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C-rappy Cacophony

Sunday, December 05, 2021

Metaverse

 Metaverse! This must be at the top of the Gartner Hype cycle. This WSJ video seems like a parody but it is reality. I find the current FB/Instagram/twitter itself as vehicles for folks to escape reality and hide behind made up names and avatars to spew largely nonsense and not take much responsibility for one’s actions. Now this metaverse is akin to adding another dimension of anonymity to the ever growing digital chaos. After watching this video,I feel like screaming… Why don’t you go attend a real concert or meet your teammates in a real conference room!? At the end of the day, one has to eat,drink,shower,relieve oneself and sleep on a bed in actual life in person and not in the metaverse. 


And so, lets not give in too much to this hype, except may be invest in Meta/Nvidia/MSFT/Nike/Unity/Roblox stocks who are going to mint a lot of money from advertising and creating platforms in the so-called Metaverse!


https://youtube.com/watch?v=rtLTZUaMSDQ&feature=share



Posted by rajesh |



Monday, February 17, 2020

Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear | ChinaFile

http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear

Very well written Prose. Helps one realize how lucky we are with the freedom and equality bestowed upon us.


Posted by rajesh |



Sunday, October 13, 2019

Asuran movie...

Watched Asuran - Dhanush/vettrimaran combo movie, with Shwetha yesterday. Movie was well made highlighting the rural setting of the 1980's around the Tirunelveli areas where violence using sickles and machetes were at its peak. Even now we hear of several news of hacking of folks with tirupachi arivaal.
Danush's versatility was very well evident. The fact that he could easily play with ease almost 3 different generations without much make-up was telling. Manju Warrier felt too old for Danush though. JayTee who plywd Dhanush's son was such a delight to watch as the angry young man. Hopefully we see more of his talents in subsequent movies. Ken -Karuna's son played his part ok.
I am sure of this movie winning several awards including a national award.


Posted by rajesh |



Saturday, September 28, 2019

Dhwani Madhura Performance

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WHn8E6s9LafUVJaf8


Posted by rajesh |



Sunday, September 08, 2019

Ethics of getting funding from dubious individuals

Looks like the MIT media lab is in a soup over its dealings with Jeffrey Epstein! While this episode might have been brushed off under the carpet, the modern day media and reporting has aided in throwing additional light into all the misgivings.

Folks who took money from the scoundrel even after him going to jail for his uncouth behavior, need to repent for their actions. Ito San stepping down is a good thing.

(null)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/business/media/mit-media-lab-jeffrey-epstein-joichi-ito.html

Sent from Flipboard


Sent from my iPhone


Posted by rajesh |



Friday, February 22, 2019

Random thoughts about Jeeyapuram House where Thatha Paati lived.



It was an old Agraharam styled house. It had a spacious Thinnai in the front of the house where I used to play one pitch cricket all the time with my friends. The space was perfect for 3 or 4 kifs to play cricket. My mamas would also join us once ina while and we had a great time spending at least 1 hour playing there. The Thinnai also doubled up as a Tution center for my Arunachalam mama to take Maths/accountancy tuition to the students from the village. The sessions would start very early in the morning around 6 am and go on till late evening. On a given day, there would be close to 50 to 100 students attending the tuition sessions. Sometimes I used to join those sessions finishing up my 10 std Maths problems or homework. The Thinnai was also our favorite place to hang out in the evenings as a family. I used to sit with Paati on the steps and Thatha used to get his "Easy Chair" out and put it facing the Perumal Koil. The whole evening would pass by so effortlessly as I heard stories from Paati and as we struck conversations with people walking past our house as they returned from work in the evenings. The steps of the house were also very distinct. Couple of them were just large pieces of Granite laid on top of each other. There was one cement step that had been created much later. I can still remember the Kolams paati used to put in front of the house which had the Cow dung as well as Hibuscus flower as decorations as well. Opposite to the house was a large vacant land which had a huge stack of Hay and couple of bullock carts. Behind the vacant land ran the Railway Lines. The trains were so punctual that Thatha used to tell time based on what trains passed through and at which speed. The goods train was a slow moving train whose sound lasted for close to 3 minutes. There were many times when I used to count all the bogies and even wave Byes to the train guard. I have walked through the railway lines and on the side of the railway lines many a times to go to the official Jeeyapuram railway station. Thatha used to take me there to the market streets to buy local stuff or go to the local tailor or shoe repair guy there. On the way to the jeeyaruram station there used to be couple of temples - One of them was the local ellachaami temple.I used to spend a lot of time at the temples around Jeeyapuram. My friend gokul and I used to do the Hanuman koil alankaram and even do the archanai/shlokams for Hanuman every Saturday evening. We would then take the prasadam(naatu chakarai/paanagam that Gokul used to bring from home) around the agraharam and share it with every house. Most of the mama and mamis used to bless us everytime we went and give us 1 or 2 rupees for the upkeep of the Hanuman sannadhi and buying prasadam/Suudam etc.One of my pleasant memories is the weekly alankaram/pujai Gokul and I did at the temple. It always gave a sense of satisfaction. Gokul was a great friend. He always looked after me as I was 2 or 3 years younger to him and was only 7 or 8 yrs old then. His house wouldn't have anything great to snack on or eat but he would always make sure that he shared whatever was there at home. sometimes he would just find Pottu kadalai or kalkandu and we used to be so happy to snack on those. Other friends I used to hang out together were Sethu (Gooch), Chandru , Prem Anand, Raaja. Most of them were elder to me but then they were very cordial and involved me in all the activities we did be it - play cricket or go across the cauvery river to Pluck Kodukapuli or spend 2 hours bathing in the Cauvery river where we played several games in water. My fond memories of Cauvery are with Thatha taking me and my sister chitra fr bath and meticulously applying soap and washing us and then applying Vibuthi on my face/hands/stomach. He used to then do Sandhya Vandhanam and then we used to go back home. The Nila choru we ate during Pournami at the banks of the cauvery wherein it used to be a PotLuck. All the maamis would pitch in with their choiciest food such as Thenga saadham/Puliyam Saadham/Thayir Saadham etc and about 30 to 40 folks would go to the Cauvery banks and eat in the bright moonlit sands. During the evenings, we used to play cricket under the banyan tree behind our house. We also used to play in the Cauvery sands when there was little to no water flowing. Great memories..More to follow as and when I remember....


Posted by rajesh |



Monday, July 17, 2017

Beautiful memories with Paati

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NXkKnKKQrbRL9qRv2


Posted by rajesh |



Sunday, July 16, 2017

Good old memories...



Posted by rajesh |



Saturday, June 10, 2017

Karunambal Paati - What a legend!

Dear Paati
May your soul rest in peace! I have very fond memories of you. My oldest memory being in Chennai Besant Nagar when Chitra was born in Veidehi hospital. You were taking care of amma and I used to play in the front of the hospital. You took great care of me, as I was your first grandson. You were always kind to me. Always spoke good of me, encouraged me to achieve. Your god fearing nature is unmatchable. Your poojais every day that spanned several hours is one of the reasons why you were able to keep your calm and go about any kind of hardship with ease. You always prayed for the betterment of others. I vividly remember playing in the thulasi maadam in Jeeyapuram when you would walk in from your early morning bath at Cauvery; and go straight to the mitham and do poojai to the thulasi maadam. Then would start your hour long puujai which used to happen while you walked around the house doing all kinds of chores. I remember helping you with a long stick to pull the 'Madi saree/blouse' that you would wear after bath. You would not mind if we kids touched you before taking bath. You used to make me the choiciest of foods, the Maida cake is still my favorite. I have never tasted anything as good as the Maida cake you used to make. The several hours that you and thatha used to spend in the backyard making therati paal and halwa! I could still sense the feeling of contentment amongst you and thatha when you would see your kids and grandkids relishing the paal cova and the halwa. You used to make me maambazham pachadi and molaguutal which was my favorite. In the backyard thinnai at jeeyapuram, we have fond memories of heating palaa kottai on a coal based stove; you and thatha even trying to make detergent soap by mixing some chemicals thatha bought; thatha shaking bottle filled with buttermilk to convert it into butter... many many sweet memories. The bathroom veragi adupu is also a fond memory. Thatha and I used to put the coconut tree leaves/barks to make the fire and the I used to bath in that hot water. All the grandkids spent a lot of time in the backyard next to the Kinaru well drawing water from it and bathing bext to the well. You used to take me and the other grandkids to the sivan temple or the krishnan koil every day. Sometimes I used to come to the Cauvery with you when you would be so watchful of me at the steps near the water. I used to accompany you when you went to other mami's house in the agraharam - pichu iyer mami, ambulu mami , saraswathi mami and several others. You would gleam with pride explaining all my antics and everywhere you used to say that 'Rajesh , chitra - Rombha chamathu kozhandhael'. My distinct recollection of you is the way you used to pamper and konju me; still stays fresh in memory - Kanna da nee, chellam da nee, mutthu daa nee, raajaa da nee, vellam da nee.. many nany such platitudes which I loved hearing and then watched you do the same to my younger cousins when it was their turn. You were such a godsend to all your grandkids. Your dedication and affection was unmatched. I always wondered how you could provide the equal warmth and kindness to all of us. There was no partiality or neglect to any of us at anytime. You were a superhuman who was so under-appreciated. I have even watched thatha fight with you but you were so graceful and silent most of the times.
I am happy that you were there actively involved in all of my main events - my birth, my birthdays, my poonal, my wedding, my daughter's first birthday. During my India visits, you used to make time to come to chennai and stay as much as possible making all sorts of podi/urugai/omapodi/maida cake etc. How lovely paati. How did I just completely take you for granted. I wish I had the thougtfulness to bring you with me to the USA, show you around and treat you like a queen, which is what you deserved for your 85 years of selfless service. Instead what you got was occasional phone calls and meaningless gifts such as shawls/bedsheets during my visits. You used to ask me for Bengay which I used to feel proud when I got 4 or 5 packs shipped to you however I wish you had been taken care of in a better manner that you didnt even have to experience that knee pain in the first place. We goofed up big time. 
The way you treated your son in law and daughter in laws! What a relationship.. you were a mother to all of them; always wished that they all had the best if health and the least of strains. You used to cook,clean,wash the vessels and do everything to make sure your working daughter in lass didnt have to strain themselves after their day's work. You took care of the kids the entire day and even at night to again make sure yor sons and DILs didnt have to take that effort.
Your best friend was my amma. You and her could talk hours together about everything under the sun. We used to ridicule you both for talking vambu matters but those were just trivial things that you discussed, just the curiosity about every family in the agraharam, every son and daughter in the family, even the cousins. I am sure my amma is going to miss those phone calls and late night one on one talks with you.

I wish your kids and grandkids could have done much more than what we did to you. We could have atleast taken you around India to visit the temples and other religious places. Coming to think of it, we didnt even spend more than a day or 2 every year with you in the last 10 years. What a shame and what a careless attitude. We have had no sense of gratitude to you. Please forgive us for this nonchalance. 

You shall be remembered for your warmth, for your humility, for your grace, for your culinary skills, for your selfless nature, for your prayers for everyone's goodness, for your dedication to our entire family. It is still amazing to realize how you came forward last year even when you were frail and not feeling well to take care of your son, who had lost his wife. You could move mountains with your mental strength. You could win any war - not with any kind of physical might, but with your calmness and prayers!

I posted this on FB where several people spoke good of you and posted condolences. You were such a noble soul. You will be a leading light for me. I face several situations where I tend to lose my calm. I want to remember you and recollect your calmness and hope that you shall be my gudinf light to overcome those situations calmly.
Thank you Paati for everything that you and thaatha did to me and will be doing to me going forward with your blessings.I hope to keep reminding my kids about you!
https://www.facebook.com/rajesh.vijayaraghavan/posts/10155277140605030




Posted by rajesh |



Monday, November 14, 2016

Gwen Ifill

I saw the news about Gwen Ifill passing away. Very sad to note that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Ifill

I remember going to one of her Speeches in Austin about 12 years ago. She was excellent.I saw her on TV as well recently before the elections. She was still eloquent.
May Gwen Rest in Peace.



Posted by rajesh |



Sunday, July 31, 2016

Testing Blog

I got reminded about my blog. i dont think I have updated it 4 years.
Several things ahve happened in the last 4 years. Dhwani has grown into a wonderful 6 year old kid. She is enjoying her vacation in India.
We have had our 2nd daughter Jahnvi. She is such a bundle of joy. We just love being with her and cherish all her antics. She being the smallest of the cousins gets a lot of attention and pampering from everyone in the family. She seems to be unique as well in her way of saying things or mannerisms. Completely enjoyable.

I have moved 3 different jobs in 4 years. Moved from Dell to Sandisk and then moved to Hitachi Data Systems. Shwetha has moved from VMWare to Cadencc.

-Rajesh


Posted by rajesh |



Monday, December 03, 2012

Life of Pi

Life of Pi  12/1/12

Warched the movie Life of Pi yesterday. I had a lot of expectations from having watched the trailer of the movie a number of times during prior movie outings. The vivid images of the a young boy getting shocked by a zebra trying to swim and escape frim te deck of a ship and his tryst with a ferocious tiger in a lone boat , the amazing way the mere cats run frantically in a group in the island and the beautifully cast Indian temple with fliating diyaa lights were part of the trailer which enthused me to go and watch the movie in the theatre. The opening of the movie also was stunning as it started as if it was a tamil movie with a Traditional tamil song set in Pondicherry. This was followed by the introduction of a host of characters who too were Indians. Just as I imagined this to be another "Namesake" kind of movie I was confronted with surprise and shock The indianness of the movie just stopped right there and suddenly the movie got hijacked into this castaway mode.
  • As the movie evolved I found that the awe inspiring trailer elements were the only most interesting moments in the whole movie as well. May be a couple of more scenes such as the moments that Pi spends with the tiger, the flying fishes in the middle of the ocean and the amazing colorful scenes in the floating island.
  • But other than these scenes I dont have much anecdotal scenes or interesting moments to remember just a day after watching the movie. May be my expectations of ship wrecked and survival kind of movies comes from the movie cast away which had many elements such as the fedex box and the soccer ball wilson which are still now etched in my minds after a decade from watching that movie.
  • Having said that, Life of Pi was still a very well made movie which just did not live much to the hype.I wish there were more juicy elements added to it when Pi is stranded in the middle of the sea or when he gets to alight on the floating island. The relationship of Pi and his attachment to the tiger could have been Made a bit more poignant. The tiger was throughout shown to be a ruthless emotionless creature that kept growling and trying to pounce on Pi. May be it should have been shown to be tamed and much docile as it understands Pi's concern for keeping it alive through his efforts to find fishes or provide shelter from the raving waves in the boat.
  • The director might have tried to stick to the original story from the book that this movie has been adapted but if he had the liberty to introduce changes to the script I think he could have shown the elderly Pi getting back to where he finally reached land and reuniting with the tiger or Pi going back to India looking for his lady love Aanandhi and probably even recreating a zoo as how his father had done earlier. May be Indian cinema has spoilt me with such happy endings but then the way Life of Pi ended seemed so abrupt and pointless. I didnt understand what the purpose of the whole narration from Irfan Khan was for. What was the connection of Pi and the bharatnatyam sessions and his love scenes? The bit about God, the church visits and Pi's ridicule at school for his crazy name were also a bit confusing and not gelling with the purpose of the movie.I feel Tabu and Irfan Khan had been wasted in the movie. They are brilliant actors who could have been made memorable role players in the movie rather than act like some stage drama charaters just mouthing out lengthy dialogues.Tabu's tamil pronunciation in the few scenes she came were attrocious.
  • Finally what is the message from the movie? May be it is not meant to have any message but it tried to dabble across many issues such as religion, vegetarianism, cruelty to animals from being in captivity at zoos/when they get transported across the world and also about the lack of compassion and common sense in wild animals. There was also this half baked attempt at saying that one can survive in a lone boat with a wild animal if one acts shrewd and doesnt lose hope.


  • Sent from my iPhone


    Posted by rajesh |



    Tuesday, July 31, 2012

    Big data... Hadoop and such

    What is "Big Data"?
    The short answer is that size does matter after all.

    Sometimes big data is measured in terabytes, petabytes, or more. In the real world, it's usually measured in frustration, annoyance, anxiety, and money down the drain. 

    Data becomes "big data" when it basically outgrows your current ability to process it, store it, and cope with it efficiently. Storage has become very cheap in the past decade, which means it has become easy to collect mountains of data. However, our ability to actually process the mountains of data quickly has not scaled as fast. Traditional tools to analyse and store data -- SQL databases, spreadsheets, the Chinese abacus -- were not designed to deal with vast data problems.

    The amount of information in the world is now measured in zettabytes. A zettabyte, which is 1021 bytes (that is 1 followed by twenty-one zeroes), is a big number. Imagine you wrote three paragraphs describing your favorite movie - that's about 1 kilobyte. Next, imagine you wrote three paragraphs for every grain of sand on the earth -- that amount of information is in the zettabyte range.

    You may "only" have some number of terabytes in your databases, but you still have a lot of data to work with. And that number is only going to balloon in size every year.
    It is not advisable to dig out the hole for a pool using only an ice cream scooper; you need a big tool.

    What is this Big Tool for Big Data?


    Hadoop is the best tool available today for processing and storing herculean amounts of big data . Hadoop throws hundreds or thousands of computers at the big data problem, rather than using single computer.

    Hadoop makes data mining, analytics, and processing of big data cheap and fast. Hadoop can take most of your big data problems and unlock the answers, because you can keep all your data, including all of your historical data, and get an answer before your children graduate college.

    Apache Hadoop is an open-source project inspired by research of Google. Since you were wondering, Hadoop is named after the stuffed toy elephant of the lead programmer's son. This explains the preponderance of pachyderms wherever Hadoop is mentioned

    In Hadoop parlance, the group of coordinated computers is called a cluster, and the individual computers in the cluster are called nodes.

    What is Hadoop good at?

    Hadoop is awesome:

    Hadoop is cheap. 
    Hadoop is an open-source Apache project, which means anybody is free to use it. Hadoop runs on commodity hardware (i.e. normal everyday computers), so you don't have to buy million-dollar specialized database machines.

    Hadoop is fast. Hadoop can deal with terabytes of data in minutes, and with petabytes in hours. Hadoop is the only way that companies with gigantic amounts of data like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon can cost-effectively and quickly make decisions.

    Hadoop scales to large amounts of big data storage. Need to add more space? Just add more hard drives to a node, or even add more nodes to your cluster. You never shut down Hadoop.

    Hadoop scales to large amounts of big data computation. Is your cluster slow? Just add more nodes to spread out the computation. Hadoop scales almost linearly in many cases - this means you can halve the time it takes to do a job by doubling the number of compute nodes.

    Hadoop is flexible with types of big data. Are you dealing with structured data? Great. Do you have semi-structured or unstructured (document-oriented) data? Lovely. Hadoop stores and processes any kind of data.

    Hadoop is flexible with programming languages. Hadoop is natively written in Java, but you can access your data in a SQL-inspired language called Apache Hive. If you want a more procedural language for analysis, there is Apache Pig. If you want to get deep into the framework, you can custom-analyse your data by writing code in Java, C/C++, Ruby, Python, C#, QBASIC or anything else.

     
    What is (Plain) Hadoop bad at?


    In the real world, just downloading Plain Hadoop from the Apache website and trying to use it has some shortcomings:

    Plain Hadoop is hard to to set up. Have you tried setting up this thing? Your best bet may be to kidnap some professors and press them into your service.

    Plain Hadoop is hard to manage. How do you do anything? Where is the graphical user interface? Oh, there is none.

    Plain Hadoop is hard to keep alive. Hadoop has various single points of failure. When Hadoop collapses, you lose data and you lose time. That hurts.

    Plain Hadoop is hard to use. Seriously, this is not a joke. Even adding up a list of numbers is painful.

    Plain Hadoop is not secure. Your files are not secure and users can easily corrupt or steal data. I hope you trust everybody.

    Plain Hadoop is not optimized for your hardware. Hadoop does not run at full capacity for your hardware, which is like being stuck in second gear.

    The good news is that you can have all the good parts of Hadoop with none of the bad parts.

    Zettaset Big Data is a faster, more reliable, easier, and secure Hadoop.

    Zettaset Big Data is just better.

    Rajesh Vijayaraghavan





    Posted by rajesh |



    Sunday, June 10, 2012

    Appa amma in Boston 2012

    >
    > These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google.
    > Try it out here: http://picasa.google.com/


    Posted by rajesh |



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