Testing some new stuff

Bangalore roads

There seems to be a major inefficiency with Bangalore road repairs. Potholes are never fixed. But every now and then major roads get a big overhauling, but they get into bad shape very soon. I read in the newspaper once that contractors don't like to do pothole fixing ; they prefer to do the major overhauling (which seems pretty obvious, less painstaking, more expenses and more profits). But keeping contractors happy is hardly the city's first priority. And from the above it would seem the major resurfacing also is substandard.

Given the huge amount of money in road construction, it seems there are huge inefficiencies in this. I would love to see contractors reined in and forced to do a lot of pothole repairing. Certainly an area of civic engagement. I wonder if some people have already looked into this.



On a different note, the above is a bad quality video of a BMTC bus (the articulated type, which is almost double the length of the standard one) reversing on a narrow section of Indiranagar 100 feet road because a section of the road got suddenly shut off due to metro construction. Someone should be fired for the driver not being informed that the route was no longer available (alternatively the driver should be fired if he was illegally using that route which was anyway in pretty bad shape due to the construction). One of my background ideas is that some white collar jobs like bus and train driving should be paid a lot. Not only is this appropriate, because the drivers have peoples lives in their hands, but it also creates some nice churn in the traditional ideas of what occupations are cool to do and what are not. Remember how when we were kids we wanted to bus and train drivers and suchlike. It would be nice if these remained respectable career options on growing up.

Interesting though not (yet) compelling. Its a discussion of "Hullaballo in the Guava Orchard" , a book by Kiran Desai. Its part of a series. Tolerate the ad at the beginning
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Yes, yes about Twitter.

Much can be written, let me start with some basic stuff. On Twitter you basically send frequent short messages about what you are doing (or anything else). You have a URL where these messages show up, mine is http://www.twitter.com/ahminotep . Twitter is more interesting with an account of your own (even if you don't want to 'tweet'), rather than go to somebody's page URL like above. The reason is, once you have an account, you can set it up so that you can 'follow' any number of other people's tweets. So on one page you get to see lots of peoples' tweets. The interesting thing is that people are responding to each other's tweets, so if you are following someone's tweets, you might get interested in some other person who is talking to the original person, and then go to their twitter site and see what they're talking about and who else they're talking to and so on.
Initially I didn't think it made much sense but I'm warming to it. For one thing, I have lots of quick thoughts that I would like to put down and tweeting is a good way to do it, rather than a blog post. I'm also getting into the idea of taking quick photos of stuff happening in the city (or in the newspaper and putting it up on twitter). There is a neat site called twitpic.com that goes with twitter that makes it easy to put up photos.
Twitter is more powerful with mobile phones. For one thing, you can send tweets from a mobile phone by sending an SMS. Freeing yourself up from the internet is a big thing. If you have an internet enabled phone though, a further interesting possibility is taking a photo from your phone and posting it almost instantaneously to twitter through twitpic. You can also *recieve* tweets on a mobile phone though I haven't been able to get this working yet.

Mark Charmer of Akvo who visited the Arghyam office a couple of weeks back and came with me (or perhaps I went with him and Nelson) to Bhuj is a big twitterer and you can see his stuff at http://www.twitter.com/charmermark .
Right now 3,4 of us at Arghyam are excited by Twitter and we're having fun with it.

One of the things that got me interested was the possibility to keep other people (particularly Priya) updated when I was travelling as I'm not a great communicator in keeping her updated when I'm travelling.

Let me know if you need help to set yourself up on Twitter.

(Click for larger image)


On the way home I came across this cow. S/he had fallen somehow, and her legs were on the road divider, higher up from the rest of the body, which prevented her from getting up. Had no clue what was to be done, but stopped anyway, and two other people came over and grabbed hold of her and turned her through 180 degrees so that she could then get up.

Twittering is continuing apace: http://www.twitter.com/ahminotep . Join !

As reported on 1st Nov. 2008 (delay in reporting to the blog in accordance with the sentiments of the would-be mother) :

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"SINGLE LIVE INTRAUTERINE FETUS 6 WEEKS 4 DAYS EDD BY THIS SCAN 23-06-2009"
CRL = .65 CMS
Fetal heart motion evident
.....
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and so it begins.

Scan image Removed in accordance with the sentiment of the would-be paternal grandparents. My life is dictated by stupid-ass sentiments.

Photos from Bhuj, Kutch

Lots of photos without captions ; comment if anything interests you and you want to learn more

Bhuj-Personal

http://www.twitter.com

I've starting tweeting: http://www.twitter.com/ahminotep
I think this is going to be a good thing ..

Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner ..

of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation fame were in the Arghyam office today for a bunch of presentations from various organisations that Rohini's associated with..

photos :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charmermrk/sets/72157611140868917/

Mark Charmer tweets about the meeting here -- http://twitter.com/charmermark , you might have to do some detective work to find it. If you see this post after 14th Dec don't bother, it would be lost in his outpouring of tweets.

And here's a little something:
http://movementbureau.blogs.com/projects/2008/12/indian-traffic-is-there-a-subtle-system.html

iPod Shuffle

I got a new iPod Shuffle today (supposedly for Priya). Such coolness