Raju Alluri's Weblog Views & News

Stem Cell Banking in India

Last week, read an ad of a stem cell banking facility in India called LifeCell. Impressive!

Here you can read more about stem cell (cord cell) banking and its perceived advantages.

Posted by spurthi ( Jan 18 2006, 06:37:45 PM IST ) Permalink

Pongal Trip: Time well spent

Got a much needed break from technology (imagine 5 full days of not touching a computer) during this pongal trip. All 5 of my aunts, along with my mother, came to my cousin's place in Bhimavaram. Along with them are 2-3 cousins and their families. It is a gathering of about 25 people, and time flew by. It flew by so fast that I haven't had time to open the only wine bottle I took to that place. That bottle may have to wait for few more months, given the frequency of my wine consumption.

Played cards with my cousins for a few hours, watched a movie (Style-Telugu), watched cricket and played with kids. Ate lots of sweets (that are specially made for this festival.) Spent one evening eating Mirchi Bajji (Chilli Pakora) and Bajji Mixture (resembles Bhel Chat), which are popular in this part of Andhra. My wife can travel all the way to this place just to eat this food.

Kids had a great time. A gathering of 8+ kids needs no mention of how much noise they make. They played Antakshari, watched movies and played lots of games.

The first day of the festival, Bhogi, is very well known for its morning-time-campfires. Kids enjoyed it very well. I took these 8 kids in my car, finding the best campfires in the area. The same day, we went to this movie; Style. Kids liked dances in the movie.

We spent the second day of the festival, Sankarnti/Pongal, in leisure. Just played a lot of games and ate a lot of food. Had to visit some relatives in this area, so the time is gone just like that.

Couldn't stay back for the third day of the festival, because we had to travel back home on Sunday.

Posted by spurthi ( Jan 16 2006, 05:00:02 AM IST ) Permalink

Pongal Trip: On the road

For this part of India where I was born, Pongal is an important festival. Every year, most of our cousins do a family gathering at our native place (in west godavari district of Andhra Pradesh) during this mid-Jan festive season.

This year I wanted to be part of this gathering without fail, but planned for only 3 days because kids had only 1 extra holiday during this weekend. However, their school announced two more holidays in the last minute. So I had to replan my entire trip. Since there are no train tickets available, I had to resort to driving to the place, 450km (approx 280miles) from Hyderabad.

Well, driving for about 600 miles from SF bay area to las vegas or phoenix was quite common for me in the past. However, 280miles of drive in India could be much more painful and time consuming, given the road conditions and especially the kind of traffic we have in India.

I started early hours of Wednesday and reached Vijayawada town within 5 hours. NH9 was mostly okay but with no median/divider for about 150km, it is the most troublesome journey. Traffic heading in opposite direction towards Hyderabad was always in a rush and made me go very slow. When I reached the 4 lane (2+2) part of the NH9, I could average about 80kmph. This part of NH9 reminded me of the best US highways I have driven on. Overall, I averaged about 60kmph on NH9.

Stayed overnight at Hanuman Junction with relatives and started early next AM. The drive on NH5 (part of the planned Golden Quadrilateral) is excellent. I could average about 90kmph. Reached my destination by about 9.00am.

Coming back to Hyderabad on Sunday was quite a fast journey. I covered the entire distance (door to door) in about 8 hours, with 3 breaks for food. Started late about 7.15am due to heavy fog. The fog area cleared up within half an hour and then it is a very nice drive. Except for village/town areas of NH9, there is no much traffic and it made life simple. Overall, I had a very decent driving experience this time.

For the entire trip, I averaged about 16kmpl of fuel on my Santro. Combined with local travel, this is a very good mileage.

Here are the best things I can think of, from the trip:

• Nicely paved roads
• Well marked directions and distances to major destinations
• Fuel availability within reasonable intervals
• Tea hotels (essential part of driving in India) almost everywhere

However, the following issues are still the biggest pain points on these highways:

• In places where there is no median/divider, there are drivers who come on to opposite traffic
• Pedestrians and bicycles going across the highway, paying no attention to oncoming traffic.
• Cattle
• Not enough break areas where you can get decent food/facilities for families and kids.

Well, from what I knew in the past, things have improved drastically so far. If the trend continues, may be driving would be a better experience moving forward.

Posted by spurthi ( Jan 16 2006, 04:15:11 AM IST ) Permalink

MMTS in Hyderabad

Last evening, while travelling by MMTS (the light rail system in Hyderabad) from my home to Railway Station, met with a person from Delhi. He is very impressed with the speed of the train and the neatness of train/stations. He said this is the best local transport system he has seen recently.

It is sad to see Indian Railways deciding to reduce the number of MMTS trains they operate. I feel if they increase the number and frequency, the patronage will definitely increase. Posted by spurthi ( Jan 03 2006, 12:56:15 PM IST ) Permalink

Lowest Temparature in Hyderabad

Last night, we experienced one of the lowest temparatures in the recent years. The min value is recorded at 8.7 C (47.6 F.) This is very low temparature for this part of the country.

The reason for this spell of weather is due to the cold winds from northern part of India.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 28 2005, 12:18:31 PM IST ) Permalink

Customized Blog Page

Finally, got some time to edit my preferences and list of bookmarks and categories on my blog page. In retrospect, I don't know why I took so long to do this :-).

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 28 2005, 06:57:54 AM IST ) Permalink

Foot In Mouth

Wired magazine's 2005 foot-in-mouth awards are interesting to read.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 28 2005, 04:12:03 AM IST ) Permalink

India Today Magazine: 30 years edition

Bought 30 years special edition of India Today earlier today. That made me recall buying the 15 years special edition of the magazine. Thats way back, during the early days of my career. I still have that old copy with me!

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 18 2005, 09:54:03 PM IST ) Permalink

Decoration @ Work

For the first time in about 10 years, bought something exclusively to decorate my office at Sun. Last night, I spotted a small cardboard picture of Dennis and bought it. I am hoping that this picture sets right expectations for people who visit my office!

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 15 2005, 09:43:00 PM IST ) Permalink

Solaris 10 University Challenge Contest

There is a Solaris 10 University Challenge Contest going on. Prizes: $5K per person for upto 4 individuals, 1 Sun Ultra 20 workstation and a $100K grant for University to buy Sun equipment.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 14 2005, 09:41:13 PM IST ) Permalink

Open Sparc?

One of my coworkers forwarded me this article from eWeek. Good read. Information related to Open Sparc project can be found here at http://www.opensparc.net/.
Related blog entry from Simon Phipps is here.
I also enjoyed reading several posts on http://slashdot.org/ here.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 07 2005, 08:59:43 PM IST ) Permalink Comments [0]

zone backup and restore technique

Lasse's Solaris and UNIX resources blog talks about an interesting way of doing zone backup and restore.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 02 2005, 01:54:51 PM IST ) Permalink Comments [1]

A Short Visit to foss.in

This evening I spent a few hours at foss.in. Stayed pretty much at Sun booth. There is lot of interest on Sun technologies related to opensource. Here are some of my thoughts:

• The Belenix team (Moinak et al) deserves a great applause. There is a great interest in this live-cd distribution of OpenSolaris.
• Techies find concepts like SMF, Zones and DTrace very interesting. Regular Linux users and users of past versions of Solaris are finding Solaris 10 to be a great leap over what they use.
• The passion of volunteers from Sun discussing these technologies at the booths needs a special mention.
• Lot of visitors have attended or plan to attend breakout talks/demos from Sun.

I was told that today the crowd at the event is relatively less when compared to other days. Our team is hoping for a large turnout tomorrow, the last day of the event.
Overall, I feel that this event is positioning Sun as a strong force with local opensource enthusiasts. Worth spending time and efforts of our coworkers at Sun!

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 01 2005, 07:41:12 PM IST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Solaris Enterprise System Announcement

Typing this as I am listenting to the Solaris Enterprise System Announcement. This is the best offering to date (by any company) to the developer community. I am sure this is going to be a landmark announcement.
In a nutshell, two key points:

• Free Solaris Enterprise System for developers.
  • Solaris Enterprise System = Solaris 10 + Developer Tools + JES + System Management (n1)
• Eventual opensourcing of Sun multi-platform software, inline with OpenSolaris.

Even today, we are getting lot of interest back in Solaris from academic community. Now we are sure going to get more and more interest from developer community too.

Posted by spurthi ( Dec 01 2005, 10:15:00 AM IST ) Permalink Comments [0]