Perspectives

Here , I have created a map group using this new service called Frappr . Go add photos and geotags. They use Google maps. Go check it out and create some dots and pictures there.

cooking
Originally uploaded by shivku.

Here is my (actually, my Mom’s) recipe for sambhar. Disclaimer: I am disclosing this recipe under GNU public license . Dont come back to me if it sucked.

Sambhar, as it is called in south india, is a fluid preparation meant to be mixed up with cooked rice and had when it is hot with a side dish ( More on side dishes later).
Without any further delay, Here are the ingredients:

You would need :

1. Tamirind or Tamirind paste (Go to an indian shop close by and ask them.)
2. Toor Dhal about 100 gms.
3. Sambhar powder. There are whole lotta people ( Including my mom) out there who make sambhar powder. Your indian shop should have it too.
4. Turmeric powder.
5. Vegetables( My preparation had about a quarter kilo of Raddish , cut circularly and a coupla onions cut into four pieces ).
6. Coriander and curry leaves
   

Note that the algorithm will refer to the ingredients with their serial number. The quantities here will probably make sambhar enough for about 4 to 5 people (depending on how big mouths they have, ofcourse)
And the algo is:

Cook 2 with enough water to soak all the grams comfortably , in a pressure cooker or a closed pan. ( I would think , for a cup of dhal , you would need two cups of water). Take 1 of the size of a lemon and put it in a cup with some water so that you extract the juice out of it. ( Or you could use the paste too). Extraction will probably take about 10 mins. So keep that aside. In the meantime, cut your 5 and keep them ready.

Once you think that 1 has shed all its juice into the water, put it in a vessel along with the cut 5, about quater tea-spoon of 4 and three spoons of 3. Add about 200 ml of water and Hang on ( It is very important that you hang enough) until the vegetables inside have been cooked. ( Tip: pick one of them out and try to smash/cut with a spoon. (duh!) ).

Assuming that 5 in your sambhar is cooked, add the dhal (that you had kept aside – didnt you? – ) , add coriander and curry leaves for aroma , salt to taste. Be patient for another 5 mins so that all the stuff in there syncs up. And thatz it. Go ahead and have a good sambhar rice.

You may also want to add a bit of seasoning to your preparation. ( Thanks to the anonymous shipra for reminding me of this ). Put a bit of oil ( coconut oil if you want to induce an authentic kerala taste ) on a ladel , add mung dhal (uluttam paruppu in tamil ) or Masoor dal and mustard. Wait for the mustards to dance a bit and for the dhal to get roasted golden. Now add the entire content to your preparation. Will taste even better.

Alright, so , the much awaited flock browser is out.

Undoubtedly, It is the next generation ( read web 2.0 ) browser. Think about it. Just like how you would assume bookmarks or a search toolbar to be an integral part of a any present day browser, a next gen browser must support tagging instead of bookmarks, an RSS reader , and social bookmarking etc. and flock has it all.

This is my face of web 2.0: I am on blogger ( for blogging) , myweb for social bookmarking , flickr for photos and use bloglines and sage for RSS. Flock does not support all of this, but they make it very apparent that it is just a matter of time before all of this in place. After all, this is a pre alpha version (I have had just one crash so far, which is pretty good! )

They dont let you import anything from Firefox. Only IE. Though it is in their todo list, I thought it was quite strange considering they are developing on mozilla code base.

From their README:
Some of our favorite features in Flock include:

* The Blog Manager
* The Flickr Topbar
* RSS integration
* Favorites with del.icio.us integration:
* The Shelf
* History Search

I particularly liked their “aggregated Feeds” concept. You could subscribe for a group of news sites and read them all at one shot and one place. Another interesting thins is that they index content of all the pages that you have visited so far. So, as you type your query in the search bar, clucene’s results show up just like google suggest or yahoo instant search. They use clucene for this , the c++ port of lucene, and I am big fan of lucene.

In essence, I already love it.Here, Go check out their blog for yourself.

IMG_0711
Originally uploaded by shivku.

I have never been so eager about a Hindi movie, a sunil shetty flick OMG! Here you see Arshad warsi shaking his booty for an un-interesting song. Most of this movie is getting made in the hotel we stayed in Goa . One piece of information that I must specify here is that, It is believed by hear-say that Manoj had a short date with one of the actresses in this movie.

It was quite a nice time that we had and thanks to yahoo! and our fearless leaders Binu and shouvick too.

Some babes from this movie. Which one do you think Manoj had a date with ?

I use blogspot mostly. But at a later point, I mite be tempted to use LJ. I believe they have one of the best written “comments” module with them. But blogspot lets you do stuff with code. Now thatz what you want. Visit http://shivku.blogspot.com to read through my ramblings.

Yesterday was a day off for dasara. Sameer promptly called me for a trek to rangaswamy betta. I was in two minds. I had a dandiya call from ankit and I was quite eager to shake my ass a bit. But got caught with work , and these folks had decided to get there a bit late. So, I decided to chuck it for this trek the next day and boy! wasnt it a wise decision.

The drive wasnt too long (and this bit was a bit disappointing). After a stop for not_so_bad idli/vada/coffee and bit of raving, we were already where we wanted to be.

Even as I was driving, M and I were wondering what folks in this part of the world do. But, inventively, there was a grand old lady at the base camp (well, it almost was! ) who was magnanimous enough to send her (grand ? ) kid for a pack of creamy biscuits and 100 bucks ( Indian rupees). Well, he did his bit, I must say.

This was by far the longest/ highest/ biggest I have been through. And my poor lungs didnt have much left to take it all suddenly. The initial walk through the plains was pleasurable. There were a coupla places where we crossed over a small channel of water ( I dont think I can call it a stream) and that kilometre walk to the lap of the hill was quite relaxing.

Bangalore has been proving too naughty this past week. Miss Rain God never gives up on Bangalore and keeps pouring all the time. But we were quite fortunate, and infact there was a point ( not the altitude) in time when I wished if it would rain. Ok, Now we start climbing.

Sam had a friend , and he had about three other friends (and more, ofcourse). So there were 7 attendies , a car, 2 bikes and good amount of food and company. The climb was about 30 to 45 degrees at most parts, and sometimes, steeper. God knows who made the pathway, but there was space enough for just one ass and it gave you the impression of a very wild place ( and hence all the fun associated with it. At one point of time, there was a aeroplane flying up there and one of us thought it was a Tiger ( duh! there are just a 400 remaining in entire India ) or a Lion somewhere around.
The path kept winding and going and so was our guide ( Mr. Venugopal with big lungs to take it all). He would make these statements once in a while – “salpa” – ( only a bit). His half-an-hour lasted a full 2 hours. We met another group en-way and even they claimed we have almost made it. ( There was about another 20 mins climb.) So mebbe it is something to do with the place and not people.

After about 2 hours of climb , we made it. I, for a moment , felt I was better off down there. But the sight took my breath away and I did not even care that the temple up there was locked up. ( Well, who went up to visit the temple anyways ). Despite , we had to tip the pujari anyways.

Mr Venugopal ( Lemme give him the respect for his lungs, though he was a school kiddo) tried to tell us where the route we took was, where Kanakpura was, and where Bangalore isint). I felt closer to the skies, and wished they a parachute to jump down. People had got certain things to munch ( Thanks! , it was amazingly tasty ). The vadas, though dreched with oil, which were served half way were panacea-tic.

After relaxing and wiling time away a bit. It was time to get back. The descend was not as demanding as the climb was, but nevertheless , it wasnt easy either. I could feel a shift of pain from my lungs to my toes , thighs and shoulders. And when I was down, I felt like I had a rebirth.

After somemore biking and lunch and tea and other techie talks with folks from Intel, We finally reached Bangalore.

Here are pics from my Cam.
Here , Sameer’s
Here , Praveen’s.

Praveen , Get to Flickr. You’d hate for not having done that before.