Vikram Chadaga

A short trip to Bahrain. Started on Tuesday and Back on Friday.

Very different experience compared to Dubai. Currency being so strong makes a big difference in shopping. We tend to buy more as everything looks cheap before you covert!

Interestingly, Bahrain is a very relaxed place and looks like a party place. Place where we stayed had 2 discos in it. People party till 6:30AM, which was very different from other countries.

Did see a few drunk people on the street, which is never heard of from the middle east.

Highlight of the place - World trade center with windmills, Clear sea water & the awesome hotel room with a view!

In the last 15 days I have been to 5 different time zones.

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My Journey started with going to Austin. I had a small presentation to do with one of the hitech companies there. It was my first time to Austin and I was amazed by the number of companies and the number of flyovers going all around. No wonder it is called the second silicon valley in the US.

By the time I could get used to the time difference of Bangalore and Austin, I hopped on to a plane to visit my sister and broter-inlaw in California. It was a red eye flight with a stop over at LA.

California always excites me for the bike lanes. So the first thing I do when I land there is to take out my bro-in-law’s bike and head out! Never ever have I seen dedicated bike lanes and also exits for bike lanes to goto work. California is truly a bike friendly city and a road bikers paradise.

The next two days we relaxed in the bay area roaming around in the car and playing a lot on Xbox kinect.

We visited the golden gate park and rented a few bikes there. It is a very nice park and I must say is a great place for runners. Not the best place for bikers, but we enjoyed going around the place. Beach was right across with wind surfers all around.

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Dated: Feb 2nd 2011

This one is a back dated post, I wanted to write down my experience doing my long distance cycling in a single day!

Summary:

Distance:102.46 mi (163 KM)

Total Time taken: 7 Hours, 21 Min

Avg Speed:13.9 mph

Calories burnt: 5,127 C

I started this journey early in the morning to avoid too much traffic and sunlight. Packed 5 Liters of water, some food for the journey and some energy bars.

Headed out towards the bangalore mysore road. Coincidentally when I hit the Bangalore mysore road I saw a few more fellow cyclist as well. All these guys were on a Road bike doing the Bangalore Brevet cycling event. Below photo is taken by them:

What I realized that day was how inefficient these mountain bike tires are when it comes to long distance cycling. My journey till Mandya was fairly easy as most parts of the road was a down hill. It was quite challenging when I was coming back. Took a lot of breaks and finally made it.

The weirdest feeling was after I reached home and having burnt around 5000 calories… my body felt the need to eat a lot. Not matter how much I ate it wouldn’t satisfy me. My stomach would feel full, but my body needed more! It is a very different feeling!

Overall, it felt great to have done this distance! I’m looking forward to do something like this this year as well!

Team: Shree Kumar, Deepak Malani & Me.

Dates: 25, 26, 27, 28th of February 2011

Total distance: 239KM

This has been one of my best adventure so far! On the road for 4 days… camping wherever you can!

Here is the path and the gradient information. Yes! we did a LOT of climbing with good downhills!

Day 1: Golden temple of Coorg and Backwaters of harangi dam

Before starting our journey we visited the golden temple of Coorg.

After this we reached Shree’s uncle’s place and started our biking journey. I was quite excited as it was the first time I was set out to do something like this. Now no turning back, 4 days on the road.

Our first day was completely on the back waters of Harangi dam. It was such breathtaking experience!

We cycled through some rough terrains. It was not about covering distance, but enjoying the view around us. No man-made things around us, just nature for as long as we went.

Here is a small video of the place:

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I recently came across this new site called GoAnimate. Found it very interesting and easy to use to create animations. Here is my first animation that I did to explain Track Every Coin. Do let me know your feedback about it! Any new scripts that you would suggest that I should try out

PS: if you liked what Track Every Coin does, do sign up for FREE!

We had recently been to the Mysore Zoo. I loved clicking pictures there. The zoo is well maintained and loved the 3KM walk around it.

Few of my fav pics:

The tiger:

The peacock: We were lucky to see the peacock spread all its feathers and dance. I loved the way it shakes its feathers.

The Zebra looked so beautiful…

The python behind the glass:

Loved the birds as well:

There were lots more animals. If you visit Mysore and have not visited the Zoo, I’d highly recommend it.

Click here to view all them.

This morning when I was printing all of a sudden the printers low ink indicator light turns on (toner exhausted) even though there is a lot of ink left in it. When I press and hold the printer button it printed a message saying toner exhausted, service printer. The printer has printed 2100 sheets and it needs a servicing.

The printer is more than a year old so it has no warranty. This is a way to discourage refilling of cartridges. The sad part is that even if you change the cartridge it will not reset on its own. It needs to be serviced by a technician.

Anyways I read a few articles on the net and found an interesting hack. Here is what I did…

First of all open the back panel of the printer…

Now locate the IC 93C66. This is an EEPROM that the printer uses to store the number of sheets printed.

Now short the pin number 1 and 4. These pins are the Chip Select pin and the Data pin. So when the main micro controller tries to read the number of sheets printed it will not be able to do so.

Connect back the printer and it should work just fine after this. I enjoyed doing this hack… thought I will share it!

Believe it or not, in India the term “I-pod” has taken a common name for an MP3 player.

In the common market, if someone asks you “Which i-pod do you have?”.

If you say you have a nano, shuffle, touch… he would be confused! But if you say that you have an Apple, Sony or a Philips i-pod he understands!

I wonder how this happened. How did the word ‘I-pod’ takeover the name for an Mp3 Player? Is it because Apple did not spread the awareness very well in India and the buzz spread through word of mouth? I wonder if the following could have happened:

Person A: What is an i-pod?

Person B: It is something that can play music!

Now when Person A sees an MP3 player he thinks it is an i-pod!

Not sure if this is a boon or a bane for Apple! Yes, the word “i-pod” is now widely used, but not sure if that is translating to sales for them.

Anyways we are keeping a short name for our product. The hardware device will be called “TECI”, short form for Track Every CoIn. So that it is easy to refer it – “Do you have a TECI?”

Blog also posted at our company web site.

I recently attended the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2009 held in Mumbai. It was one of the best organized conference. Hats off to TiE.

For the first time I heard all the big industrialist of India speak on stage. This was a three day event and every day was better than the previous.

First day the main highlight was the talk of Ratan Tata and Narayan Murthy. I was hoping this talk would be more about their experience and how they had built such an empire, but for some reason it was not moderated that well.

The talk was more of a political twist than an Entrepreneurial journey. Nevertheless they both answered the questions asked very well.

After this I heard Capt. Gopinath speak.

He really seems like the guy who has started from scratch. It was amazing to hear his talk about how he built such a big industry and sold it. He had a vision, a vision that everyone can travel and afford to travel by flight. How he raised money when no one was giving him any money. How he started off with just one aircraft by taking a loan. A very inspiring talk.

Now Entrepreneurship has become his lifestyle. He seems to have started a new logistics company.

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If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

I asked myself how come I love running on the streets and others don’t. I figured I was doing a few things differently.

• Running in residential areas:

Avoid main road when you can. If you are running random and don’t care to do a loop  it is best to run on small roads. Here is an example of my run around Padmanabhanagar. You  can see on google maps that there is only a few spots I hit the main roads (roads shown in yellow). I run mostly in the residential areas and small roads (roads shown in white). You can go from one area to the other by doing this, once in a while you might hit a main road, but find the next cross road as soon as possible.

What I love about running in the residential areas/small roads is that there are quite a number of trees around you. And all the houses look so different. Every house in Bangalore has its own charm in the way it is built. Some are colorful, some are built big, some are small and cozy. I keep myself entertained looking at all this.

• When you hit the main road stay to your right:

I feel this is very important to see a head on traffic than traffic behind you for two reasons, 1. You hear less honks. People in India honk so that the other person knows they are coming. 2. It is safer to see head on traffic so that you can move around looking at the vehicles.

But yes… most important thing is to find the next small road and get into it!

• Music helps

Music has always made me stay in my own world while running. I listen to a lot of podcasts / audio books while running. This can make you run a couple of extra miles.

These are the top three things that I do that makes a difference. I’m sure the other runners will have more points, do comment your experiences so that this helps other runners. Let us make street running a culture in Bangalore!