Another one goes live..

O Mere Dil Ke Chain

Sound check 1..2..3..

Going live...

So here are the much awaited (yea right:-) clips of my first performances in a long time:

Mere naina saawan badho

Chura liya hai tumne

Pehla nasha

Two of the shortcomings of having a simple portable synth are that

- no MIDI interface. Have to buy additional interface card.
- if you screw up one note, the whole track needs to be re-recorded

still a lot of fun:-)

6 track recording on PSR E403

Well finally the synthesizer arrived. The day it was scheduled for delivery, San Mateo bridge had a bad accident and was closed down for the whole morning. And the local origin of depot (San Pablo) was this bridge away from my home:-) I was telling Radhika that its gonna delay a bit more (it had already taken 2 months to reach San Pable from KS).

Anyways, I have already recorded 3 songs with 3-5 tracks each. Of course they are a result of my comprehension (by ear), since I still dont understand the notation etc. But I tried some chords for the first time on one track. They sound great!

Off to the day now..more when my album comes out ;-)

An imaging workstation for prototyping

Here is a glimpse of my work in progress hobby project. It is still pretty rudimentary. But it can

- load DICOM image volumes
- display 4 co-ordinated views (3 MPRs and 1 Volume rendered view)

I am adding support to expose GUI for basic and advanced image analysis algorithms. The base of this project is all templated, very generic.

Hopefully I will share major updates soon. My aim is to make it opensource once it becomes a little stable.

Enjoy.

Aryeh Frankfurter and harp

We were at the Kings mountain art fair a couple of days ago. Boy was I in for a surprise. It was so relaxing being lost in stalls of some of the best artists.. all of that in deep woods.

Aryeh Frankfurter was playing there. I was not familiar with his music or style of music so to say. He was playing a miniature harp.. very soothing. I bought a CD called "Harp Songs of the Midnight Sun" from his collection. You can listen to it over and over again, still feels new.

Now that my keyboard is due for delivery tomorrow, I might try some of his songs:-)

Stuffed eggplant

Ok so the 1000 Indian recipes book finally came to some use. Radhika is busy preparing for her final exam, so I thought of going on this culinary adventure yesterday.

I has heard of all the other mentioned ingredients being used in stuffed eggplants before, except two: pomegranate, and fennel seeds. Both of them were supposed to go into the stuffing. I was a little doubtful about using them (well I didnt have the first one actually) because I wanted to recreate the taste from our childhood.. how our mom used to cook it.

I tried..with fennel seeds and with chaat powder instead of teh pome.. seeds. It turned out pretty good actually. This means more free time for Radhika (away from kitchen:-)

The warehouse saga

I had ordered a portable synthesizer style keyboard from Yamaha on July 21 online at GuitarCenter.com. The availability status was 'ready to ship in 24 hours'. I was real excited because it had been a while since I last felt some meaningful creation coming out of my clumsy hands:-)

Well, little did I know that it would be 'back ordered' within 15 days, all after 3 calls and 2 online chats with the customer service, and their ignorance of where the shipment was. I got impatient now and demanded an answer around Aug 16 or else I will take the matter to a consumer forum, and to my surprise, the order was canceled abruptly. The email said: "Since you threatened to take the matter to a 3rd party, we cannot help you anymore. Your order is now cancelled."

I was reallllly pissed. Heres the fun part now: I found the email id of the CFO of GuitarCenter from some SEC filing document online. I wrote him a long email explaining all this, and that they should have this poor customer service experience looked into. Turns out I was not alone. 100s of others were giving GC bad reviews on bizrate.com for past 2-3 months or so.

Honestly I wasnt expecting to hear back. But the immediate next day I get a long apologetic email from a supervisor of customer service, stating how the company is moving inventory to a bigger warehouse which has caused all this mess. He offered a gift card as consolation, and promised prompt delivery after re-instating the order if I agreed. Of course I agreed.

The order now shipped last friday, and I am expecting it anytime soon.

Can you imagine how it will be if you had to get a CFO involved for every 200$ purchase? I certainly would be really wary when buying online now.

English, August: An Indian Story

Picked up this book by Upamanyu Chatterjee at Barnes&Noble a couple months ago (ISBN: 1-590170179-9, nyrb classics). Still havent finished it. Heres the outline of the main character (Agastya OR August in English): an elite graduate attends the coveted Indian Administrative Services academy, gets trained as an officer, and is posted in Madna (a hypothetical district town in the heart of India). I am on page 55, and although the character doesnt look baffled or confused by the stark difference in life between New Delhi and this small town politics and bureaucracy, he is yet a calm and serene out of the place officer who escapes the mundane meetings and salutes by means of the newly learnt local tactics. At night he remembers all the drugs and alcohol that were a part of his young life in Delhi. But is still effortlessly settling in at the guest house with a servant at his orders and an official car to roam around in.

The best part so far has been the senior officials already there (the Superintindent of Police, the District Collector) who dont take him seriously owing mostly to his looks (skinny young guy with new age principles?).. August (the character) looks too different from the rest of the office bearers, all of whom are fat, with overpowering persona, and a niche for local vibe and how to do only the bare minimum in a turmoil of politics and government (rather the taxpayer's) money.

Will August stay there? Will he blend in? What of all his friends to went to Yale and Harvard to pursue a greener pasture as he tried to sleep avoiding mosquitos in 45 degrees C heat? Only time will tell...

The first blog (pehla prapatra)

So I had a mail group on google working my mind, a webpage that compiled the threads of my life, but my soul was still scattered and lost between music, exotic curries, and a longing to publish. Hence was born this surreal portal, to blend all of them together like an achaar. Now if you visited the last link to find out what an achaar is, you will know what to expect on this blog: a taste of my mind and spirit (not literally, sorry you Hannibal Lectar fans ;-) gobbled up and blended with sprinkles of mundane happenings.

Bon appe'tit!