Vinayak Hegde

The Mattupetty Tea Estate is situated between Devikulam and Munnar. The early morning fog in the winter months combined with the rolling green hills covered with tea plantations give this place an ethereal feel to this place. It is situated at a height of 1700m in the Western Ghats, Kerala. The tea gardens around Munnar are owned by the Tata group. This photo was taken in January 2007

More technical details about the photo at my photoblog (click on Image Info).

The Clouds Above at Pangong Tso, Ladakh More photos here

The first CloudCamp in India is happening on Sunday, March 29th in Bangalore, India. ACM Bangalore is supporting this CloudCamp.

CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.

One track will feature invited speakers from early adopter startups, CloudComputing Vendors and Developers. Register below.

If you are interested in sponsoring or submitting a proposal for a talk, send an email to vinayakh AT gmail DOT com.

Some of the proposed sessions are “A introduction to Cloud Computing” by Dave Nielsen, “How to build a Search Engine using AWS” by Chirayu Patel and “How to use Cloud computing to build a MMORPG” by Arjun Gupte.

Tentative Agenda:

Doors open at 10:00am
10:00am: Talks (2 startups on their experience of using clouds)
11:00am: Expert Talk (a survey of cloud platform products – Amazon, Sun, Google, etc)
11:30am: Expert talk (case studies of app architectures that use clouds)
12:15pm: Break for unconference
12:30pm: Unconference session 1
1:30pm: Lunch
2:30pm: Unconference session 2
3:30pm: Unconference session 3
4:30pm: Quick snacks
5:00pm – 6:00pm: Panel discussion and close

I recently contributed to a book called ‘97 Things every sofware architect should know‘. It is a collection of axioms by various architects around the world including some famous names such as Allison Randal (The lead developer for Parrot), Bill de hÓra (Co-editor of Atom publishing protocol) , Michael Nygard (who wrote “Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software” – a 2008 Jolt Productivity Award Winner), Neal Ford (who wrote “The Productive Programmer”) and Rebecca Parsons (Thoughtworks CTO)

The book is now available for purchase from Amazon. The content of the book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3 license. You can read it on the wiki if you are not inclined to buy the dead-tree version.

The book is edited by Richard Monson-Haefel and Mike Loukides. Interestingly the Amazon editorial review quotes the axiom that I have contributed (“For the End-user,the interface is the System”). Unfortunately there was a limit of 300 words for the axioms and no companies or products could be mentioned as the editors wanted a certain timeless quantity for the axioms (and rightly so). I plan to explain what I meant in greater detail in a blog post soon.

Some more interesting trivia about the book.
* Currently the book has 5 star rating from 3 reviewers.
* It is #1 in the “Design and Architecture” Category and #5 in The Software Development Category in a short time frame. (It’s been about 2 weeks since it was released.)

The cover has the photos of every author (whose contribution was accepted) on it. My photo is 2nd from the leftt on the last row .

Swaroop and I had been planning for a trek in mid-February after the Sharavathy valley trek. We looked up a list at Trekwiki (It’ a great resource if you enjoy trekking) and choose Thadiyandamol over Red Hills. We just pinged a few friends and got a good response for the trek. We rented tents and booked tickets and were all set to go. We met each other and took the bus from Mysore bus stand. We did not get much sleep and got down in pitch darkness at 5.00am at Napoklu. We started walking from Napoklu towards Kakkabe which is a small town at the bottom of the trail. Walking in the mist as the sun rose was an amazing experience. We walked about 15 KM from Napoklu to Kakkabe.

Kakkabe is a non-descript town with a main road and a few houses around a small bridge over a stream. This was one of the last places where we could stock up on food (which we did). The first third of the climb was on a shady tar road with trees on both sides. The climb was generally gentle for this part. There are a few stream on this section where you can fill up on water. We rested at one of the streams for a while resting and washing our slightly sore feet. We resumed climbing till we hit a flat place where we could have a great 360-degree of the surrounding landscape. There was a stream nearby and we decided to camp nearby. Putting up the tents was a good team effort and it was great fun especially for those who were doing it for the first time. We had food and some rest at the stream sleeping on the grass and staring at the tree canopies above. After a hour’s sleep, we moved back to the open campsite and started climbing towards the peak. We had setup camp about two-thirds of the way up on the way to the peak. The trail from here on was divided into 3 parts – the first part was a gentle slope with tracks within dead grass. This led to a a trail within a thick evergreen forest where a single person could walk at a time. The third and the final part was steep and the route was slippery. Finally at the top of the peak we were awarded amazing views of the surrounding mountains and the vallley below. The clouds were moving in and obscuring the views creating a surreal experience. It was almost 5.00pm and the sun would start to set. We started the journey downhill.

We walked down the peak and the slope was slippery in places. I slipped and fell forward. To regain my balance I put my foot forward and gained momentum and I was almost running downhill. My left foot hit the rock and I fell on my right hand hitting my head on the rock. I felt a throbbing pain on my forehead and saw blood gushing down the right side of my face. My spectacles were broken and the right side of my face was bruised and had gone completely numb. I slept on the grass and realized that I cannot afford to lose consciousness. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to use my handkerchief as a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood so it could form a clot. I got up to see that Mohan fall in the
same fashion but thankfully he was unhurt. By now my t-shirt was almost completely soaked with blood so was the upper half of my jeans (I did not realize this back then). Since the light had started fading we decided to move downhill to the camp-site. As I got up I realized that my camera was broken into two pieces seprated into lens and body. I carried the pieces when I felt pain in my right wrist while picking them up. With the help of other trek mates we made it through the narrow pathway in the forest down to the camp site.

By now the light was fading fast. At the campsite everyone sprung into action and Vikram gave me first aid. Thankfully there was a clot and the bleeding had stopped. I rested in one of the tents while a couple of fellow trekkers ventured downhill to find transport to get me to the hospital. They found a Jeep owner who came came up the hill on a rocky road. These guys were spooked on seeing and we drove down the hilly trail on th 4×4 to Kakkabe and thereon to Virajpet.

There was no doctor at Virajpet but the nurse volunteered to bandage me. She recoiled in horror as she saw my open wound on my head. She managed to bandage me but refused any money from us even after persisting. She advised the driver to take me to Madikeri where I could get medical attention. The driver was driving like a madman on the narrow road from from Virajpet to Madikeri. We reached Madikeri and a Doctor examined me. I got my wrist X-rayed. While taking the X-ray I had intense pain in my elbow which was swollen so I got it X-rayed as a precautionary measure. After that got the CT scan done. It came clear (It clearly showed a brain so all doubters can now rest I was not so lucky with the X-rays. The orthopaedic surgeon told that I have a fracture in my right wrist and elbow. Another surgeon stitched my wound (totally 12 stitches) and gave me painkillers. We stayed overnight at the hospital.

In the morning, we went to the hotel room to freshen up. As I looked in the mirror I realised why everyone was so horrified. My hair was soaked in blood. My T-shirt was almost completely black from dried blood. We cut the t-shirt away as the plastered hand would create problems in removing it and got a new one. We then moved to Madikeri bus stand and thereon to Virajpet. We got into the bus and had a good time generally. The drama was not yet over as the bus broke down and our trekking gang was broken into two as we tried to get into another bus. Somehow we finally reached Varun’s place and spent the night there.

I am much better now. I got my stiches removed and the swelling on the face is gone. The head wound is slowly healing but the right arm is still in a plaster. It will be 4 weeks before I can remove it. The camera body seems okay but the 18-135mm Zoom-Nikkor lens (which took almost all the pictures on this blog is broken internally and beyond repair)