Biking

Mumbai Kerala Bike Trip: Planning

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This entry is part 1 of 10 in the series Kerala Bike Trip

Route

24 Nov, 2012

The following is the original draft made by me and JK (in the office 😉 )

  1. Mumbai – Hubli, night halt (day1) 576km (8hrs+) [travelling]
  2. Hubli – Ooty, night halt (587km, day2) (10hrs+) [Mysore is 100km less, about 8hrs] [travelling]
  3. Ooty (day3) [rest]
  4. Ooty – Munnar, night halt (day4, 242km, 5hrs+) [rest + travelling]
  5. Munnar, and around (day 5) [rest]
  6. Kochi, port (day6, 130km, 2.5hrs) [rest + travelling]
  7. Allepely, night halt (day6, 60km, 1hr+) [rest]
  8. Shornour(jk’s home village) (day7, 166km, 3hrs) [rest]
  9. Shornour, and around (day8, ) [rest]
  10. Bhatkal, Karnataka, night halt (day9, via Mangalore, Udipi, 474km, 9hrs) [travelling]
  11. Jog Falls, Gokarna, Karwar, night halt (day10, 84km+150km 4hrs+) [rest + travelling]
  12. South Goa, palolem, agonda, etc, night stay (day11) [roaming + rest]
  13. Panhala, night halt (day12, 300km, 5.5hrs+) [travelling]
  14. Panhala, tour and around (day13, 50kms) [rest]
  15. Mumbai, (day13/14, 397km, 6hrs+) [travelling]

If we see our daily activity as Riding only and Travelling (T), Rest (R), Travelling&Rest (B)

TTRBRBRRRTBRTRT

About 5 heavy travelling days, 7 rest and roaming days and 3 roaming + travelling days. So pretty evened out, more of rest + roaming as we would want.

Budgeting

Petrol – 3600km, ₹ 6000 in petrol (assuming 45 kmpl.)
Lodging – 13 days night halt ( appox ₹ 4000 per person, assuming per night appoxx ₹ 1000/3 )
Food – ₹ 1300 (appox 50 per meal x 2 x 13)
Misc – ₹ 1000 (souvenirs, laundry, etc, IF ANY 😉 )
Bike Maintenance – ₹ 2000 (hopefully none, but – engine oil, punctures, but adding an upper side)
TOTAL – appox. ₹ 15,000 (₹ 14300)

Map


View Larger Map

Well the length of the route in the perspective with India’s size looks LONG !

Update

1 Dec, 2012

It seems, Manas wont’ make it. Damn! That leaves just me and JK. Which means the trip might become little expensive for lodging.

The date is now fixed, 10 Dec, 2012. We’ll be visiting the famous Dudhsagar waterfalls as well. I’ll be getting my engine oil changed today, 9 days ahead of trip start.

Medicines / Toiletries

Its best if none of them are ever used, but if wishes were horses…

  • High BP pills (ya thats for me, Hypertension patient)
  • Crocin (Analgesic)
  • Lomofen (Diarrhoea, stomach infections), Domstal, Dompan, Pudin Hara (Stomach aches, problems)
  • Soframycin, some bandages
  • Combiflam (pain killer, anti-inflammatory)
  • Odomos
  • Bathing soap
  • Washing soap (ya, have to do our own laundry!)
  • Toothpaste, toothbrush
  • Shaving kit

Utilities

  • Bike PUC
  • Bike Insurance
  • Phone Charger
  • Bungee Chords
  • Map, Itinerary printouts
  • Paper, Pen (For all misc blog writups, spending log, etc, notes)

Update

3 Dec, 2012

Manas is finally making it. 🙂 But we’ll have to cut off Gokarna, South Goa, etc. Thats not bad, we could make that as a separate trip with Dudhsagar falls, etc.

Update

6 Dec, 2012

Just a day to go by and we’ll be on our motorbikes, Honda Unicorn (me), R-15 2.0 (Manas) and FZ-S (JK). All adding up to 450cc lesser than my and JK’s recently researched dream machine – Ninja 650 R 😀

Late night, putting my last moment requirements around the saddle bag. My Saddle Bag #1 is almost full with clothes and toiletries. I got that this saddle bag from Manas’ friend.

Uncategorized

माँ – Poem: mother

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I found this lovely poem on mother (hindi).

माँ

शब्द नहीं हैं कुछ मेरे पास,
बनाते हैं जो तुम्हे कुछ ख़ास|

इस धरा में कुछ भी नही है इतना पावन,
जितना मधुर मन तुम्हारे पास है मनभावन|

जिन परिस्थितियों का सामना कल तुम्हे करते देखा,
आज उसकी कसौटी पर खुद को खड़े देखा|

कर्तव्य विमुख होने को जी हमेशा चाहता है,
उस कर्तव्य पर कल और आज तुम्हे डटे ही देखा है|

आज होठों पर हसी कम , आखों मे अंगार ज़्यादा है,
हर विषम परिस्थिति में तुम्हे हसता हुआ ही पाया है|

दिन रात हमे पालने में तुमने एक किया है,
आज हमने उन्ही दिनों को अलग और रातों को अलग किया है|

गंभीरता तुझमे पहाड़ों से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
गहराई तुझमे समुंद्र से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
ऊँचाई तुझमे अंबार से कुछ ज़्यादा है,
धैर्यता तुझमे पृथ्वी से कुछ ज़्यादा है|

सबको खुश रख कर तुमने आँसू पीये हैं,
हमे खुश रखने मे तुमने सब कुर्बान किया है|

आज तुम्हारी एक अच्छाई मुझमे समा जाती,
मैं भी शायद आज कुछ धन्य हो जाती|

धैर्यता का पाठ अभी तुमसे सीखना है,
शालीनता से रहना अभी तुमसे सीखना है|

उस प्रभु को करती हूँ मैं शत – शत प्रणाम,
तुम्हारी बेटी बनाकर मुझे भी कुछ कर दिया महान|

कभी यह सोचती हूँ कि माँ बड़ी है या भगवान,
जवाब देने मे सकुचाती हूँ कहीं बुरा ना मान जायें ये भगवान|

इस धरती मे माँ से श्रेष्ट कुछ भी नही है,
शयाद धरती को माँ इसलिए कहते हैं,
क्योंकि उससे सर्वश्रेष्ट कुछ भी नही है|

Uncategorized

Why do I swim ?

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  • Feels like flying in thick medium
  • Love to see other creatures like me flying around me
  • Helps me forget all negative thoughts / rather I don’t get time to think about it
  • Feels like a dream
  • Like watching oldies share jokes with each other and enjoy life to the fullest
  • Tire my body, and feel like rebooted before the start of the day (Windows users will know better 😉 )
  • Nothing like a cool dip in water in a tropical climate of Mumbai
  • Breath control helps body to calm down (more like Pranayam)
  • Post swim, makes you hungry like anything
  • Keeps your body in good shape

and above all, ’cause I love to swim 😀

Biking

Murud, Diveagar, Shrivardhan beaches on 2 wheels

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27, 28, October 2012.

A bike ride to Murud with JK and Surya visiting some of the most beautiful and picturesque coastlines in India. Starting with Alibag, Kashid, Murud, V Beach (Murud), Diveagar, Aravi and its hilly road overseeing the beach
and finally Shrivardhan.

Route

  1. Mumbai to Alibag (via Pen, Vadkhal)
  2. Alibag to Kashid
  3. Kashid to Murud.
  4. Murud to Dighi (via a ferry: Rajapuri Jetty to Dighi Jetty)
  5. Dighi to Diveagar
  6. Diveagar to Shrivardhan
  7. Shrivardhan to Mangaon (NH 17 junction via the long Mhasala ghat)
  8. Mangaon to Mumbai
Linux, Web

Ubuntu 12.10 Verdict

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A Saturday, new Ubuntu in the Downloads folder. What is it that you expect a linux user to do?

I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on Lenovo X201. I had 10.10 installed previously. I decided not to upgrade, but to clean install. It didn’t give me upgrade options anyways.

Post installation, here are some of the things I faced / enjoyed

Bootup time almost 25 seconds, it was around 15-20s for 10.10. A BIG downside for this release!

The Dash feels much quicker. However the gnome-shell still feels snappy as opposed to dash

I fuckin love the WebApps concept in Unity – That has actually made me stick to Unity.

Search in Unity still makes you click – as opposed to gnome-shell – Search the right string and hit Enter. That doesn’t work in Unity

I hated the original Alt+Tab utility in Unity, so installed Compiz Configuration Settings Manager (originally ccsm – so don’t search for that in apt). I replaced it with Static Window Switcher. It worked but then strangely started showing bugs of ghost windows moving in and out of the gray bar – little distracting, but didn’t break anything. (I was too careless to resolve conflicts 😛 – Was that the reason ?)

I adore the complete integration of Social World into the top-right corner of Ubuntu. You name it, Gmail (the Web App of that one is “क्या बात !क्या बात !” It shows the unread mails in Inbox, TagX, TagY, all in that top-right corner dropdown). O… continuing with integration – Facebook, Twitter, Chat, etc. However I’m an old time user of Pidgin, and have tonnes of logs in Pidgin which I don’t want to lose. I have no idea how to make Pidgin as the default integrated chat client into GNOME3 and Unity alike. – Help would do. Thunderbird too integrated nicely since the last release.

Ubuntu – Amazon Nexus – Naaah ! Disabled the “Online Search Results” from the “Privacy” application

I’m not a big fan of the Dark Ambiance theme, but with the other themes support in terms of UI elements, logos, etc.. I’ve got to stick with Ambiance atleast for now. I would’ve preferred the old GTK2 based Clearlooks theme.

Score: 7/10 – All the marks getting lost for the tacky compiz and inability to change defaults easily without installing other apps.

Linux

Python 3.3 ipaddress module Awesomeness!

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Python 3.3 was released yesterday, Sept. 29, 2012. It has a wonderfully geeky module for IP address.

Take a look at some of its usages..
Casting / Conversions

>>> str(ipaddress.IPv4Address('192.168.0.1'))
'192.168.0.1'
>>> int(ipaddress.IPv4Address('192.168.0.1'))
3232235521
>>> str(ipaddress.IPv6Address('::1'))
'::1'
>>> int(ipaddress.IPv6Address('::1'))
1

Arithmetic Operations

>>> IPv4Address('127.0.0.2') + 3
IPv4Address('127.0.0.5')
>>> IPv4Address('127.0.0.2') - 3
IPv4Address('126.255.255.255')
>>> IPv4Address('255.255.255.255') + 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
ipaddress.AddressValueError: 4294967296 (>= 2**32) is not permitted as an IPv4 address

Wish I could code in Python 🙁

References

guitar

Guitar Chords: Ala Barfi

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This entry is part 32 of 41 in the series Guitar

This earthly song from Barfi! movie strikes the chord with the seventies and early eighties. Those who have heard the Murphy radio with their grand parents would relate much better. I prefer the Swanand Kirkire rendition with vocals coming straight through the heart.

Strumming Pattern

There are around 3 basic strumming patterns in this song. One for the normal stanzas and other two for stanza ending and chorus.

  1. Normal Song (pattern1): D DU(muted) D DU(muted)
  2. Ghus fus ghus fus (pattern2): D(muted) U(muted) D(muted) U(muted) D(ring and mute) D(ring and mute). Typically G(down) G(up) G(down) G(up) G(down) G(up) G(ring) wait and C(ring). Pattern stays same for “kabhi na rukta ye re..”
  3. Khur khur pattern: Play same as Ghus fus but the C chord and D chord has to be strung only once
    like G(D) G(U) G(D) G(U) G(D) G(U) C(single downstroke) D(single downstroke)
[pattern1]
O..o..ye..
G
Aankhon hi aankhon mein kare baatein
G                  C         D  
Gupchup gupchup gupchup hoyi
G                       C
Ghus fus fus fus fus
G
O..o..ye..
G
Khwaabon ki nadi mein Khaaye gote
G                C           D

[pattern2]
Gud gud gud gud gud gud hoye
G                       C
Bud bud bud bud bud bud (Repeat once)
G

[pattern1]
Ala ala matwala barfi
G       C       D
Panv pada mota chala barfi
G         C          D
Raaton ka hai ye ujaala barfi
G             C         D

[pattern3]
Ghumshum ghumshum hi machaye Yeh toh footpath
G                                    C   D
Khur khur khur khur 
G
khurafati kare non-stop (Hoye)
[pattern2]
G              C   D
Khur khur khur khur (Hoye)
G                   C
Bud bud bud bud (Hoye)
G                C
Gud gud gud maula iss se bachai le
G                        C      D
Khur khur khur khur (Hoye)
G                    C
Bud bud bud bud (Hoye) 
G                C
Gud gud gud maula iss se bachai le
G                        C      D

[pattern1]
Hey..
G
Aankhon hi aankhon mein kare baatein
G                  C         D
(Gupchup gupchup gup) hoyi
G                     C
Ghus fus fus fus
G
O..o..ye..
G
Khwaabon ki nadi mein Khaaye gote
[pattern1]
G                C           D
(Gud gud gud gud) hoye
G                 C
(Bud bud bud bud)
G

[pattern1 but without playing the last rigning chord, played more in continuous motion]
Kabhi na rukta re
G
Kabhi na tham tha re
C
Gham jo dikha usse
D
Khushiyon ki thokar maare
                    G
Palko ki harmuniya
G
Naino ki gaa re saare
C
Dhadkan ki rhythm pe ye
D
Gaata jaaye gaane pyaare
                    G


Bhola na shamjho ye
C
Chaalu khiladi hai bada bada
                   D
He..yeye..

Suraj se uljha dega marega
C
Phoonk aise top talaiya pipal chaiyya
D
Har kuche ki aisi taisi

[CHORUS]
(Barfi Barfi tu hai meri..)

[pattern1]
Barfi jab amma ji ki Kokh mein tha soya
G
Amman ne murfi ka Radio mangaya
C
Murfi munna jaisa lalla
G            C      D
Amma ka tha sapna
              G
Munna jab haule halue Duniya mein aaya
G
Baba ne Ceylon wala station lagayaa
C
Radio on hua amma off hui
G          C          D
Toota har sapna
            G

O..o..ye..
G
Munna mute.. hi aansu bahaye
G               C         D

[pattern2]
(Chik chik chik) haye
G                 C
[pattern1]
O..o..ye.. Munna jhunjhuna sun bhi na paye
G                          C           D
[pattern2]
(Jhun jhun jhun jhun) haye (Jhun jhun jhun jhun)
G                     C    G

[pattern1]
Ala ala matwala barfi
G          C       D
Panv pada mota chala barfi
G           C           D
Raaton ka hai ye ujaala barfi
G                 C        D

[pattern3]
Ghumshum ghumshum hi machaye Yeh toh footpath
G                                    C     D
Khur khur khur khur khurafati kare non-stop (Hoye)
G                                  C   D
[pattern2]
Khur khur khur khur (Hoye)
G                     C
Bud bud bud bud (Hoye)
G                 C
Gud gud gud maula iss se bachai le
G                        C       D
Khur khur khur khur (Hoye)
G                     C
Bud bud bud bud (Hoye)
G                  C
Gud gud gud maula iss se bachai le
G                        C       D 

[CHORUS]
Biking

Kurze / Talasari Dam bike ride

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Sunday, Sep 2, 2012

I used to wonder why kids in their paintings always paint the cliched green mountains, blue sky and a river flowing by through green valleys brimming with yellow-green farms. Today, I knew why ! – ‘Cause its a sight that leaves a mark on your memory. Mine was stamped today.

Saturday evening Manas called and an impromptu bike-ride was on the map. Kurze Dam, which is just close to the Talasari junction on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad, NH 8 highway.

Back to the kids’ paintings – By September, the earth has been painted, replenished and cleansed as well. The sights that we saw on our way were just from the kids’ art books. The flushed-clean highway clinging to the green bosom, climbing and caressing the green paddy fields, which were close to being harvested giving a slight hue of yellow through the broad green spectrum. The air too was crisp-clean. Every single particulate dust had settled. The small, yet picturesque hills around the Manor region added another touch of flavour to the picture. As if that wasn’t good enough to put in a frame, the sky with its receding black clouds, was now azure blue.

A right turn from Talasari took us through a lazy little country side still oozing of the wet spells that were continuing to be intermittent. The gravity dam’s wall was just ahead of us, the road kept moving along the wall teasing us as it would never touch the dam wall. We spotted a small brown opening through the grass and we ploughed through to the base of the water reservoir.

It was still raining, wind creating a wonderful mixture of the droplets. The water body streching ahead of us till we could only see the mist in trees far in the background. At our feet though was the pungent brown mud, blades of grass fizzing through it. The whole sight reminding why people in country side can’t think of places like Mumbai as their home.

Kids passed by us adoring the R-15 and the other lowly models. I asked them

तुम्ही पोहता का इथे ?

to which they eagerly pointed out at the base of the reservoir where they were heading and ran off. JK looked at them run bare foot, and his philosophical counterpart murmured

साला कोई टेंशन नही है

I too pondered … we had lost all, the carefree attitude, the innocence, the honest smile, everything.

We took a few snaps and headed back towards the base from the dam wall. To my surprise the kids were actually swimming, jumping in the water. We rushed and joined them. The water was warmer than the air, which made us feel out of the world! Manas enjoyed clicking our water buffalo (JK) and the kids with his water proof camera.

On our way back we had some parathas that my mother had helped us with and Granola bars with Mars chocolate that Manas always keeps handy on his bike trips.

Even the hot shower by the end of a wet, cold ride wasn’t good enough to wipe clean the warm swim that we enjoyed.

Travelling Directions

  1. Head on the NH-8 highway towards Gujarat
  2. Take a right under the flyover at Talasari
  3. Head right into the heaven in a minute.

Photos

  1. JK’s Facebook Page
  2. Manas’ Facebook Page
Linux

Tweaking Gnome3 / Fedora fonts like Ubuntu

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Recently I installed Fedora 17. Font rendering in Fedora is somewhat unoptimized, thanks to many patent clad algorithms for rendering fonts. But you if you want the best, follow the steps below

  1. Enable RPM Fusion Repos
    rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

  2. Install freetype-freeworld package
    yum install freetype-freeworld

  3. Install gnome tweak tool
    yum install gnome-tweak-tool

  4. Tweak font rendering
    Open gnome-tweak-tool by typing “advanced settings”. Then set
    Hinting = Slight
    Antialiasing = Rgba

  5. Configure ~/.fonts.conf
    Please save the attached file as .fonts.conf in your home folder ( ie. /home/michael/.fonts.conf ). Note the file name is .fonts.conf with a period in the begining.
    fonts

Above will render fonts in the best possible way (Font Rendering is matter of preference – tweak around for yourself). Now any application, Google Chrome, Firefox, etc will render fonts in the same manner.

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