Happy Holidays

Wish you all happy & prosperous New Year.Its time to write almost last entry for this year.

For quite a while was thinking to write about 2005 year diary. Hmm............not able to write with this dull and grey sky and no need to mention the cold at Paris but wait............ seems some ray of light is trying to reach my desk which I do not want to loose, hope that will keep my spirit high while writing this.

2005 started with the longest vacation I ever had so far in my career. It was six week India trip and an escape from cold Europe. It was not a vacation after all, as my younger brother was getting married.

Coming back to Paris we did traveled as-usual in the first half.We have been to Germany, Austria, Spain and Portugal.It was superb with excellent weather and good food.

Pamela did a great job which I was not able to accomplish from quite a long. She made sure my parents visit Paris. And yes...they did came in mid-August for 4 weeks. Organizing their first trip abroad was not perfect; starting with floods in Mumbai, not able to get cheap tickets & with delayed baggage service by airlines in Paris etc. But at the end hope they had good time in Paris.

We celebrated Pooja and Diwali this year at Maison de l'Inde. And yes, one more thing not to forget... in-spite of my disliking of France & French, I ended up joining French class.

Being crazy did major change to this web site. Anywayz, this holiday season is highlight with visit to Vedanta Society at Gretz. Need to see how I end up this year.

Once again best wishes and keep visiting.

Thank God its Friday

It has been a while I wrote any post. Well, after quite a long time I met with Tapas a good old friend from Bay Area. The meeting was short while having dinner at our place; got some updates on other friends in Bay Area.

Yesterday, was last French class before 2 week vacations so we went out for drinks after the class. I never had this kind of social events where you have to speak in French and you are not ashamed of your mistakes. It was good as all others did not started conversing in English though the french language was butchered like anything. It was fun; returned home late night :( . Well, need to finish lots of homeworks and revise the course now or chance of passing the exam is bleak

The big reason for writing today is about the comment I got - if I am selling my TIBX shoe laces or not? Well the whole idea of writing that post came to me when I read the news of Intel offering $10K for Dr.Moore’s paper published in Electronics Magazine 40 years ago.

Metro in Paris

Living in Paris and not travelling in Metro has lots of demerits. Like usual I am going to start with the traffic jams, one way roads, unavailability of parking, high parking tickets and very unusual sense of Parisian driving skills.

These only list if you have a car and travelling of your own. But what about those who are taking other mode of smart transports like Bus, Tram, Bicycle, Rollerblade or just walk to work or work from home? Well, looking at the list they look cool-nice with their own merits and demerits. For example, I used to go to work in summer by bike, it was the quickest mode to reach work with no major traffic. And I used to go-through Bois-de-Boulogne to have some exercise and fresh air.

But wait, I have not listed demerits yet for these mode of transport over Metro. You will have no clue about what is coming up or going on social front like which movie or big concert as metro walls list all those for you. You never know when there is “SALE” coming up from Galeries Lafayette to any electronics stores. Not only that you will also miss what is the latest trend in the fashion from shoes to eyeglasses.

This list can be long. In short, if you are not noticing the metro walls & people while walking those long passages between different metro lines you miss a lot ;)

create typewriter effect with ming php for flash (swf) movie

This is nice and simple code it creates the simple effect which you might have seen in lots of web sites. As it is PHP you can use the same from your own news reader to database.

setBackground(0x00,0x00,0x00);// SM - This is very important as it set sets the speed of the movie// SM - Higher the number faster the typing will appear$movie->setRate(3);// SM - This one will depends upon you$movie->setDimension(600,40);$movie->setFrames(31);$movie->nextFrame();// Define your String here $str = 'Miing Typewriter Effect'; /* SM - As you note The space between character if not fixed SM - due to font width so you have to figure out your own SM - Now we split our string and make an array with the same */ $chars = preg_split('//', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);// print_r($chars);$inc = 0 ;for($i=0;$isetFont($myFont); $myText->setColor(255,255,255); $myText->SetHeight(30); $myText->addString($chars[$i]); echo ("$chars[$i] \n") ; $firstText=$movie->add($myText); $firstText->moveTo($inc,30); $inc = $inc + 18; // SM - this is very critical as you need to add this extra frame to make this effect of some typewriter $movie->nextframe(); // SM - This helps to determine the width of the movie // SM - turn only if you need the same // echo "inc is $inc \n" ; } // SM - we do not want to loop this movie// $movie->add(new SWFAction("stop();")); // SM - Save the movie $movie->save("/tmp/banner.swf",9);?>

Create Banner with mirror effect by ImageMagick

A simple way to create a text image which will have mirror effects. The best part of this you do not have to use any fancy imging software and it takes only few seconds to create the same. The code a single line to make it easier for Windows

convert -size 460x130 xc:white -font forte -pointsize 72 -fill "#cccccc" -annotate 0x180+12+80 "Banner Mirror" -gaussian 0x2 -stroke black -strokewidth 1 -fill "#80904F" -stroke black -strokewidth 1 -annotate 0x0+12+55 "Banner Mirror" -draw "line 0,68 430,68" Banner-Mirror-Imagemagick.jpg

Reached 10K and folding

Folding @ Home is a Stanford University project of understating protein folding. It is distributed computing where small tasks are sent to Personal Computers (PC) across the world and it uses those CPU power to calculate. The results are sent back to the main computer. It is a very safe program and probably you will not notice any performance change for your computer.

There are similar projects for understanding Genome to AIDS which uses more or less similar technology of distributed computing. If you think you can contribute using your unused power of your PC other than warming the planet than please join any project of your choice.

The recent announcement from Sun about their low power consuming CPU is a new start from those Mega Hertz and Giga Hertz race. As most of the commonly used applications can not use any way as they are always backward compatible to reach all the market.

Orsay revisited

To my greatest surprise I found failure in implementing a perfect backup system for my digital images. Somehow I lost all the pictures from Orsay museum. May be I just deleted them(by mistake)!!! Yes I know the trouble of digital memories they are very easy to capture but most difficult to save. There are lists of problem that can happen to your golden past; starting with the media card to Hard Drive not to mention virus problems or accidental deletion of files

My current system is far from perfect I have one copy on my computer and other in external USB drive. That way I am insured from virus and hard-drive failure but may be I should make DVD(s) and keep it in a separate place. Working for IT is making me so paranoid with backups but I know few people who lost their digital pictures just thinking nothing wrong will happen to them.

Well enough of bragging, I think it was a small and good lesson and great reason to go back again to Orsay. Being there I just forgot all those anxiety of living in Paris small apartment and trouble it poses from carrier to saving for future or just picking up the language and be able to communicate properly in French. On humorous side if French economy does not recover and keeps declining then some dark day they can lease some of these masterpieces to new emerging economies of East to make some money.

This time there was temporary exhibition from Russia which was worth to explore the paintings from mid-19th century to 1917 ; most of the paintings and objects are from National Museum of Moscow and St. Petersburgs .

Diwali at Paris

"Are you safe out there?" This was typical question to which I have been answering to my friends and relatives after the riots at Paris suburbs. I myself was keeping updated with news only. "Thank God" it looks like getting better now. I would not like to make any comments and express my view on the same as it seems to be very complex matter.

We celebrated Diwali quite well this year. On evening of 2nd oct. it was at Vendanta Society of Paris(with puja).And on 5th it was at Maison de l'inde with fireworks and cultural activities. But this year the biggest celebration of Diwali was hosted by Mayor of Paris at “Hotel de Ville” for the first time. It was an event by invitation. Unfortunatley, I didnot have enough social contacts to be there.

Part -2

create individual pages for each image dirty way with php
[code]
<?php
//$image_files=[] ;
$type = "jpg";
$abspath_folder = "/home/santm/public_html/PamelasCreation/images" ;
if ( is_dir ( $abspath_folder ) ) {
if ( $handle = opendir( $abspath_folder ) ) {
while (false !== ( $file = readdir($handle ) ) ) {
if ( $file != '.' && $file != '..' && $file != 'CVS' && $file != 'index.html' ) {
//santm echo "FILE is $file \n" ;
$the_array[] = $file;
}
}
}
}
closedir( $handle );
// end of reading the directory
// santm print_r ( $the_array );
// making sure the array only has our jpg image starting with a number
foreach ( $the_array as $img ) {
if ( !is_dir( $abspath_folder .'/'. $img ) ) {
if ( eregi( $type, $img ) && eregi ( "^[0-9]", $img)) {
$the_image[] = $img;
}
}
}
// the main part
if ( !$the_image ) {
echo "no image \n";
}
else {
$i = count ( $the_image);
echo "count $i\n";
// sort the array
rsort ($the_image) ;
//print_r ($the_image ) ;
for ($k = 0 ; $k < $i ; $k++) {
$bb = $k+1 ;
echo "santm $the_image[$k] \n" ;
$full_name = explode (".",$the_image[$k]);
$short_name = $full_name[0];
$foo_img = images .'/'. $short_name;
if ( $k != 0 ) {
$pre_name = explode (".",$the_image[$k - 1]);
$pre_short_name = $pre_name[0];
}
if ($bb != $i ){
$next_name = explode (".",$the_image[$k + 1]);
$next_short_name = $next_name[0];
}
echo " short $short_name \n";
//
// doing dirty way with system call for placing the header
//
$head_out = shell_exec ('cat /home/santm/head.pam.inc');
$write_handle = fopen ("/home/santm/public_html/PamelasCreation/$short_name.html","w+");
fwrite ($write_handle,$head_out);

fwrite ($write_handle," $bb of $i\n");
fwrite ($write_handle," <div class=
\"big_photo\">\n");
fwrite ($write_handle,"\n");
if ( $pre_short_name ) {
fwrite ($write_handle,"<
img src=\"images/previous.gif\" alt=\"next\" border=\"0\">\n");
}

if ((!$pre_short_name) || (!$next_short_name)) {

fwrite ($write_handle,"<a href=\"index.html\" width=\"90
/%\">\n");
}
else {
fwrite ($write_handle,"<img src=
\"images/home.gif\" alt=\"home\" border=\"0\">\n");
}

if ( $next_short_name ) {
fwrite ($write_handle,"
\n");
}
fwrite ($write_handle,"\n");
fwrite ($write_handle,"\n");
fclose ($write_handle) ;
}
}


?>
[/code]

photo album : imagemagick (part -1)

Quick and dirty way of creating photo album with imagemagick, creating images with black border as it looks good for all

#!/bin/cshset files = `echo [0-9]*.jpg`echo $filesforeach file ( $files )set w = `identify -format  "%w" $file`set h = `identify -format  "%h" $file`if ($w > $h) then  convert $file -thumbnail 500X -bordercolor black -border 1 /tmp/foo100/$fileelse  convert $file -thumbnail X500 -bordercolor black -border 1 /tmp/foo100/$fileendifend

Place de la Concorde

After a long time I was able to capture the fountain of Place de la Concorde in a very beautiful sunny morning. It is so amazing that we still take pictures of Paris like tourist on their first day. When we left home it was cloudy and we were questioning ourselves why we are carrying the camera with us. But luckily it was worth to do so. Then from there we took a small promenade at the garden of Elysee.

While walking in 5th arrondissement we saw preparation for a big renovation is going on at Madame Curie University (Jussieu) as they used asbestos as insulator, But with high risk of cancer now government is trying to get rid of the same. It has unique architectural plan which resembles as a molecular matrix where each column is numbered. Looking at the same you can like it or hate it there can not be any middle opinion about the same.

Tibx Shoe Laces

Yes these are my dirty shoes. Not very sure about the origin of those shoe laces, I got them when my old office was getting closed. Missing the TIBX bus and shares I got those laces :( (People got nice race cars and big houses in Bay Area a dream come true in this materialistic world and what I got for boarding the train late. Well I have another pair of these laces…..

Unless any big shoot TIBX one day decide to run a charity marathon with these laces on his gizmo running shoes there is no real value to the other pair of laces I have. Any one out there …. You know I am sure it will not cost much.

Migrating rrd database between different architecture

This script you run on the source host from the same directory where all those rrd files are there. I found this very helpful while migrating between Linux and Solaris.

#/bin/csh

set all_files=`echo *.rrd`
echo $all_files
foreach file ( $all_files )
set base = `basename $file .rrd`
/bin/rrdtool dump $file > /tmp/new1/$base.xml
end

The do a `tar` with `gzip` as that will save lots of space and time while transferring data between machines.

And on the destination machine you uncompress and untar the file to an empty directory.

#/bin/csh

set all_files=`echo *.xml`
echo $all_files
foreach file ($all_files)
set base = `basename $file .xml`
/opt/local/bin/rrdtool restore $file /opt/local/htdocs/cacti/rra/$base.rrd
end

Hope this helps.

French class

After all these months, I prefer not to use years yet :) I started formal French class. I am not sure how it will end up as it keeps me reminding about my Spanish class which I dropped out after 2 months. But for those 2 months I went on time to Foothill community college every morning at 8AM. It was different as medium of instruction was English now everything is French. It is not difficult to understand what the teacher is saying but it is very hard to form a full sentence correctly in french.

I applied for beginner (level I) but after writing the test last week I found myself at level II yesterday evening. This must be due to my wife who made sure I do well in this test. May be I should not have answered so much as a beginner but I did not want to miss this chance as this class starts twice a year only. I would like to thank Daniel (my office teacher) as well. May be I could have learned better at first place paying more attention to him and secondly if those (office) classes were at regular interval.

I have to admit the class looks good with the dynamic and hard working teacher. She looks like going to make sure her students learn to speak and write proper French. The most of the students are from Asian origins female who are working as house maid in Paris.

Well I need to memorize a list of verbs and their conjugation now for tomorrow’s test.

Gallery2

Well I am having lots of trouble with a simple gallery2 installation with 15 pictures for my wife's hobby pictures. While I am running a 1600 picture gallery on the same server with out any problem touch wood. The back on the main one not there.

And i am having wonderful tech support from dot5 hosting to say the least. The guy does not even know what is Unix he replies it is FreeBSD.

A quick a dirty way to get around. Let's name the site as www.mysite.com Here the user name for your web server is not same as your account. So when you create a file ftp you see the owner/group as "joe/joe" and when web server creates it it is "web/web".

Connect via ftp create a gallery2 directory ; chmod 777 the same on the Top most Document root.
put this file in the same directory "gallery-2.0-full.tar.gz" make sure binary more
also FTP this php file foobar.php with these lines in it

<?
system ("tar -zxvf gallery-2.0-full.tar.gz") ;
?>

Now connect to this foobar.php via a web browser.

Follow the instruction from gallery2 installation when you point your browser to this location

http://www.mysite.com/gallery2/

Need to create the g2data directory and chmod 777 via ftp again .

to finish the same Gallery will ask you chmod 755 gallery2 directory.

Running Paris Versailles

Almost after one and half year I was running in any event. The weather was very grey but it was very pleasant for running. Temperature was around 16 degree Celsius. The race was 17KM long starting from bottom of Eiffel Tower to Château de Versailles.

For the first time, Pamela accompanied me to the starting point of the course so as to take a photo of mine with Eiffel Tower. The first part of the run was along River Seine and then it goes to Forest of Meudon; this was the most crucial part as it has a steep climb (approx.2kms).

Well, the water stops were quite nicely spaced and I did not felt like a trash any time during the whole course. There were around seventeen thousands people in total but at a time only 350 runners departs so when I started it was almost 30 minutes after the first group started.Anyway, the route was quite scenic as the main part was bit away from the city in the forest & I finished by 1h 29mn 59s which is not that bad :D

New look to web site

Migrated to Wordpress along with Gallery2, the choice for the same was not easy. As for a long time Mambo and custom home grown Photo Album was doing the job fine. In fact the template I used for the same was appreciated by friends. But as days passed and numbers of pictures are growing it was getting difficult to manage the same with custom gallery. But the idea to grab Wordpress and dropping Mambo is a personal one. I will not compare the two. The fact is they two are different and just I felt like blog software will be a better choice for a personal website compared to a CMS

Well there is lots of lots work left to organize the pictures now after this migration as there was no tool or script that I could use to automate the same :(  Hope to finish this by end of September.

banner with imagemgick convert

To create a banner with mirror effect!!

convert -size 600x130 xc:transparent -font forte -pointsize 72 -fill "#cccccc" -annotate 0x180+12+80 "Pamela's Gallery" -gaussian 0x2 -stroke black -strokewidth 1 -fill "#ff3600" -stroke black -strokewidth 1 -annotate 0x0+12+55 "Pamela's Gallery" -draw "line 0,68 570,68" banner.png

ssh and scp

Via tunnel

scp -P 2222 font_slewed.gif santm@localhost:/tmp/banner.gif
ssh -p 2222 santm@localhost

nomally :

[How To] Puttygen Puttssh for ssh

1. Run PuttyKeyGen
1.a Make sure you choose SSH2DSA at the bottom
1.b Click on Generate
1.c Move Mouse as mentioned.

2. Once the key is generated
2.a Put proper comment for Key username and hostname
2.b Type your Password please try to choose a proper password i.e. with number, special character, upper case hard to guess
2.c Save the public and private key I saved in
C:\Documents and Settings\santanu.misra

3. Now add pageant.exe to your startup programs as shortcut.

4. In the property box modify these
4.a In “Target” Box add the Private-key file name
4.b In “Start in’’ Box put the directory where you stored the public key ; look at step 2.c
4.c Make “Run” to minimized

5. Right click on pageant and you will see there is an option for adding the key.
5.a Choose your private key file that was generated with “PuttyKeyGen” and it will ask for the “Passphrase” enter the password you entered in step 2.b
5.b You can see your key with “view key” option. There is a option to delete your key as well.

6. Now we need to configure putty to work with our public and private key. The screen shoots are quite self explanatory.

How ever I did modified “ScrollbackLines” for putty with regedit as I like to have more scroll back line; default is only 200. The ket is located in
MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuttY\Sessions\Default%20Settings
For quick access to known servers you can do this to automate login via (ssh)
ssh-add -L >> .ssh/authorized_keys

Back to Work

When I was on my vacation last week in Spain and Portugal, was thinking about to write down all that we had experienced there - the places we visted and food we tasted and others. But back to work it is such a Dilbert place that I can not explain with my logic.

Also I need to find a cheap solution to restore pictures from Smart Media. It looks like there is a well suited option commercial for 40 Euros. But I am still looking around for a free one if I can as I am not going to use the same again.

Stay tuned for experiences from Madrid, Granada, Seville and Lisbon.

Lost Pictures Recovered

After discovering that one of the SmartMedia Card from my Camera not working at Seville we were really very heart broken and anxious. It had pictures from our first three days of our trip. And in those first three days we traveled from Madrid to Granada. We had captured lots of evening pictures in Madrid and sunset view of Alhambra at Granada.

But we kept our nerve cool and continued with other media cards and tried our best not to remember about the same. Getting home and after finishing lots of house hold chores at late evening we started trying Google for an answer. And quickly it became clear that we were not the only one with this problem. The commercial solutions offered were OK but bit pricy($40) for one time use. Since those pictures were precious to us, so I tried to buy the same over internet and my credit card got declined.

But today my luck was better as I found a better web site with lot of good links(shareware) for the same. Check out, if you happen to have same problem in future (touch wood).

http://www.jr-worldwi.de/photo/index.html?SmartMedia_recovery.html

Well time to go to bed and prepare pictures for posting them on web. Adios

Hotel Train Lisbon to Madrid

We were at the very last phase of our vacation. We took train back to Madrid tonight as from there we had our flight back to Paris.

We booked the train ticket long back; I went in-person to get the same from Spanish Railway ticket office based in Paris. The office is kind of hidden by all the stores near to Boulevard Haussmann; ever busy shopping place.

Being Indian it was a really something new although we had experienced few other different night trains in Europe. As this was a Hotel Train, there are mostly 4 kinds of tickets in this night train which connects Lisbon and Madrid. The cheapest one being the chair car, next one is four person cabins where passengers are divided according to gender. Then there is two people's cabin, there is also two kinds of the same. One being first class with attached personal shower and loo while the other one is only with personal wash basin. These cabins are maintained and operated by Accor Hotel Group, one of the largest hotel chains in continental Europe.

Well,our booking was two persons cabin with wash-basin. As a matter of fact we were kind of surprised with the hospitality and the cabin itself. It really worth the money we spent in fact I wish and wondered how much extra it would have been for the first class. With first class the dinner and breakfast were included but for us it was only breakfast.

So far I have seen this kind of train service in Hindi (BollyHood) movies experiencing the same in real life was a dream. May be our beloved Laloo-jee can travel once in this first class and he introduces the same service from Patna :))

Lisbon - Portugal

Second day at Lisbon, as we had covered most of the top attractions on day one we started our day in ease, but I am sure lot of people might not agree with us ;) on easy going part.

We headed towards Colombo Shopping Mall which is one of the largest shopping mall in Europe and built very recently. After being mall rats for a while we bought some and had lunch there in one fast food Mexican place. Depositing those shopping bags to hotel we went to Baixa again. We walked more in Baixa streets and then headed towards Belem. The weather in Lisbon being till far was with overcast all the time and temperature much lower than Spain, we took a long walk along the river side.

Before going back to Lisbon we entered the famous Paties House dating back to 1837. Oh! Those paties they are so good and mouth watering I feel like tasting them now as I am writing. Resturant is really big inside and with very reasonable prices. It should top the list for going to Belem.

For dinner we had some fusion food which had Indian spices with Portugal taste in Chaido. The restaurants are too small and packed so there is always someone waiting near the door.

Lisbon - Portugal

Well the over night bus journey between Seville and Lisbon was not very long one. We had an hour long stop as soon as we entered Portugal. The road condition was good and we reached the Oriental Stop of Lisbon at very early hours and the sky was still dark. From there it took another 20 minutes or so to reach the final destination near Zoological Garden. We took a taxi and the ride was a short one to our hotel for only 6 Euros. The driver was nice and he was mentioning about the drought Portugal is facing.

The Hotel (Novotel) was under renovation but the staff was kind enough to get us a room at 4:30 in the morning although we had by mistake booked for only one adult which we came to knew then and there.

After having rest for few hours we headed out from our hotel to Lisbon downtown by metro. It was a very cloudy day. I was feeling heavy headed and wanted to get some coffee.

After walking in Rossio Square for a while we bought day pass for Lisbon Trasport. The Metro system is run by the Government while the Bus, Tram and trolleys are run by a company. Lisbon have lots of trams and it seems like one of the attractions. Lisbon downtown is divided in three major part Bairro Alto, Alfama and Baixa. The first two one are on hills and the last one in the middle of the two.

It took us a while to figure out the starting point of Gloria funicular. We took it to reach the top of Bairro Alto Neighborhood. The ride is very small and full of tourists only. At the end of the 2/3 minute ride the people who bought a single trip ticket was wondering is it really worth or not.

Just getting out of the funicular on the right towards hill there is park, from there we get very nice view of the other part of the city and the river from there. There is also the ‘Porto’ wine collection place just across the street. Start walking downhill towards Chiado. Chaido is very happening place with lots of designer shops and places to east and drink. We visited Sao Roque Church which is very beautiful with lots of excellent tile and marble works inside; it was built in the glory days of Portugal.

We had lunch in one of the restaurant of big mall in Baixa Chaido. After that we took tram 28 for going to Alfama. This one is also a old tram most likely built in 1930s and it passes Baixa district. We visited the Caste of São Jorge. After spending a good time and taking the view of Lisbon & River Tejo we took the same tram back to Chiado. In Chaido we took Bica funicular which is like Gloria a old one but it is very stiff and goes down to the river front. The buildings along side are very old and in poor condition.

Once reaching the river front we took tram 15 towards Belem. There are both new and old tram on this track. Belem is 5 KM outside of Lisbon. On the way we saw 25th April Bridge, which just looks like Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco. The reason may be both are built by the same company. Belem tower and Monastery are the main attractions along with the ‘Monument to the Discoveries’.Well it was a quite a long day and we headed back to Chiado for dinner and then to Hotel.

Seville - Spain

Last day at Seville... After checking out from the hotel we took a bus and got down next to the Casino of Exposition. But today it is a public holiday at Seville which we did not knew, so the roads were quite empty at 9 in the morning. After getting down from the bus we walked towards Plaza de Espana. Plaza de Espana was built for 1929 world expo. Lots of Latin American countries joined that expo. The world expo was not a success as that year was marked as first financial disaster of the Great Depression as U.S. securities lost $26 billion.

The famous tile work of Andalusia is at its best here. There are maps of Spain from that time; the benches, the small decorative bridges are really beautiful. We walked along the great corridors of Spanish Pavilion. From there we walked to Alcazar while we saw the university and the famous 5star hotel. The university used to be a cigarette factory before.

King Pedro Castile in the 1360's with his mistress Maria de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the Alcazar. Pedro embarked upon a complete rebuilding of the palace, employing workmen from Granada and utilising fragments of earlier Moorish buildings in Seville, Cordoba and Valencia. The comparison between Alhambra is like comparing apple and orange. This is build with lot of confusing room. The outside garden is really beautiful which worth a stroll.

As that day was religious holiday with procession and big gathering of people around the cathedral. We walked along the cathedral towards city hall and further. After lunch we rested inside a café for 2 hours to beat the scorching heat.

We took a bus to visit Basilic of Macarena, the weeping Mary which is world famous. We walked back all the way from there to Plaza de Espana. It is better to visit west facing Plaza de Espana in the evening for photos.

After all that walking we were really tired and exhausted. We had tapas again for dinner next to our hotel. It was a better place with street side seating. We really enjoyed my food with cool breeze and watching people on the street.

Taxi ride to the bus stop for Lisbon was a good choice at late night. But waiting for the midnight bus was not fun. But the overnight bus ride was not bad.

Evening in Seville - Spain

Back from Cordoba around 4PM in the afternoon to Seville. We went to buy ticket for next phase of journey that was between Seville and Lisbon. Oh! That was too hot and sweating experience to summarize in short. Back to hotel being boiled with afternoon heat we got freshen up.

We started our evening stroll starting from Puente de San Telmo towards Triana around 9PM, the other side of the river a common Seville neighborhood. On our way we saw the ‘Torre del Oro’. After a while went to a tapas bar which was crowded with local people. Here the server notes down your order and price with a chalk in front of you on the desk while you have your food standing. Around midnight we left Triana as we could not find any flamenco music sounds. This is the only thing which we could not listen to in this trip of ours. We came back walking near to cathedral and took picture of the bell tower (in night mode). At this hour city was still crowded with tourists as well as locals giving a feeling that night is still young.

Cordoba – Spain

When we started planning for Andalusia we did not thought of Cordoba first. But later friends who had been there suggested visiting Cordoba.

We walked from our hotel on the busy morning streets of Seville to reach the train station. We bought ticket for AVE (fast train) to Cordoba. The fair is not at all expensive compared to French standard as it costs almost similar from Paris CDG airport to city center. The train service is really good and train travels in high speed.

Cordoba’s main attraction is its Mezquita(Mosque). This is a living history of Cordoba as it transforms from one culture and religion to other. It was one of the first big city that was built by Moorish rulers in Spain at 10th century. These leaders wanted to build a mosque for their religion. Earlier the mosque was small but with time as Cordoba prospered, it was extended to accommodate more people.

The double arch with red and white stripes makes a very immense effect to the visitors. These double arches are purely for decorative purpose but it is so unique. Later days when Christians gained their control over Cordoba this was converted to a Church with very little modification giving it a feeling of church inside the mosque.

The `Mihrab` traditionally had two functions in Islamic worship, first it indicated the direction of Mecca (therefore prayer) and it also amplified the words of the Imam, the prayer leader. But The Cordoba Mosque Mihrab looks south in the same way as the Damascus mosque and not south east in the direction of Mecca. This one is very beautifully decorated with Islamic arts of gold on marble.

From there we went around various streets exploring beautiful patios of Cordoba. Best time is early May to visit the same. There is a competition for most beautiful patio in Cordoba, which means lots of patios to check out in early May.

We had a light snack of fruits and juice near to Alcazar. The afternoon was scorching hot. After waiting a good amount of time for the public bus we took a taxi back to train station. The ride in the AC car was worth (4 Euros) every penny as the outside was burning at 40 C.

Seville - Spain

I should have started jotting down all my memories from this beautiful city immediately after my return to Paris. But back to work and daily routine.... lots of finer moments are fading off.

We took a morning bus from Granada to Seville; we reached Seville around 11AM. The bus ride was around 2 hours and 45 minutes. From that IntercityBus stop to our hotel (again Novotel) we took again local public bus. But we got down 2 stops before the actual stop which ended up with a walk along the nice boulevard of Seville.

As we reached before afternoon there was no non-smoking room available to us. So left our luggage & went to a Mall next to our hotel.We had our lunch that day at McDonald which is really a restaurant where you don't feel like you are eating 99 cent burgers. Hmm..........money well spent for the interior decoration of this McDo, may be one of those new one where McDo is fighting back to win its market share.

We started our sightseeing around 5PM after fresh up with the Cathedral of Seville which has its entry in ‘Guinesses book of world Records'. Its really BIG we had been to Vatican (Rome) and St. Paul in London but this one is really special. All the money, gold, silver and what not poured from New-World shows its mark. May be like those of Birla Temples of India - more the money bigger and whiter it is with marble . But any way I am not going to question human’s faith and its relation with God like poet Shri. Harivansh Rai Bachchan. The treasury collection is awesome. The craftsmanship of wood, marble, glass and others are really superb. There are so many things inside to pay attention to. The Bell tower is the only remain from the old mosque on which this cathedral was built after the moors were defaulted.

Getting out of Cathedral, we walked on Santa Cruz district. It is the old part of the city. The lanes are really narrow; some of them reminded me of Vanaras and Calcutta. It has special purpose: as the houses are so close they do not get sunlight that much which makes them cooler than the new city. There are lots of nice little parks and patios with orange trees one of the speciality of Andalusia. These trees serves the purpose of shade as it has got very dense leaves. But we were told these oranges are very bitter .

The evenings are really special in Seville when every body is out to take a stroll. It is really nice to enjoy watching people while sipping something cooler and biting tapas.This city is very lively & warm too.Here, temperature is very high in afternoon around 40C & it cools down by evening 7-8PM with a cool breeze.

In the evening we ended up walking on the Bridge of Triana after passing the bull fight Arena. We had Paella for dinner. Paella is a rice-based speciality which is laced with saffron, paprika and can contain intriguing morsels of seafood, meat and vegetable.It was almost midnight but there were lots of people even toddlers along with their parents on the side walk.

While walking back toward the bus stop for hotel we came across a resturant with lots of tempting , mouth watering desserts kept near the window on the road side. As this place was too crowded with locals & tourists we didnot found any place to sit & have dessert.But, we were also no less... we managed to get two chairs to sit & ordered for the same(just imagine how tempting it could be that without table & proper arrangment we had our dessert).Anyway, we enjoyed it very much.....something we can never forget.

Alhambra - Granada - Spain

We did not book our tickets for Alhambra before coming to Granada. There can be 8,000 visitors inside Alhambra in a given day. Out of those 8,000 around 6,500 are sold over internet & phone. So for us, it meant getting up early and queuing up in the morning. As it was Monday and not peak of tourist season... we were lucky.

Alhambra has main 4 sites to visit. The main attraction is of course "Palacios Nazaries" the best preserved Moorish Palace in Europe. The palace is quite intact from all the wars that were fought between Christians and Moorish (Arab Muslim from North Africa). The war ended at 1429. I heard lots of tour guides mostly Japanese comparing this to Taj Mahal. As I have never been to Taj Mahal I can not say for certain but I am quite sure it is not that close to Taj Mahal in beauty. Still the works of Moorish artists are really very appreciable.

We spent a good amount of time in Palacios Nazaries, from there we went to Generalife via beautiful garden of roses. From there we visited 'Palace of Charles V' and 'Alcazaba'. This makes the four attraction of Alhambra.

After siesta, we went to the Cathedral and walked around there. That evening while strolling we came across Mexican Restaurant - "Chile Grande". The food was really excellent which reminded me of my Californian days.

Granada - Spain

The temperature in Spain was quite hot compared to Paris. It was around 37° C when we reached Granada in the afternoon. The bus station for intercity is not at the city center but there is a good connection of public transport for the same. Our hotel was at the center - Plaza Royal.

Around 5 PM, we headed out from hotel, it was still very hot and bright. We walked towards Plaza Nueva. We entered into two churches while walking along the Darro River. They were small churches compared to the cathedral but also have nice wood work. Then we walked uphill towards St Nicolas Church in El Albaicín

It is on hill top from where you can have a great view of Alhambra at the sunset. The cobble stone roads are really narrow. There are lots of tourists at that view point in the evening so are gypsies. They were playing music and selling their art works.

As we had time before the sunset we walked down a bit and went to Sacromonte. There are gypsy caves most of which are now converted into houses. But there is one part left for historic and touristy purpose.

Then we came back to The Church of San Nicolás. I am quite sure if you been there recently you must be knowing Bill Clinton also re-visited this place while he was President as he was here once as a young student. Well even with out his historic visit this place at the sunset is really great to look at the red fort – Alhambra.

This is one of the photos that were there in that Smart Card Media with which we had problem. It would have been very sad if those photos were not recovered.

Well I must admit this time the vegetarian place recommended by Rick Steve was good for dinner.

Madrid - Spain

We were on our way to spring break; we planned to visit Spain and Lisbon for 10 days. We started our trip with flight from Paris to Madrid on Saturday 21st May 2005.

We reached Charles de Gaulle Airport on time and the checking was smooth but after boarding the plane we were in ground for almost one hour before taking off. The cost cutting measures with European state carriers are all alike now, so there is no free snacks & drinks in the short flight. By the time we reached Madrid in the afternoon we were very hungry. We got into the Metro from Airport to our Hotel which involved dragging our luggage for 10 minutes or so. The hotel was again ‘Novotel’, this one was not that outside one like that of Vienna but not very close to the Metro like Berlin. But we found this one is quite OK with public transportation as there is a Bus stop just outside the hotel which takes to the center of Madrid – Sol.

After freshen up we headed towards Sol, after reaching there we had a very late lunch in a Falafel place. It was great – cheap price – tasty and fresh food.

After that we started our walk tour towards Royal Palace via Plaza Mayor. This walk is a kind of an introductory tour referred in any travel guide book. We took lot of pictures of the beautiful ceiling of the royal church, decorated with bright colors. From there we headed more south towards the Basilic.

Our dinner was not up-to mark. As dining section of Rick Steve's guide book is quite empty. There are plenty to choose from when it comes to eating as Spaniards have great passion about gastronomy.After dinner we walked from Sol towards East to “Banco de Espana” and we tried to capture few nice big white buildings in night mode with tripod.

Next day morning we checked out from hotel and started our Bus journey to Granada. We were very lucky to get to the bus station on time to board the bus to Granada with out any wait. The five and half hour long smooth & comfortable ride with one break gave us view of Spain’s agricultural rich country side. Before reaching Granada we passed some scenic view of Sierra Nevada range.

Vienna - Austria

We just finished uploading pictures from our Vienna trip to our site. It was a great trip. Only complain was the hotel which was really outside of city without any proper public transport. The hotel was “Novotel” and we preferred it as we got good treatment from this hotel chain for our trips to Amsterdam and Berlin. When we booked the same it was mentioned it has Metro next to it. But in real world the metro station is 5 or 6 KM away and there is a bus which runs every one or two hours between the metro station and the hotel.

The evening we reached was bit late around 11PM so I decided to take a cab from the airport to the hotel. The hotel people told me it cost around 35 euros from the Airport to the hotel. But it cost us 54 Euros so I was very angry with the Taxi driver at first for taking longer routes. But when I asked again with the hotel guy he said it is normally around 60 Euros. Well that made me feel good but not better.

Next day, Saturday, we went to Melk by train from Vienna the weather was great with blue sky and warm temperature. The train ride was nice as it gives a good view of Austria’s country side. Melk has a very beautiful abbey which is known as Stift to the local. From there we took a boat ride on Danube River to Kermes. While walking from the boat stop to the train station we met a lady from Graz. She suggested us to take the train ride to her beautiful town in the Alps on any sunny morning.

That evening we came back to Vienna and walked around StephansPlatz and dined in a vegetarian place, the food was good.

Sunday we had our coffee and some tasty pastries to start the day. We walked along the ring starting from Opera, Hufburg Palace, City hall, Museum Quarter Parliament, University and the stock Market. After that we went to St. Augustine’s Church to listen the Sunday Chores. It was a very different experience the music and singing was really very soothing to ears. After lunch we went to Belvedere Palace. It was very special day as Austria was celebrating its 50 years of Freedom. There was live music, dance in different form. We really enjoyed those great outdoor performances.

On our last day we went to Schonbrunn (beautiful fountain) palace. It was summer residence of the royal. Its beautiful park really demands a good amount of time from you to explore those lavish green surroundings.

Well that brought to an end and we were back to the airport for our afternoon flight to Paris.

Bonjour

After a long time I changed the theme of my web site; hope the color combination looks good. The two templates are 'new' and 'zen'.

There are now more than 1300 pictures to checkout in the Photo Album section. Most of them come from last 3 years as that is how old my digital camera is. And a big section comes from Europe. After moving to Paris, we used this opportunity to visit maximum countries possible which are part of Schengen visa.

This year we went to Germany, Austria, Spain and Portugal till far.

Though, each countries and places have own attractions. But now, it looks all alike .. Chateau, Bateau, Gateau (Castle, Boat Ride, Dessert) along with Museums and Cathedrals. May be this is due to too many places we have visited in last 2 years.

I recently played with Ming a cool system to play with PHP for creating Flash movies. Here is sample Ming, PHP slideshow . Also created a simple banner with typewriter (ticker) effect

New PC

After months of checking web sites for prices reading forums for review and always thinking about moving out Paris I got my new PC. It was not an easy choice as all these years I wanted a Mac from Apple. And Mini-Mac was a real contender for long time.

But at the end I went for mini-PC because of the money and choice of flexibility I have with the same. There has been a tremendous change in computer hardware in terms of speed, functionality and size in last 4 years when I made last PC. This is the configuration I got for my new PC.

• Shuttle SB83G5
• INTEL Pentium 4 530J 3.0 GHz
• Samsung PC3200 512Mo DDR
• Hitachi 160Go 7200 RPM S-ATA 7K250
• LiteOn 48/24/48(CD) & 16x (DVD)

It coasted me around 650 Euros when I got these parts from different small computer stores in Rue-Montgallet in Paris. Well I have to admit the whole setup process was quite easy but it requited a good amount reading the manual. It worth the RTFM as the CPU and heat sink connection is the most vital and tricky for a success.