My bro is going around placed on every weekend. He and his big gang keep finding hills around and climb those across the day. So I thought, lets try the same model here. But gurgaon has no hills around. So I checked google maps with terrian maps and located, the closes hills to be around Alwar, Rajhasthan. Compare those heights with ours e ofis a bit silly cause Gurgaon is at an altitude of 220m and those hills are merely 600m. But for first time trekking, that is just a good warmup. Also by the time you real alwar, you are already at 300m altitude. The first trek I did was on June 20, 2005. The day I had climed my first mountain. I did not have any Holux of any GPS those days. I was with my cousin Ransingh enjoying my small 5 day holiday in Pune. (Then, my ex-girlfriend was getting married in Delhi the same day, so just wanted to run away). That day was monday and without any plan we attempted the hike cause we had loads of time. It was chilling at the top and the experiance was memorable!

So past week, me and my wife planned to take a hike ourselves. We attempted a survey session few weeks before in the same mountains and visited a old Fort on the hill top. That survey was totally on my car. Yesterday we did a real first hike. Loaded with Holux Logger, MGMaps and Trail Explorer waypoints we managed to reached our base. That was already about 350m and we both were dead tired. The timings were planned incorrectly since it was 1600Hrs and still climbing therefore, we agreed to abort the hike for the day. We walked back to the car about 2km far klept introducing ourselves across the village we walked by. The Experiance again was amazing!

We had to learn a lot of things. Like not carrying some enery drinks, some snaks. Carrying some bogus heavy luggage along and not starting the hike early enough. During our car survery, we reached the city about 3pm and the hilltop at about 4pm. This time we reached the city about 2pm and spend next two hours walking towards the base. The sunset time is about 1730 therefore, we could not keep climbing and had to retreat instead. The hill forest is not dense and any tekker will find it peanuts. But for first timers like us, the thorny bushes and lots of rocks kept bothering us a lot. There have been a lot of rains around the hills past few weeks therefore the green cover is very beautiful. But again, the hills are mostly made of sandrock therefore, plantations are very minimal small. We covered the entire hike in the GPX track and later mapped to my JOSM. The car ride to alwar takes about 3 hours from Gurgaon via the state toll highway and the distance is about 110 km. We will do the alwar trek again in the coming weeks, and this time actually reach the top.

So what do you do with a Holux GPSlim240 or a Holux M241 GPS Logger? Well, I bought them before I had a reason. Yes, thats exactly like me. First I bought the world’s smallest bluetooth receiver Holux GPSlim240. It reached without trouble in 7 days. I worked with it for a about 2 weeks. Used mGMaps on my K790i. Later also installed Nav4All. That was what I thought to be fully loaded until my bro vivek told about the M241.

The Holux M241 GPS Logger is high end system for those who know how to use it. For silly people it simply comes with a LCD to let you see the latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, time and total distance traveled. So yes, you don’t need a bluetooth receiver at all times. For utter crazy dude like me, it can log. That alone is the super duper system to be used in so many ways. Welcome to openstreetmaps project. The ride has just started boys!

OpenStreetMaps is a great project for its letting anybody map their locality. In the case of INDIA, Google or Yahoo both have very bad quality satellite images and that too more than 2 years old. The locality where I live is mostly empty lands on google earth while in reality there are like 5000 apartments around. I started OSM after 3 weeks back when I had bought my first GPS receiver, Holux GPSlim240. It worked great (almost). I installed loads of softwares on my K790i and started playing with it. First I installed mGMaps. Its a mapping tool to render maps or terrain from various sources. When I first found out about mgmaps it could even render GMap. Now it can render everything but gmap. Haha. The interesting thing is that it can even render OpenStreetMaps along with wikimapia. mgmaps is great software and u can actually use it to travel to ur destination as it can hook to a bluetooth GPS and show position in realtime! (DO NOT USE IT WHILE DRIVING!). You can add bookmarks and zoom or pan around the map just like it were a web browser. Finally, mgmaps also supports realtime upload of the position. Therefore, if my profile can be accessed, you could even track me in realtime. My phone with the GPRS will keep uploading the coordinates to the mgmaps server. mgmaps also supports a great new function of friends. It will getting coordinates of all of its friends and display them on my phone’s screen. Same way will display my position on my friend’s mobile screen. The next amazing software for realtime GPS navigation is Nav4All. Nav4All is also a J2ME application just like mgmaps and works perfect even for my indian roads. Certainly it does not have all the roads that we know but it is growing. I don’t think its using OSM or any known data sources. It comes with a big bunch of audio languages and has a clever UI. Supports Night mode display as well has Economy intelligence over it for saving the mobile battery. Nav4all also supports uploading the points to the server but I have not tested its realtime engine. Then I tried to use GPSed. Its a data logger software which will write the info into a file on ur phone after it gets points from the bluetooth GPS device. The problem with GPSed is that on my phone it is very CPU hungry. Most often it responds very slowly and secondly on my phone it rarely succeeds in writing data to the file. At the end of the session when I want to save all logs it has failed everytime. Im not sure that this is cause of the security settings or not but I could not use GPSed very nicely. Besides that, it does have fearures to upload the log to its server. That is when I needed the Holux m241 Data Logger, the thing needed for GPS Tracing.

Openstreetmaps has been contructed in many ways. One of the very common methods for mapping has been GPS tracing. Since no overlay map can show a locality better than you being their yourself, collecting the GPS traces will allow you to later map your path even without the need of any satellite imagery. For my case its the only solution since my locality is no where seen in the satellite maps. I collected lots of traces from the m241 and later converted them to GPX format. OSM accepts GPS traces ibn GPX format. The Holux download utility that comes with the driver CD allows changing the log type from TRL into KML, NMEA and GPX formats. That is what I upload to see my trace on the mapping toll (either Potlatch or JOSM).

I will continue this blog for next few days with lots and lots of links cause I did not get all those in one location.

Would be a bit early though to pass my judgment on it but ill try to be careful. After we celebrated India’s 59th Republic Day on 26th January 2008, the entire stretch of the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway has been completed. The same time the Toll Gate also became operational. There is one at the border of Delhi and Gurgaon. There is one also at the other end of entrance to Gurgaon. The later would not have as much heavy traffic and would not suffer peak surges during the hours of the day. What already hurts is Toll Plaza at the Delhi Gurgaon border. The plaza has least 18 checkpoints and all flooded with traffic at the morning and evening hours. The flood is so heavy and spreads a kilometre away from the gates. Added to the chaos is the ugly driving habits of this region. Lane driving was also a challenge to be taught to this region and now, that makes a mess in the entire span of the traffic jam. The authorities might have been in rush to start it in this manner it seems. They also would more likely been shocked that the traffic is to such a scale, beyond they can control. The expressway was the shine to travellers on this route for the past year. It was saving an amazing amount of time and had become a preference for most who could choose. As of now, it is a total disaster to plan a travel along this expressway. Nearly an hour just to cross the gates should be part of the travel plan itself. I do hope the authorities are not siting idle. They already did a fantastic job to construct it and now will find a solution to this problem too. This is INDIA. We have problems beyond imaginations. Just the thing I like.

Oh yes, i’m there already!. The first ever 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. So what its in 28th September. This one could as well change all the favorites that people have with the Grand Prix de Monaco 2008 to be on 25th May. Monaco is the one to invent the flavour of city racing. That one track, that one long tunnel, those small turns. The only track I always remembered distinctly. So what is my start point. I start from the 2008 Malaysia Grand Prix that coming on 23rd March. We have the ticket details for Malaysia race but its a bit struggle to point where-is-what. Tickets start from around INR 3000 (EUR 40). So the bigger bet is the flight tickets. My travel plans for last year all got screwed up badly. Started with a bash in Singapore in Jan 2007 and ending the year, betting on a totally wrong team. So we start a fresh again. We don’t have the details for the Singapore track yet. Hope it will come online sooner. My best wishes to the Hero of the last season, Lewis Hamilton. The almost missed, would have become the first Champion of Formula1 at the Debut season.

I started tracking Formula1 from 2004 along with bro. Then the all time King of Formula1, Micheal Schumacher ruled the tracks. All of them. Then met Fernando Alonso. Never saw that last race of Japan. Also saw our home guy Narain Karthikeyan in 2005 races.

And as you can see, I am seriously involved in Wikipedia. So by habit, I wiki everything else too.

This was my first half marathon attempt. I wanted to join the 2005 as well as 2006 editions but somehow lost for laziness. Then it was branded as Hutch Delhi Half Marathon. This time with loads of money to buy Hutch, Vodafone got the title spot. Had registered via the indiatimes website. Trust me, I completely thought either they would mess my details, or incorrectly charge my card and later forget and refuse about it. Again due to my great laziness, I joined the 30000 people on the last day of the registration (about 2 months before the date). Charged my card with about ~Rs.200 for my as well as for my brother vivek. So I must say, I was wrong about indiatimes at least on this count. They did manage the electronic registrations nicely. They actually managed the hosting web page too in neat way.

Before three 3 weeks I got the two envelopes for me and for bro with more details about the event. Still no race track information within it. The track was not even on any online web page at that time. I guess the finalizations take its own time. The details in the envelope stated that we need to collect our running Bib from Ansal plaza, New Delhi within the span of 4 days before the race day. And this was a strict remark. So we go there on 26^th October. We get a small kit with few items with big bold logos on them as well as the last notes with the race track (finally!!!). I kept starring at the track and wondering, they expect me to run half past delhi and back and at too under three hours!!??. Are they crazy? Or am I? My running number was 6110 and bro was on 6112. Since me and bro sure were to complete the race and also needed the race timings, we also rented 2 timing chips as Rs.1000 each. This amount was to be refunded on the race day itself. The chip from sport-timing was tagged for me and was supposed to be worn at the ankle all the time during the race. Bro did not think its a RFID due to the manner the data was been read from it. A simple copper wire could detect some signals been emitted from this device. So I suppose, the signals would keep getting sent for as long as the battery would allow. Anyway, our visit to the Half-Marathon Expo was now complete. Took near 2 hours but everything was organized fine keeping in mind the incoming traffic of 30K in 4 days.

Ah, the race day morning started at 4am. It is October 28, 2007. We had seen a late night show of Shoot-Em-Up and reached home at 2am in the morning on the race day itself. (God bless Clive Oven). So we reach the reserved parking slot at the Nehru Stadium. A shuttle bus service would drop us to the start point. At 6.40am, only 7 cars were parked. An array of about 6 busses were waiting to leave on after another. The first bus had left and we sat on the second. After ~15 minutes reached the spot which was 5 minutes walk to the arrival area. We realize that the Veteran race had already started at 7am. The chip holders like us and another thousand would get the first race entry therefore had a separate holding area. At 7.45am the half marathon race had started. The crowd like this I had not imagined. A total of 7000 runners were for the 21.097km distance. We both were just casual joggers therefore, we knew our stamina would empty at near ~6km or 40 minutes. It was a heavy congested crowd for the first killo metre and the we found the first water spot. As per the details, there would be plain water every killometre and a energy drink every 4. There was markers for every killometre along the way. Me and bro continued together past 5 killometres non-stop when he took the first halt. I departed with engines running. My first halt came at 9km for about 2 minutes. It was 50 minutes to race then. Sooner I heard cheers and found Disi Diudone, Rwanda and Macharia Isaac, Kenea coming back! Wow! I ran another 2 killometres and no fuel left anymore. Found the first Glucon D station and felt really great! My pit stops beyond 11 mark were quite frequent. Found another group, Indians this time coming back. Reached the India Gate and back again while walking. Half mark was crossed at 1h.10m i guess. Did about half run and walk cycles till it was 19 km mark. Had done lots of calculations to guess that I sure could rest and still finish the run within the time. Surprisingly found the 500metre board. Without fuel, charged the engines up again and ran. Ran and ran and counted every 100 metre board I found along the way till the finish list time recorded me at 2h.39m. Bro crossed the line just 7 minutes behind at 2h.46m and found me in the queue.

The queue was the nightmare. The queue was for taking the chip refund, the certificate, the medal and the timing certificate. That queue was in open at at 11am under the sun. It was for everyone who completed the race and was among the “privilaged” group of chip holders. Us privilaged ones were made to stand under the sun for 2 hours at the same spot. All the joy of achievement had gone away. The mega branding of Vodafone was never seen anywhere around. A typical goverment office of India with chaos and nothing else. It was already declared that the refund would only be given on the race day before 2pm. The details also suggested snaks would be given after finish. Those snaks had a seperate queue which we privileged can’t take at this moment. News of printers going bad, server down and what not kept floating all the time. The queue also had people from bombay marathon suggesting the very same chaos was noticed even there. The dumb staff with bold logos did not know anything about the correct process. No even a clue about managing the thousand finishers who are made to stand for 2 whole hours. There are no cameras here. Nobody is waving brands here or queuing for a NGO. We runners were only important in the track. Now left in unattended, we did not even have the guts to start a debate. Had this been to the knowledge of the runners, I can bet less than half would not even come to the race. We are Indians, so we always know there is a queue for everything. But we just thought the title brand may have some sense to manage such large scale events. Alas. Corporates and corporates. We are just bloody consumers. Go find your own way. We did not get the certificate and did not join the next queue for the snaks. Never knew how it felt when the legs shut down. The shuttle bus was nowhere to take us back though it was printed. After half hour paid Rs.100 to drop us from Nehru Park to Nehru stadium and another hour for home sweet home. Bro was fine the second day, while my legs were normal only on the fourth morning. It was all the fun but the finish line. I will be there next year too though along with wife. And this time would target under 90 minutes. Need far better practice but worth it. Cheers!

(there were many many brands all though the track giving water and to napkins. most of those brands have been intensionally removed, except the title)

It must have been a Winamp 1.x or something and pre-2000. The option to export playlist into HTML file has been old enough. It was little easy to share the list or publish it online. What I noticed one day was a image in the generated page. This image was not anti-alias therefore, felt something was wrong somewhere.

The image above is a screen shot of what is seen on the html page of generated playlist. Then, I even say a cursor as when moved over this image. Finally I began to click and select. To my biggest wonder, I could actually select the word Winamp just like a text and even the word playlist. Then how the hell did this white text write itself over the word Winamp? That I never has seen in any site!? I don’t even know any html tag lets you do such rendering geometry. This is all so confusing!

I ran down the source and found specific tags which had dimensions written. I played around with it for a while to realize how you use the margin attributes of the stylesheet! YIPEEEE!!… Its’s fun! I would eventually dig it to the source, W3C CSS Level 2 Specification. I read all of it and learned as I used it. Its so vast that I still have no become expert in using stylsesheets like peanuts.

It was a small handbook I got hold of at Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Gol park, Calcutta around 1998. The book was Visual Basic 4 Tips and Tricks or something like that. Then I had just started my NIIT’s GNIIT course. The first semester had started which was about DOS and all other crap. I had good knowledge of QBasic syntax before this. Anyway I had done lot of DBase III Plus programming and even played with C using the K&R - The C Programming language. Therefore, the syntax and fun that I learned from book got me excited to play with real VB4. That was the first time I had made windows program and a MsgBox “Hello world”. Wow. I had learned this too easy language syntax for RAD within the next 3 months. We had a picture box. A grid based windows form editor. Later in after an year I had to enter Visual C++ SDK programming followed by the official study of RAD using VB4. ha.

Setup is easy. Graphics are neat. Documentation is good but with not beat for first timers like me. I have had experiance only with EPiServer before this one. That is a windows dot net CMS. Its fair but besised being closed source, it ignores the performance aspects. TYPO3 is open so we can’t complain. (I like this feling). Has template support and also a nice typoscript language too. The language is very simple just like advanced configuration script. There are loads of extensions too.

It took 3 full days by the time I could run my first few page with one most simple menu and a simple template. That was fine till that point. Beyond that, I need my own custom menu and very complicated templates. Documentation for doing these is very less. I have to figure out the trick based on what what expansion API are supported. Tutorials are good but none for thinking differently.

Today is day 4 and I have got to finish the menu hacking exersize. I need to compose my own menu with my own choice of wrapping tags and content as already built images.

It was somewhere around 1997. Sitting on the stairs of NIIT computerdrome, Park Street, Calcutta. There was a short discussion going on that you could run logic programs on HTML page. “HTML does not come with logic! how can u run a program”. There is this thing called JavaScript. It had functions. Looks like C or Java. It’s Cool! Like you can show message boxes from a HTML page. Is’nt that great! “How do you compile this script?”; “How to you attact it to a HTML page?”; Ha! thats the funny part. It runs without compiling….really!!!? And you write it in the HTML page itself. It even has events like onload on the BODY tag. Fantastic!!! Looks very intresting!

Today that little language brought by Netscape rules the planet baby!