Running / Cycling Related ...

Will try my best to keep updating this post with events (mostly close to Bangalore)...

2010

Upcoming events,
http://marathon.auroville.com/ - Feb 14 - 2010
http://www.goamarathon.in/ - March 07 - 2010
http://www.thehigh.in/


2009

Upcoming events,
Benguluru Walkathon - December 5th 2009
http://www.feetonthestreet.in/
http://www.toimidnightmarathon.in/home.html

Past events,
http://sunfeastworld10k.indiatimes.com/
http://www.kaveritrailmarathon.com/
http://www.vydehiandmallyaheart10k.com/
http://bsaherculescyclothon.in.com/
http://inside.nikeplus.in/ / http://inside.nikeplus.in/racedetails.php
http://www.bangaloreultra.com/
http://www.hyderabad10k.com/




m.m
http://minmaxmim.blogspot.com/2009/08/running-marathon.html

Learning's From an ANT

Learning's From an ANT

An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.
Lao Tzu

“Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.”
Jack Handy

“Though your enemy is the size of an ant, regard him as an elephant”
Danish Proverb

Black ants or carpenter ants are found in plenty where ever there is a hint of rotting wood or gaps in wooden structures.

Never stop dreaming. Follow the omens.
Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist.

Every grain of sand in this universe has a story to tell.

/

Every grain of sand in this universe has a experience to share.

MM

Similarly I was recently sitting in my favorite news paper reading spot and observing the never ending energy of black ants. They were scurrying around running here and there, they were looking more busy than any manager I have met. An anomaly or a parallel thread started getting created in my mind, I started relating their actions to the actions of a six sensed human.

1) Ants greet every ant – DO WE?

I saw many ants greet each other or which ever ant crossed by, it was neither a gossip session nor were they in a un-conference mode, it was more like a handshake but in this case they shook their antennae or rubbed their antennae against each other.

How many of us greet fellow human beings on a daily basis be it a known colleague or a unknown human? I have seen people drop their head down to avoid conversation / to avoid eye contact. May be we must greet each other whenever appropriate and spread goodwill.

Scientific Reason: Ants can not converse they will communicate with each other with the chemical secretion called pheromones. When two ants meet they will secrete pheromones on the land so that other ants will follow the trail, some time tentacles(antennae) are used as visionary and auditory sensors depends upon the breed.

An forager ant that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony; this trail is followed by other ants, these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behavior helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually finding the best path.

Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from further away. Several ant species even use "propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves. MORE

2) Ants carry every dead ant back – DO WE?

If an ant met a watery grave or was unfortunate to be showered with love by a slipper, its body was taken care by members of their tribe. I saw several dead ant bodies being transported from the accident spot, the dead body was moved to several locations and meetings were held over the dead bodies similar to a postmortem in human terms. Then in 5 - 10 minutes you will see the ant body missing.

I was surprised to see the level of responsibility and care taking abilities in a small ant – caring for another ant. How many of us stop to help people involved in an accident and hurt. How many of us in the advanced stages of humanization take a undertakers job. May be we must care for the injured, hurt and the unable whenever a chance comes our way.

Scientific Reason: In addition to defense against predators, ants need to protect their colonies from pathogens. Some worker ants maintain the hygiene of the colony and their activities include undertaking or necrophory, the disposal of dead nest-mates.Oleic acid has been identified as the compound released from dead ants that triggers necrophoric behavior.

A few (like Atta) have special chambers for this, but most carry the dead nest mates a short distance away from the nest entrance and deposit them in "refuse" piles. Corpse removal possibly evolved as a way of avoiding such fungal or perhaps bacterial invasions of the colony.

And in some cases, the ants bring the dead ants back and home to eat, because they're rich in protein. But I think that's specific to the one type of ant, rather than general ant behavior.

Picture credits 1 2 3

m.m

Signs of the Times

Jetty translates to underwear in colloquial Tamil language.
Intended usage - Bathing in your undergarments is prohibited.
Don't have a bathe after drinking Liqur (liquor) :)
Spotted in a small village in TN.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiruparappu

Thiruparappu is a panchayat town in Kanniyakumari district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is known for its waterfalls, and for an ancient Shiva temple, which is one of the twelve temples visited in the annual Shivalaya ottam pilgrimage.

Pictures

m.m

Climate Change - Blog Action Day

BLOG ACTION DAY

Cometh the time and cometh the blog post...

An early Emperor of the Xia Dynasty in China about 4,000 years ago said
'A picture speaks a thousand words'

On these lines I decided to post pictures that closely represent the state of the
climate rise in our mother planet.

Earth - 100's of years before


Earth - Current State


Earth - In a few decades


Red Hot Earth


Lets join hands to save mother Earth


A finger is enough to switch a light off




www.blogactionday.org

m.m

Tips for buying a good running shoe

Can you please provide some tips / help on aspects to watch out / look out for while choosing a good running shoe.


Please post them as your comments.

Links

http://www.therunningbug.co.uk/ArticleDetails.aspx?Title=Choosing+the+Right+Running+Shoes

http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/info/index.jsp?categoryId=222919

http://www.ineed2know.org/products/running-shoes.htm

http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?tabnum=1&art_id=44541&sc=3406

http://www.fleetfeetbonneylake.com/10-tips-buying-running-shoes

http://running.about.com/od/shoesapparelandgear/ht/runningshoe.htm

http://www.realbuzz.com/articles/top-10-tips-on-buying-running-shoes/

Shoe Finder
http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/shoelabshoefinder/

What is LIFE?

Received this picture as a forward today, yes it may strike a chord to many, but don't worry there are many people who are being wise and this won't apply to them at all....

My 2 cents were if one could successfully define what is life? then there is no purpose left for that person to live anymore as he knows it all and there is no meaning to life and he has become super human.

In this same context loved a quote and a tagline,

Dr. Salim Ali, the famous ornithologist, had said, “Man does not live by bread alone. Just look at the people who have no hobbies and spend all their time solely in earning a living. After fifty when they retire from official chair-warming, they don’t know what to do with all the time in their hands and just spend it watching the clock! If they cultivated a hobby like bird watching – it is very healthy because you have to be out of doors to watch birds – they would have lived longer to enjoy their pension.”

Read this at Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, close to Mysore - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranganthittu_Bird_Sanctuary

Loved the tagline of a company - The Fuller Life - 'One life. Do more'

Yes the forward can be viewed with various perspectives, optimism, pessimism well I choose the former.

Cheers to LIFE

Your comments please.

m.m

The extra mile...

I am still wondering if the service provided by my favorite GSM provider - Airtel was an act of going the extra mile in customer support / satisfaction or going the extra mile in senseless activities.

Call from customer care (CC): Hallo may I speak to M?
M: Yes this is M.
CC: This is regarding your complaint that you have registered at the customer care.
M: (scratching my head), now which complaint was this, tariff change? service activation? DND?...(anyways) YES tell me.
CC: Now is your connection and network coverage issue proper?
M: (I was surprised that they proactively cover everyone's network and in a hurry check my tower signal bar on the phone and see that it is ready to burst out of the phone) Yes it is fine. What was my complaint regarding?
CC: Sir, you have complained about your network coverage in ABC area.
M: uhhhhhhhhh? hmmmm? Are you serious?
CC: Yes sir.
M: Yes the network coverage is long gone, but I want to tell you something, this was a complaint given in the mid of 2007 and you are calling me regarding this a cool 2 years later. (Anyways thanks for remembering)
CC: Sorry for the inconvenience, is there anything else that you would to know from us.
M: No
CC: If you have any query please call 1234455 to get your queries answered, thank you and have a good day sir.
M: Wish you too a good day.
click....

Makes me wonder if they are doing a great job in resolving all issues or are they having some ancient process / systems thats making their good intent to serve people go wrong. Are they losing on money, time, customer good will and above all are they barking on the wrong tree???

Can we apply Business Process Management (BPM) here?
ps: Yes I just finished a training program on BPM.

m.m

Joy of Reading

I was misled in life by my teachers.

Is this a big statement to make with Dr Radhakrishnan’s birthday coming up next month? In my case the entire blame lies with the teachers who made merry by messing up with the usage of the words read and study, this humongous error made me shy away at every instance of the word study or read.

Later in life when I could distinguish between right and write I also knew that the word read was not associated to the social evil – study.

That’s when I started the ’famous’ art of reading with the famous five and was ‘secretly’ reading the secret seven, then had a ‘hard’ time graduating to the hardy boys, didn’t know if mills & boon was a ‘boon or bane’ and now finally into biographies miles away from ‘biology’. The joy of reading increased when I realized that I neither needed to be in Sydney to read works of Sidney Sheldon nor be frost bitten to read works of Robert Frost.

I would be lying if I say that I float in milk colored clouds, surrounded by cute looking angels, and the sound of waterfalls in the background when I read, but the truth is I really get so engrossed by many books that I usually enact many of the characters and scenes in my mind and might end up with an Oscar nomination one moony morning.

To add to a saying of Mahatma Gandhi - Live as if you would die tomorrow learn as if you would live forever and read as if you would carry the wealth of knowledge to your next birth.


m.m

Running a marathon:

Why does Marathon always sound like ‘marra’-thon as in hindi, dead in the queen’s language and the ending pronunciation sound like mara-‘thorn’, a thorn in my sole/soul.

For the ones who have gone through the vice of running marrathorns lap after lap month after month, how do you motivate yourself to train when others drive Bentleys and builds palaces in sand with soft melodious background music of snoring. For the ones falling under the ‘L’ category (lazy, lucky & latter) don’t despair you are better off, bigger assets around the midriff, bigger healthcare bills & of course longer lifespan of your shoe soles.

Amateur marrathorners might have been unlucky to be dragged into the sport by some over passionate runner who covers distances like an auto ferrying passengers. But it is a blessing in disguise once you are hooked, running acts like a drug; it makes you yearn for more and in stronger dosages.

A runner’s best friend is the thump thump footstep sound that accompanies him throughout the grueling distance just that the intensity of the sound is inversely proportional to the distance (longer the distance covered softer the thump). A good runner’s thump is equivalent to a Royal Enfield bikes thump.

A runner’s worst enemy is thoughts of the cozy position on the couch with a coke, fries and a nice action movie on HBO. These thoughts are like mirages that float around the circumference of one’s mind especially when the mind is exhausted and wants to start spreading positive thoughts.

“Run as if your life depended on it, in fact it does so do run” - MM

Link: http://runnersforlife.com/

Disclaimer: I am neither an ultra marathon runner nor a health freak; all I am is a bad writer trying my luck for fame or rather a few nice comments.

m.m

Flower Enthusiast or Macro Photographer

Does it matter if you are a flower enthusiast or a macro maniac sorry I meant macro photographer??? The place to be is The Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Bangalore.

The flower show revolving around the Independence day celebrations in India has started. It is really worth a visit, but remember people travel from far to see this show so there will be a crowd. Try being there at around 8:30 and get into the glass house at 9;00 when it opens. If you go early you will be lucky to see all the butterflies having their morning snack - nectar and flowers in full bloom and not many to disturb your angles and your macro's.

PS: Will post my 2009 pictures soon.

Lalbagh-2009

My Lalbagh Set - 2007
My Photostream

For more history, address and details on Lalbagh,
http://www.horticulture.kar.nic.in/lalbagh.htm

News Articles
TOI
http://www.sindhtoday.net/news/1/37928.htm
DH

m.m

Job Schedulers - UNIX

We might have worked on various Job Scheduling Frameworks, one of the famous one that comes to our mind is Quartz. Yes quartz is a cool frameworks which has advanced error handling, job scheduling and various other great feature. Recently while trying to create a scheduling task for a task in UNIX I decided to check out the inbuilt job scheduling component - crontab, instead of setting up a java application and scheduling it using quartz. There is also a command like a timer at which a script can be run - at , but this feature doesn't enable scheduling and is good for a run once command.

What?
In the UNIX / Linux environment, it is possible to asynchronously execute tasks at any desired time of the day.

How?
It spawn's a new shell at the scheduled time and runs the job. cron starts itself at boot time and never stops until the machine is shutdown. This is maintained by the cron clock daemon.
cron is slaved to the system clock and awakens at one minute intervals to start scheduled jobs / jobs.

Process?
cron reads text files called cron tables. cron table maintenance is accomplished with the crontab command. A cron table file is ordinary ASCII text and consists of one or more lines specifying what is to be executed and when.

Commands?
crontab -e and crontab -l are most often used, the former to create or edit a cron table and the latter to display it. On most systems, crontab -e will automatically start the vi text editor and if a cron table already exists, load it into vi. Upon saving and exiting from vi, the new or revised file will be submitted to cron, overwriting the existing cron table.

Syntax?

min hour day mon dow command #comment

Permitted Values
min 0-59
hour 0-23
day 1-31
mon 1-12
dow 0-6 (Sunday = 0)

Values are cumulative, cron understands an asterisk (*) to mean all legal values for the field where it is used, and also understands numeric ranges.

Example
crontab -l

30 * * * * /export/home/user/example/DeleteOldTmpFiles.sh
This means this sh file will run every 30th minute of a hour every day, every month of the year.

Credit: http://aplawrence.com/Basics/bbcronbasics.html
Summary and few pointers have been taken from the above site and the above site is a very good tutorial site.

Issues
1) If vi doesn’t start check if the .profile file of the user contains the following
export VISUAL=vi
export EDITOR=v
2) If the cron job doesn’t start check if your username is in the cron deny file – check this link for more details - http://www.tech-faq.com/create-cron-job.shtml
3) If everything seems right and still your cron job doesn't run check if your script file has executable rights
ls -altr filename
if it is not there you will have to add this in your .profile of your user or create a new .profile file
chmod u+x /export/home/user/example/DeleteOldTmpFiles.sh

Useful Links
http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/crontab.htm

m.m

SVN vs CVS

Why is every one adopting SVN / Subversion over CVS?

Is SVN / Subversion winning over CVS?

Find out more at the following links.

Detailed Notes
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.forcvs.html

Comparison Details
http://www.pushok.com/soft_svn_vscvs.php
http://momentarypause.blogspot.com/2007/01/subversion-vs-cvs.html
http://versioncontrolblog.com/comparison/CVS/Subversion/index.html

m.m