Fun – Page 17

Swimming Lessons – Day III

It has been a busy week. I didn’t get a chance to practise swimming at all. I was hoping that it would rain, so that the lessons get cancelled :). It was a bright sunny day as usual 🙂 and I had to go to the lessons. Didn’t learn anything new, but managed to drink up half the pool. There was a scary moment, when I thought that I was going to drown. Seth, the instructor says, “Vinay, whenever you feel that you are going to drown, just breath deeply and point your chin towards the sky. You will float”. Good advice, but frankly, when one is drowning there is no time to think clearly. You thrash around like a wild thing. Breath deeply and keep your chin up is the last thing you think about :). As if though my prayers were answered, it started thundering after the first 15 minutes of the class. We were all asked to come out of the pool to avoid being hit by lightening (more like avoiding potential law suites 🙂 ). Apparently we are not supposed to go into the pool for 15 minutes after we hear thunders. And the class only lasts for 45 minutes. So the instructor asked us to go home. Man, was I happy or what :). This reminded me of days in school, when the school would be closed for bad weather.

Note to self: Must buy kickboard and practise.

Not saying No, means Yes!!

I subscribed to the Honolulu Advertiser back in August for 9 weeks. At the end of the 9 weeks I kept getting notifications to renew the subscription, but since I didn’t want the paper any more, I kept ignoring the notices. And as any normal person would think, if you have not asked someone to renew your subscription or paid for it, they should just stop delivering the paper right.. WRONG!! They delivered the paper for a couple more weeks and then call me today saying “Sir, you are overdue on your payment”. I was really mad, but then the poor lady who called is not responsible for that, so I was cool and paid the bill. So people beware…You should say “NO” :), or be ready to fork out the cash.

Swimming – Lessons

Day 1 – [1/10/2004]
Instructor – Tiger
. Check out our capabilities by asking us swim for a short distance (half lap). I managed to churn up the whole pool with my thrashing :).
. Grab kickboard with hands and learn to kick legs properly.
. Grab floating handlebars with hands and learn to kick legs properly and use one hand at a time to thrust forward.

Thank God, we were not asked to put our head under water 🙂

Day 2 – [1/17/2004]
Instructor – Seth
. Grab kickboard and swim (kick) all the way till the end of the pool !!! (freaked me out)
. Grab kickboard and swim (kick and push with one hand alternatively) all the way till the end of the pool.
. Throw away kickboard, put your head under the water and swim half a lap. (Drank half the pool during this exercise. I tell you, chlorinated water makes you pretty nauseous)
. Swim (kick, push with hands, head under water – AKA real swimming) the whole length of the pool.
. Backstroke – This was real hard for me. I could not relax enough to believe that you could float in the water on your back.
. Scissor Kick – Grab kickboard, put it under your head and grab it with your arm as if though you are holding a violin. Lay on your side in water and kick your legs as in a scissor action. Again, was pretty difficult for me to lay on my side. Kept slipping onto stomach or back.

It was a pretty intense second class. I thought that the instructor was pushing us too far, too soon. Have to work on my kick. I am bending my knees, keeping my fingers apart and thrashing wildly. The key is to move your whole leg. Will keep practising in the pool at home.

January 18, 2004 by admin Fun Sports Uncategorized 0

Zaurus – More Pictures

More from the previous post. I collected some more pictures from the Zaurus migration. Didn’t want to post all of them to conserve bandwidth. For the interested, here are the links

http://www.kudithipudi.org/pics/1_14_2004/applications.png
http://www.kudithipudi.org/pics/1_14_2004/internet.png
http://www.kudithipudi.org/pics/1_14_2004/multimedia.png
http://www.kudithipudi.org/pics/1_14_2004/pim.png
http://www.kudithipudi.org/pics/1_14_2004/settings.png

January 14, 2004 by admin Fun Technology Uncategorized 0

Zaurus – English ROM

I bought a Sharp Zaurus 760 from Japan through one of my friends a couple of months back. This model is not sold in the US and I have been wanting to get my hands on it for a long time. I was well aware of the fact that the interface was all in Japanese, but since it runs Linux, I was confident of being able to hack it and change the locale settings. And there are a lot of enthusiast sites on the Internet which have information about this. Well, I got the PDA or rather Personal Mobile Tool (as Sharp likes to call it) and changed the locale settings by following the instructions in the following links
http://members.rogers.com/e46m3/zaurus/
http://downloads.conics.net/pda/zaurus-sl-c700/eng-inst/
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php

Although I got most of the settings and menu options converted into English, I was still not satisfied. I wanted to modify the ROM to a complete english setting. Unfortunately, I am not such a Linux Guru (aspire to become one 🙂 ). Months passed by and as happens with such toys, it started piling dust until I came upon this site. They claimed to have a completely customized ROM with english. It was 11:00 PM in the night and the battery on the Zaurus was completely drained. Well, such goodies shouldn’t be kept waiting :). So I charged the batteries for ~ 15 minutes and got to work. Here is what I did

1) Download the ROM image from Cacko.biz.
2) Follow instructions found here.
3) Reboot the Zaurus and presto… you have an English ROM

Note: Apparently you cannot start up the Zaurus if your battery is completely dead although it is connected to an AC power source. You will have to wait at least 15-20 minutes for the batteries to charge up partially. Weird..

Here is a screenshot of the Zaurus running Netfront. It is connected to the Internet with a prism wireless card.
Zaurus :: Netfront :: BBC

That is the original screen size (640X480 pixels!!). Isn’t that impressive. I just cannot understand why Sharp doesn’t release these great PDAs in the US. They do have the Zaurus 5xxx series for sale over here.

Thanks to the Cacko Group, I now have an english version of the ROM. The same group has a X11 based distribution for the Zaurus. I will try that sometime next week. If you are having trouble getting to the main site (it is damn slow!!!), try this mirror site.

January 14, 2004 by admin Fun Technology Uncategorized 0

How many kilometers in a mile??

Ever wondered about such questions? How about “How many liters in 20 gallons?”. Well, the almighty Google is right there to help you. One of the little knows features of Google is it’ calculator functionality. Type in “20 gallons in liters” in the google search box and see what you get. Hope you understand why Google is my homepage 🙂 now.

UPDATED (3/28/2006) :
Looks like a lot of people are getting to this post by searching for the number of kilometers per mile in Yahoo. Just so that you don’t have to go somewhere else :), here’s the data

1 MILE = 1.609344 KILOMETERS
1 KILOMETER = 0.621371192 MILES

1 KILO = 2.20462262 POUNDS
1 POUND = 0.45359237 KILOS

January 13, 2004 by admin Fun Uncategorized 0

Larry the lobster – Ocean to Kitchen

Brian is an avid scuba diver. His typical routine is Work – Home – Dive – Work – Home – Dive … He is even working on getting a rescue diver license. He usually finds interesting stuff during his diving trips, so when he tells me that he found something “special”, I was expecting a shell or something like that. Little did I know that I was in for a treat today :). So without further audue, here we go

[Brian with his catch of the day.]

[Me, taking the chance to pose with a lobster.]

[Larry – The Lobster]

[Colorful food.]

[In he goes :)]

[Out he comes]

Presentation..Presentation..Presentation

[And right onto the table]

Yummy… To quote Brian “Hey man, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time” :). Sorry Larry.

January 12, 2004 by admin Food Fun Uncategorized 0

How ironical

I came across this news item on the BBC’ website. Isn’t it amazing that we need studies and scientific findings nowadays to come to common sense deductions. Is there a sane person in this world who doesn’t know that we are pillaging mother earth? But still we try to cover up by saying that there “isn’t enough evidence“. But I guess it is human nature. Once we get used to comforts in life, it is pretty hard to give them up.

After all this ranting, I go and get two 19” pizzas just because they have a 2 for $22 special. And we wonder why we are fat!!!!

January 8, 2004 by admin Fun Rantings Uncategorized 0

Swimming-Japanese Lessons

I live in the wonderful state of Hawaii and I can’t swim!! My friends have been having a ball about this for sometime. I decided to rectify this by learning to swim. So I call up the local YMCA and find out that they have swimming lessons for adults [me] :). Lessons start on Jan. 10. If there are no postings after that date, you know what happened :).

On the same note, I have always been fascinated with Japanese culture and language. I like the way the Samurai masters speak in the movies. Such authority and command. Well, I was in the local library the other day and came upon a brochure for the local community school. $40 for an introductory course to speaking Japanese!!! Classes start on the 26th of Jan. I hope after the course, I can enjoy my anime‘ in their original glory.

It is amazing how many resources (and not expensive either) one can find if you only know where to look.

January 8, 2004 by admin Fun Sports Uncategorized 0

Too Many Smilies!!

One of the cool features of WordPress is that it replaces all the smilies with icons. And now that I see my postings, I tend to use a lot of them :). There I go again!! :). Maybe my resolution of the year should be “STOP using so many smilies” :).

January 5, 2004 by admin Fun Uncategorized 0