The online shopping destination of choice for me was ebay. eBay is not really an online store, but is an enabler for those who want to sell their wares online. In other words, you don’t buy anything ‘from’ ebay, you buy it ‘over’ ebay. There are tens of thousands of seller selling their wares over ebay and you can buy their stuff that they have advertised over ebay.

Anyway, this post is not about ebay and to promote ebay, but it a reflection of how my shopping habits have changed.

Among my friends, I was one of the first ones to embrace online shopping. I seemed to have good faith in online security certificates and secure gateways, and I was comfortable with the knowledge that my PC did not have any spyware or malware that would record my online transactions and keystrokes. So I jumped on the online shopping bandwagon.

In the past, I remember quite vividly, I used to take my bike out, roam for hours in the hot sun in Jayanagar 4th block (which was nearby, but prices were higher), or in SJP Road or National Market (further away, but cheapest prices) to buy electronic items and computer components. I used to go around asking shops for their prices and would finally go back and buy the item at the best price. Many a shopkeepers who made good business used to even turn away the ones who were just asking prices and not making any purchases. Soon, I had a preferred vendor, who used to give good rates as well as was reliable.

These days however, I browse for products online. Searching for the best prices doesn’t take much time due to the sort function available. Reliability of dealers is easy to know thanks to the feedback left by other buyers. And the best part is that there is no need to roam around in the hot sun, but instead you can buy whatever you want from the comfort of your home. Buying online of course adds shipping costs to the cost of the product, but you have to evaluate that with the cost of commuting, should you want to travel down to a store and buy something yourself.

The idea of Shopping has turned around on itself in the past few years. However there are pitfalls to the online system. When you go personally to a store and buy something, you will for sure know that you have bought what you have been looking for. However, in online shopping, you have to really really know what you want and how it looks, and hope that what you are buying is what you want. You will really get to know whether you have bought the correct item only after you receive the goods in your hands. Unlike manual shopping where you get the item immediately, in online shopping, you have to wait for a few days, or up to a week to get the product.

The best products to purchase online then are those that have a fixed model number and where you cannot go wrong with buying it. Avoid things where you have a preference for color or feel or texture or fitting, such as toys, clothing etc. as these items might be depicted with a picture different from what they actually are.

Also, it is very important to read up the item description and be exactly sure that this is what you are looking for. Even if there is a little bit of ambiguity over a product description, avoid it like the plague. Words and terms that you don’t understand are a sure sign that the dealer is taking you for a ride.

Online shopping is the best for items that you might have already seen in the past (since you know how they are in reality) and have decided to purchase now. Online shopping is not that great if you have multiple items to purchase since the shipping charges will only be compounded and it is better off that you just drive down to the nearby store and buy what you want.

Online shopping has definitely brought in a lot of convenience to my shopping needs, but then I am missing the fun of going shop to shop and enquiring the rate and bargaining till I get what I need. At the end of it, I have a product in my hand and it is a one day job. Whereas in online shopping, I am lazily sitting at home physically, but my mind is impatient until the product finally reaches me and I can test that it is indeed working and as I had expected.

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For one, more than half the people don’t have patience, and a good part of that group lack any sort of brains. Honking seems to be a religion here.

“Hey, you are in my way” – HOOONK
“Hey, I want to overtake” – HONK HONK HONK
“You there, your car is dirty” – HONK
“My car is bigger than yours” – HONK
“I want to scratch myself” = HONKKK

The answer to any problem is to honk. Relax your shoulders, tighten up your wrists, insert a proverbial earplug into your ears, reach for that horn, and let it blare. Oh, how irritating is that sound. Every time I hear someone honk unnecessarily, I feel like getting out of the car and slapping the guy’s face 180 degree around.

But then, like I said, more than half the people on the road lack common traffic sense and are generally devoid of gray matter. I am driving along at 20-30kmph on the road, there is a guy on the right side who wants to cross, he sees me approaching, I am thankful that he sees me (as I don’t have to impart a warning honk), I come closer and closer as he is seeing me, AND THEN he decides that this is the perfect time to dawdle across the street to reach the other side. ##%^&@&

I ask – “What was he smoking?”. All this while he is seeing the car coming. He could have crossed earlier, or after I had passed, but no, he decides that he is entitled to make me test my brakes. I jam the horn and apply my brakes and hope that he has enough sense to up his pace at the last minute to avoid the car.

Oh, and then there are stupid cab drivers who weave in and out of traffic like they are enacting a Nagin film. There are these highly inspirational auto-rickshaw drivers who decide that the white lane marker is drawn so that they should drive their front wheel exactly on it. Either they think it is a test of skill, or they have had one too many checks for drunken driving.

Net effect is that they drive bang in the middle of the road at a speed that is just enough to keep you confused whether you should be in the 1st or 2nd gear, without offering you any space to overtake on either side. It is at these times that you wish some customer flags them down so that they can suddenly swerve to the left without any warning indicator, and at least leave the right lane free for you to overtake.

At times like these you realize that it is not a crime to Honk. Better safe than sorry as they say. So what I do these days is that I just roll up the windows and play some music, so that I am not irritated by the honking of dullards around me. As for me honking – I am still learning the “Art of Honking”, as I still feel it is a crime to honk for no reason. I have to get over my reluctance to honk for no reason.

Some rules of thumb for new and inexperienced drivers out there who don’t know when or why to honk.

You are approaching an intersection – Honk and pass
You are taking a turn – Honk and pass
You are changing gears – Honk and make those around you aware
You decide to change lanes – Screw the indicator, just keep honking until people slow down to see  what you are upto
You see a gap develop between your car and the one in front – Honk like there is no tomorrow, so that a biker or an auto-wallah doesn’t manifest themself out of thin air and try to slot their vehicle into that gap
You see a cabbie around you – Just HONK for no reason, as you never know what they might do.
You see an auto or a biker – Again HONK like crazy, it irritates them and they don’t have any window to roll up and drown the sound

Oh, and do remember – who has the bigger horn and blows it the longest, gets the right of way. There couldn’t be a simpler traffic rule anywhere else in the world.

… And it’s fun when you are stuck in hour long jams and are bored with the radio. Orchestrate your own horny music.

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Since then my leg has healed and I have clocked a few thousand kilometers, but I still long for an automatic transmission.

I have, since long, been a fan of manual transmission. A manual transmission makes you feel one with the car. You dictate terms to the car on how it drives through the manual transmission. Manual transmission is much much more fun, than an automatic transmission. And then you drive in India – with cows and dogs standing in the middle of the road, seemingly deaf humans crossing in front of your car without so much as a warning, with speed-breakers and potholes built to rip out ever little bit of metal placed on the underside of the car, and with the ever maddening bumper to bumper traffic that plagues our city streets.

It is then that you develop a pain in your left leg and your left shoulder and wish that there were a better way to drive in India.

When I think about it, when do I really have the chance to have ‘fun’ on my manual transmission car? I use the first two gears for 90% of the time and the rest of the gears the remaining 10%. Even on that odd weekend or very very late night, by the time I race up to the 4th or 5th gear, there is a huge speed-breaker ahead and I have to jump on the brakes. This being the case, I really don’t see any use of a manual transmission at all.

Since then, I am considering an automatic transmission car. The only downside to that is the poor mileage that seems to be the bane of automatic transmission. However, firstly, I believe that this is wrong data and people just don’t know how to use an AT box. AT through its inherent property knows exactly when to change gears, and also does it with the minimum delay since there is no human involvement here.

Secondly, even on a car with a bad AT box, what is a little loss of fuel efficiency as compared to the great deal of convenience and comfort that you get while driving?

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I agree 100% with what he says. Respond and not React. When faced with a situation or a crisis, wait a while, let the rush die down, think about what has happened and think intelligently on a way to undo or counter the event that just happened.

I am usually criticized for not bothering about happenings and taking things coolly at all times. Maybe this article will help you realize the way I behave. Of course, I am not very intelligent to respond effectively each time, and I have had my outbursts many a time (especially in the recent past), but most of the times I really don’t bother about things and I seem to come off very passive. I however reserve my comments on whether I am really passive, or whether I am thinking of a response.

Anyway, the point that i am trying to make is that it is all well and fine to think about responding all the time, but that is not practically possible every time. I believe that you have train your mind for eventualities by playing it out in your mind and thinking of possible responses. It is sort of like a game of chess. You think of a move, then you think of your opponents counter to that move, then think of your counter to your opponents counter and then the next move and so on. Only when you are certain that all possibilities after making the move are in your favor, then only you should make the move.

A case in point is a near miss that I had with a bus recently. I have always prepared for eventualities while learning to drive the car. Eventualities such as a dog or child running in front of the car, a vehicle stopping suddenly in front, swerving to avoid something but at the same time looking to the sides and behind so that I don’t cause an accident with the adjacent vehicle and many more. I keep playing such things out in my mind. People say, don’t think of bad incidents – your thoughts might just make it happen. I believe that it is good as it prepares me for what to do when it happens. A bus once suddenly swerved into my path on the main road while I was right next to the divider. Instinct would have told me to swerve away from the bus, but had I done that, I would have firstly rammed and dragged my car along the divider. I might have jumped into oncoming traffic had the divider been smaller. I might have bounced off the divider back into the bus too.

But somehow my hand kept the steering dead straight and my foot pressed down hard on the brake. I kept a straight line and missed the bus by a few cms and I didn’t hit the divider either. Worst come worst, I would have banged the left front of the car into the bus and would have had only that much damage, as compared to what would have happened had I rubbed against the divider.

So, to respond, you have to be prepared with a response. I think there was a technical term, but I would call it ‘Intelligent Sub-Conscious Reaction’. Reacting itself is bad, but reacting intelligently is the best. You end up doing the correct thing, and also you do it immediately without wasting time.

What do you think? Do you too conjure up such incidents and prepare yourself for eventualities?

Update: I think the term is conditioning. You got to condition your mind for an eventuality.

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The past few months, I have bought myself a few novels off online stores in the hope that I might have some nice material to read. While choosing the book to buy, the first incentive was the exciting discounts on offer and the next being the reviews of the books on many a websites. Now it seems to me that these discounts and reviews go hand in hand. In order to make a bad book sell, first write rave reviews on it, and then put it up for sale with a tempting discount.

I have fallen victim to one such book at least. I have bought three books online in the past month, 2 States, Dork, and May I Hebb your Attention Pliss!. The first two books had rave reviews but were decent works. I could read them without my head hurting and some parts of it were nice and enjoyable. 2 States was quite nice now that I have read the other two books. I felt some facts were a little twisted, but if you just read the book for the story and not try to relate it to actuality, then it is a good book.

Dork on the other hand was a disaster in terms of expectation. If you read the reviews of the book, you will think that it is the greatest work of art after Shakespeare. The reviews warn you to read the book alone so that your roaring laughter is not heard in public and induce people to thinking you are demented. Nothing of that sort. I might have barely let out a simper reading that book. The book itself was not bad, but it was far from being as great as it was made out to be.

And then I thought of buying what eventually might have turned out to be the greatest mistake of my life. I bought the book ‘May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss!’. I think I should have first read the author’s blog to see what kind of stories he wrote and then decided whether to buy his book, which is essentially his blog in print. I must the appreciate the author and the publisher for that con they pulled over the public’s eyes. Of course some of the rave reviews were indeed being truthful in saying that I should treat each chapter as a blog and not read the whole book in a single go. Understandably they did feel the need to be humane enough to forewarn people who were going to buy this book.

I should have read those warning signs before venturing out to buy that book. I have not been able to get past more than a few chapters. The writings are filled with so much cliché and coffee table talk that I feel this is an appropriate way for loners to involve themselves in a conversation. Read the book the feel that you are with demented people sharing your thoughts. Random thoughts a demented mind is right, and that is exactly what you get with this book.

After the disaster that the last book was, which made my previous two buys seems like I struck gold, I am now in need of some good fiction and original stories. I have pre-ordered the latest book by Jeffrey Archer – And Thereby Hangs A Tale. This is his sixth collection of short stories and I am expecting this author to live up to his reputation and deliver me from the literary hell that I have inadvertently dragged myself into.

Maybe I should think about joining a library and read some classics and works from the 90s and early 2000s, which are at least original and written with a story in mind and not just for the sake of writing and publishing a book.

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I am of course a supported of Opensource and I do really want to not use my Windows box and use Linux exclusively for all my purposes. But that is just not happening. There is always one or more things that I cannot do with Linux that I am able to do with Windows, and when I need to do that, I need to switch back to Windows. The shutting down and rebooting back into another OS is quite a bitch, you know?, especially when you have to do it multiple times in a sitting.

Still, things can be planned. For example, Flex development is not supported on Linux. Fine, I can plan my tasks such that when I want to do the Flex dev, then I will boot into windows, and at all other times I will be in Linux. I am not going to be wanting to do Flex for 15mins every 60mins, no. But it is all the other simple tasks that gets my goat.

Previously, the reasons why I was juggling between distros, have ranged from unavailability of certain packaged software, to the distro itself being slow on certain counts such a boot up times, responsiveness, to even the speed to updates where some distros take ages to update a package and other download delta updates and are extremely fast. But these are things that one can live with. The simple tasks again are the ones that get my goat.

What are these simple tasks?, browsing, blogging, tweeting, to keep it short and simple. On linux, I am unable to publish my blogs. Yes, beat that. I use the web interface of wordpress, I login to my blog, I type, and I hit the publish button. 15mins passes and the ‘working’ graphic goes round and round and round. On some distros, it throws me back the php page itself as a download. Hey, I want to upload my post, not download it. Same goes for twitter. I have never, and I mean never, been able to use the twitter web interface to tweet on Linux. Don’t ask me why, but that’s just the way it is.

On windows, everything works just fine and I have had no problems whatsoever, except for twitter’s site being very very slow at times.

So, what’s with all this? I can only attribute this to some compatibility problem between linux kernels and my hardware. Individually, I have perfectly compatible hardware, but put together, something is messing things up. Windows likes it, linux not. I can change my OSes easily, well not easily but at least given a few hours of installation and set up time, but I cannot change my hardware according to the whims and fancies of Linuxes. And with linux not accepting my hardware the way it is… well, there are things that cannot be said on a blog.

For now, I have about 5 distro CDs in front of me. I have a list of browsing related tasks that linux has not been able to do. I am going to boot into the live CD mode of each distro and try out those tasks. The distro that does all(yes all, I cant live with half baked products) the tasks wins and I will install that. Speed and responsiveness comes later and I will fight it out with that distro at a later time.

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This is not the first time that I am changing my linux distro. In fact after umpteen number of changes, I had decided to stick to the set up that I currently have. I have a multi boot of OpenSolaris and Ubuntu along with Windows XP. I read a lot about OpenSolaris and the amazing features that it offers and I wanted to try it out and do all my development on that. On the other hand, Ubuntu was the distro that would help me give back to the community and be the mainstream linux distro on my PC.

As it turns out, things didn’t go as planned. OpenSolaris really needs some serious hardware. At least much more serious than my current hardware. The distro is way too slow to be able to get anything done. I still haven’t got around to registering my install, since the registration window never opens. Running an app takes ages and there seems to be some fault with the update system which always times out. Over all the distro is very inviting, has a good set of packages and an inviting desktop, but it just does not work on slower machines.

Ubuntu on the other hand is a mainstream linux and is the default choice for almost 50% of those who use or want to try out linux. The unfortunate thing is that Ubuntu has become very slow of late. Applications again take a very long time to start up and multitasking is a definite nono. Things are not as bad as in the case of OpenSolaris, but it is still not smooth enough for someone to be happy with it. The worst is the time that GRUB takes to initialize. I don’t know what Ubuntu does while starting up GRUB, but it is easily the slowest system to boot up by a factor of at least 4x. I wanted to stick to Ubuntu because of the great community, because of the vast array of software available for it and easily, and mostly because many of the great open source projects are built on Ubuntu.

But I have now come to realize that there is no point trying to use a popular or mainstream linux, or even an out-of-the-way distro on my PC. I need something that is fast and runs smoothly so that I can continue to use it without getting frustrated. Getting frustrated with something blocks all hopes of being able to accept something. So I will try and find a linux distro that ‘works’ on my machine and try and get familiar with it and try and use it for all that I want to do.

Linux Mint Fluxbox is one such distro that is supposed to be light on the system and it is also a fork of Ubuntu, so I suppose it has the same build and package system and will be compatible with the software and community that Ubuntu has. If this doesn’t work out, then I will be trying Xubuntu.

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It was not just about CAT, but even before that I used to read magazines within a few hours of buying it and I used to finish largish novels overnight. If I sat with a book, I would read it for long times without getting distracted and would cover large sections of the book in one shot. This was true of all kinds of books – magazines, comics, educational, technical, etc.

However, lately that has not been so. I struggle to read book and magazines. I take very long on a single page, heck I take very long on a single sentence. I realize that I am just not able to concentrate. I can read fast only when I can read with concentration. Previously I used to skim through the sentences and I never needed to go back to a sentence after having read it. Nowadays, I tend to go back to the same sentence over and over again and I still am not able to get it into my head. It seems a sort of a mental block.

I have to literally read the sentence word by word like how one does in primary school and still I am not able to retain what I read. My eyes are unable to scan the sentences at a constant speed and there is a constant mismatch between my eyes and my brain. I find that my brain is distracted, my eyes are distracted and I am as a whole very very distracted.

Mainly this has been so since after college, my reading has been cut down by a lot. Since I joined work, I only do coding and debugging and analysis. There is nothing much that I am reading. I think I should read more and read more often. Somehow I am unable to find myself doing it. Previously I could read more, because I used to read a single novel in about 2-3 days flat. Nowadays, I keep the book for about 2-3 weeks and I still wouldn’t have finished reading it.

This is nagging me a lot and I have to do some thing about it very soon. Maybe meditation would help relax my brain and eyes and prevent them from getting distracted so much.

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Anyway, within a few days I found that I had to take photographs. I just couldn’t sit idle. There were a few occasions like the moon rising very close and appearing so large and irresistible and orange, that I had to photograph it. Then there was the solar eclipse in Bangalore and obviously I had to photograph it. Meanwhile the clouds appeared fascinating, some new birds decided to show up near home and much much more. Its like the elements of nature decided to gang up on me and ensure that I take photographs.

All in all, I had to get back to photography. It was like a part of my life and there was no way that I could separate myself from it. The interesting thing was to find out how to keep up my addiction and motivation to photograph. I decided the best way to do that was to restart my Photography Blog.

And I restarted my Photography Blog – Photography How To.

The next thing was to publish the best of my photos online and create a sort of gallery dedicated purely to photographs. No writings, no stories, just photos. I didn’t want it to be some online photo album where I will keep uploading all my photos. I want to upload there only selected photos and photos that make my photography look good.

So then, I created my new gallery – Kliques.

I hope to dedicate enough time to keep these two spaces up to date and hope to add a lot of content that you will find useful and that you will enjoy.

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Moon

Maybe the lunar eclipse that happened a couple of days back was an eclipse on my photography interests. It cast a shadow of doubt on my love of photography and my equipment. I do not have the best camera around, but then I bought this camera very well keeping in mind the advantages that it brings to the table over the costlier and better cameras like DSLRs. So, then I decided to learn more about the camera and decided to try some RAW photography. I always used to shoot in JPEG since I didn’t want to bother Post Processing much. But I have decided to experiment with shooting in RAW.

Shooting in RAW on my camera is a problem since the writes times are very slow and once I take a photo, I have to wait at least a second till I am able to take the next shot. One thing that I find irritating in digital cameras is that we go on clicking and usually we end up liking only 10% of the photos we take. Maybe shooting in RAW will help me think about my composition and I will take fewer shots but more usable shots.

My irritations with shooting in RAW can be demonstrated with the photo to the left. I took this snap of the moon a few days after the lunar eclipse. The moon was rising and it was huge and it was orange. But in the RAW photo, the moon was whitish yellowish. How do I know/remember how orange the moon was when I am post processing? I just experiments with all the controls and got out this colour on the photo. Then I compared it with a JPEG that I had to see that the color actually matches. In this case it did match, but how can one be sure of how the original image looked while doing RAW post processing. For example, things like skin tone etc. Should I ask the subject to sit next to me while I post process so that I can match the skin tone on the subject and the photo on the screen? Somehow, I am not finding RAW mode very scientific in terms of the results matching the original scene. Sure, you can make it look awesome, without losing details like a JPEG, but then how easy is it to make it look correct?

I am also going to experiment with mobile phone camera photography since that is the one that is more accessible to me and I always carry it around wherever I go.

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