LexeCorp fancy dress party!
This picture I offer up as evidence of the fact that we are up for anything. This is the family dressed up for a special occasion, an Indian wedding that we attended this Sunday.
To achieve this we had to battle my distaste for shopping. Please note that I even have the right shoes, though I will admit that my ever patient wife bought them for me in my absence - yes, I ran away before the end of the shopping day.
And as it is India, we also had to deal with yet another power cut, and right in the middle of us dressing both ourselves and the kids .
I think the kids are the stars, and I would like to say that the little one, Taiga (pronounced Tiger), had to put up with his solid little frame being shoehorned into an outfit already bought one size larger. He suffered the most but I think just looked so cute. Actually, many an Indian has looked at me in disbelief possibly thinking “Why is this foreigner mocking me when all I ask is the name of his child”
And my eldest looked good too
Cubbon Park
Cubbon Park in Bangalore is a pleasant escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. It offered us a place to take the kids on a lazy Sunday, and me the chance to take some amateur snaps. I have mentioned Lal Bagh previously, possibly the only other significant park area now left in what was “Garden City”. The park has some beautiful vistas that hark back to a more serene era. I truly hope that it will remain as is and not become consumed by the urban juggernaut that is Bangalore.
If you didn’t spot my quip, I am British, and juggernaut is our word for a large lorry (or truck). For those who enjoy etymology, you will already know that the origin of juggernaut is from the Hindi, Jagannāth. It means “lord of the world” and is the title of Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu). Yet another geographically appropriate word.
OK, enough words, here are some pictures which I hope you will enjoy.
 |
| Cubbon Park |
Planning avoids problems
I was a little surprised by some of the feedback that I have received on the choice and use of Ubuntu or even Linux. It made me realise that certain early decisions will make a distribution on a particular machine either a joy or a nightmare. For myself it has been a hassle free joy. Maybe I can explain why.
When I selected my computer last year (a Dell notebook) I knew that I would wish to use Linux. As a senior IT contractor and a parent of young children, my time is precious. So I chose a specific machine which I knew had all linux drivers provided. In Australia a pre-install was not available, but for myself this was not an issue.
Well, I started using Cooperative Linux (coLinux) to run Debian. I installed a large blob (a virtual linux partition) on my Vista hard drive i.e. the NTFS file system, configured coLinux and loaded. Easy. I then configured a software bridge to share the internet. Painless. I immediately used apt-get to upgrade to the latest Debian release and used Cywin’s X Server to run X Applications to my Windows desktop, a perfect example of co-existence which kept me happy for quite a while.
Later someone suggested that I should consider a full Linux install, and it made sense. I repartitioned my disk (still a nerve-wracking experience even with a backup) and built Ubuntu.
To my surprise, everything built out of the box, bar it not initially recognising my 1440 * 900 display. A quick set of steps and it was working. I had never previously found Linux so quick and easy. Though CoLinux and AndLinux are superb in what they do, as is Cygwin, this native install was a good decision for me as Vista is a memory hog and even with 2GB RAM, it can often ask me to shutdown applications due to low memory. As an IT worker, tools I use in the office, the likes of Oracle, Eclipse, SQL Developer and similar, are all heavy on resources.
At the time, and as now, Ubuntu was supported on my machine, and I quote from the Ubuntu site
Canonical continues to offer full commercial support for Ubuntu 7.10 on all of the pre-installed Ubuntu certified Dell hardware products
So, if you are a Linux end user or novice then do, or ask your friendly tech-head to do, some pre-checks on your proposed or current hardware. If you are a techy even, plan out your future requirements and your results will be commensurate with your early efforts.
My last blog mentioned my surprise at the knowledge required to make a fix. However, the initial upgrade was indeed seamless, I was simply particular about it being “just right”. If you wish a guaranteed solution then stick to that which is certified and supported i.e. 7.10. Even as a techy I still stuck to the 8.04 LTS line as conservative means stable, as it has been.
Final words, if you are a techy and want the latest tool versions (but without dowloading them individually and possibly building from source), then try 8.10, it’s new. I am a techy but the latest tools that I use are all easily downloaded from their sites and have worked without issue on my 8.04 line. I hope this gives you insight into how to start with, and maintain, a Linux system without undue effort. Oh yes, “Enjoy”.
Linux can be hard for end users
I love Open Source and have used Linux since my first Slackware install in 1994. I remember it well because I had just emigrated to Australia, left my VMS platform forever, and was creating a replacement platform for a SunOS server that was well past its sell by date.
I now use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on the desktop as well as Vista SP1 in a dual boot configuration on my company Dell Inspiron 9400. As the title goes, Linux can still be hard for end users. It can even test an old hand like myself. I’ll tell you why.
I was just updating to the latest 8.04.1 patches when I noticed that the latest kernel was installed but not listed in my grub boot options. I suspect that I had just misinterpreted a request about whether or not to use the supplied menu.lst, or something to that effect, and I had erred on the side of caution by saying no (as I did not want to risk losing my dual boot entries). There was no risk, but the wording was poor.
So, first thought was to re-run grub as so
alex@lexeNote:~$ sudo update-grub
But on quick inspection of my boot options, and that’s in
/boot/grub/menu.lst
I see no additions for 2.6.24-21-generic.
Well it would seem to me that if the packages are there, and I proved this by re-installing the new kernel with Synaptic (the GUI package manager), then maybe the tool was the problem. And so I decide to re-install it as so
alex@lexeNote:/boot/grub$ sudo apt-get purge grub
alex@lexeNote:/boot/grub$ sudo apt-get install grub
A techy would say, why not edit the menu.lst. But as an end user desktop (Ubuntu…), this seems too much to me.
Anyway, we can now test my theory
alex@lexeNote:~$ sudo update-grub
Great, grub does add in the required changes this time.
However, on rebooting to test this option, I discover that my GDM is locked - I log in and just get a white screen.
I can always reboot back into the previous kernel as I leave at least one previous one in place (in fact I leave quite a few). However, knowing that CTRL-ALT-F1 will give me a terminal, I check to see what is happening.
alex@lexeNote:/boot/grub$ uname -sr
Linux 2.6.24-21-generic
Yes it is there but what is wrong with my desktop manager? Well I decided to read a little and it seems that a proprietary driver is likely to be the problem. Others had NVIDIA issues, some WIFI. Hmmm, I was using a proprietary ATI driver to get 3D effects.
I conclude that all I need to do is reboot into the previous kernel, turn off the proprietary driver (System->Admin->Hardware drivers) and then try my new kernel. And here I am typing in this blog with my latest updates and new kernel.
BUT, and that is a big but . I will have to revisit the driver if I wish 3D effects again (yes, another aside). More to the point, this is not appropriate for end users. I suspect that other techies will also possibly be caught out by this and maybe not look at the problem in the way that I did. I will see how many hits this blog entry gets. 8.04 LTS is supported until 2011, though there is the option to jump to 8.10 as it is now available for download.
CONCLUSION: I love Open Source and prefer to use Linux for a server. Sorry Ubuntu, but I am still in favour of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for this. I do now prefer Ubuntu (Debian) on the desktop, BUT this kind of problem solving is beyond most end users, and a few techies that I would work with in a professional capacity. A pity really, end users may have a capable techy in the office but a vast number are experimenting at home, and I think this does them a great disservice.
ADDENDUM: my comment on Server Ubuntu is unfair as I have not yet tried it. I do use Ubuntu desktop and it is easier than anything that has come before it, but it still requires more effort than is appropriate for many users.
-
Myself, and the company I keep
External Stats
-
Archives
- November 2008 (11)
- October 2008 (17)
- September 2008 (16)
- August 2008 (7)
- July 2008 (17)
-
Categories
- Announcements
- Business and Casual Dining
- Commendations
- Data & Documentation
- Databases
- Embedded and mobile phone platforms
- General
- Graphics, Visualisation, Image Processing
- Mobile platforms
- Networking and protocols
- Process and practice
- Software Design, Development & Programming
- The WEB
- The Windows platform
- Travel
- UNIX and Linux platforms
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
