Dânesh Zaki

I was in Brisbane, a suburb of SFO last month and took a walk on Powell Street on one of the weekends.

The green tram below reminded me of Kolkata’s trams because it is utilitarian - actually being used by people to move around. The yellow and red ones below seem to be only a tourist attraction, they don’t seem to be used for actual  commuting.

Interesting structure of the Contemporary Jewish Museum

The Apple Store

JJ Valaya’s store in the Westfield Mall

Nice looking dome of the Westfield Mall

A boat standing in a Brisbane wharf, a few miles from the SFO airport - not SFO downtown but a nice picture :)

I visited Munnar, a beautiful hill resort in Kerala, India with family this week. I try to relive the trip in this post.

We started from Chennai by the Alappuzha express around 9 PM and reached Erankulam Junction at 10 AM. The train was an hour late but the pleasant weather and the scenery on the way made sure that we were not too bothered by the delay.

A view from the train

Another view from the train

From Ernakulam station, we took a cab to Munnar - a distance of 160 KM.The drive on the hill is very scenic - some of the shots are right out of a postcard.

Scenic view of a tea estate enroute to the top

There are several tea estates in Munnar; most of them belong to Tata Tea. You will find Kanan Devan mentioned in many places - it is brand owned by Tata Tea.

Many such amazing views greet the traveler

We were able to see three waterfalls on the way up. The water in them seemed clean, thanks to people not bathing in it.

This is my favourite shot of one of the three waterfalls

We visited the “Spice Garden”, an area with a guided tour of the trees and plants that grow in that region.

A bright red flower in the “Spice Garden”

The drive from Ernakulam Junction to Munnar town takes about 4.5 hours. If you spend more time around the waterfalls or clicking snaps, this can go up by over an hour. We stayed in Siena Village, a further 20 km away from Munnar town. The food was good but the service was not so. The USP of this resort in my opinion, is the amazing view that you get from the room.

Clouds can cover the region fast

We also visited the Mattupetty dam - rainwater dam and Echo Point - an area near a lake where if you shout loud enough you might hear an echo (pics not worth posting). We also went on an exciting elephant ride where the elephants trek up a slope!

Fencing at the waterfall to prevent people getting in and dirtying the area

Thanks to our driver I was able to get a long shot of the waterfall

A beautiful shot to round off this post

We returned back to Chennai by the same train, boarding at Ernakulam Junction at 5.20 PM and arriving at 6.20 AM in Chennai. I was not impressed by the Ernakulam junction station as it neither had a good public announcement system nor a clear indication of coach positions from engine. This led us to a minor chaos while boarding the train. But the train stops for over 10 minutes giving people sufficient time to board (we were traveling with a 2 year old infant).

For people planning trips to Munnar, I recommend setting aside 2-3 additional days for the house boat in Alappuzha and visting Thekkady. These are definitely on our agenda for our forthcoming trips.

For now though, we will be revisiting Munnar in our dreams!

After 30 days of abstaining from food and carnal desires, it is the hope and prayer of every fasting person that their souls have been cleansed to a certain extent. Eid Ul-Fitr is an occassion that is “earned” by self-conditioning unlike other occassions such as weddings and public holidays that come to happen regardless. For this reason, it gives the Muslims a sense of great satisfaction and joy.

Typical activities during the day of Eid start with visiting the mosque for the early morning prayer, then again for the special prayer and then followed by meeting and embracing of relatives and friends. In India and probably throughout the sub-continent, “Eidi” (money) is given to children by elders, gifts are also exchanged. Friends (both Muslims and non-Muslims) are invited for lunch/dinner and eagerly look forward to the Biryani!

After this, many people choose to spend the evening out or continue visiting relatives and friends. For me though, in the past few Eids that have gone by, a relaxing nap in the afternoon has been the norm.

Here is wishing everyone a happy Eid and God willing, we will have an opportunity next Ramadan again for more introspection and soul cleansing.

Photos courtesy:
Mosque: Flickr stream of Radiant Guy
Biryani: Flickr stream of Pengrin

As the number of followers increase, so does the volume of tweets that one sees on his/her Twitter stream. Do all of the tweets matter? How do we know which are the ones that interest us without sifting through the deluge of tweets? I have tried to put together a set of criteria based on which tweets could be presented to the user. The tweets following this criteria may not necessarily be ordered chronologically . The critieria that I have chosen to distinguish tweets are:

• Who
• What
• When
• How
• Where

Most Relevant Criteria
The most relevant ones among the list above are the Who, What and When. As listed, there can be at least four categories of people with whom a person interacts with (Others can be expanded to office colleagues, relatives, experts etc). Tweets from people in these groups will have a precedence in that order. But it may not be a straight forward decision as the What comes into picture. Tweets could be text statuses or links. And of course spam, though one would not expect known folks to spam, but you never know. So, now it becomes a question of setting the rules: is a tweet with a link from a Close Friend of higher relevance than a text tweet from an acquaintance? These are the rules that one would have leave the user to decide. The client software should provide an option to customize these rules as per the user’s preferences. When a tweet was tweeted is also an important criteria as people are not interested in reading stale news. This should also be part of the rules interface.

What is not Relevant?
I am not looking to much at how or from where the tweet was created. If and when Twitter provides GPS capabilities tightly coupled with tweets, the Where part might get interesting.

Other Criteria
The things that are missing from the list are Hash Tags. Hash tags are a category of their own just like tags in a blog post. These should provide an alternative to the above list of criteria for selecting tweets to read. Also, in general, the criteria should be customizable, as what one user looks for may not be what another does.

As you may have noticed, this post does not cover replies and direct messages. When these are addressed to the user reading the tweets, he/she may put these at a a higher priority than the criteria listed. When replies are addressed to other users whom the current user is following, the tweet will fall under the text-real stuff criteria.

Conclusion
To conclude, we need smarter clients (web/desktop/mobile/other) that provide the ability to set/customize rules in order to make sense of the deluge of tweets that come one’s way. I hope the big ones such as Tweet Deck, Twitterific and maybe the interface for premium Twitter accounts (?) think about this and implement it in their future releases. Till then, keep sifting!