I am told by Deepak that Mylapore is one of the oldest parts of the city and is regarded as a cultural center. It also has a long history which appears to go back to the Roman days. Its close to the Marina Beach area which is one of the longest continuous beaches in the world I am told. It also has its fair share of restaurants, a mall, interesting olds and news, and I’m digging it.

Someone told me that the best way to see Chennai is out the window (or lack of one) of the Chennai auto’s. The auto’s look like this…

There ya go! Not me riding in one but I’ve been bustling around in them myself. Taking photos out of the window/door thing is a blast. I’ve promised a few people at work to chronicle a day going to work. I’ll be riding the Mylapore MRTS which is a hop, skip, and a auto ride from the hotel I’m at.

I’ll try to post more often since someone in the office showed me some kindness and gave me a little Tata Indicom USB broadband CDMA modem so I can do email and light webstuff when I want to.

Catch you all after I get to Japan on Saturday! I wish I could have an extra day or so and get back to the Lion Beerhall in the Ginza; but there is always a next time for that.

I’ve not wanted to openly advertise because I’m still deep in preparation for the trip. I’ve done similar things in the past when I did archeology. I left once for months, traveled all the way up to Montana or Wyoming and then returned through Las Vegas. Hiked one time from Barstow all the way to Vegas. Spent a few months in Needles, California out by the Colorado River. There was a  town I still remember there called cal-nev-ari. An unusual place to be sure. I met a hard rock geologist there who was walking down the road after doing some work elsewhere. I stopped in my rental car and asked him if he needed a ride to Needles. He had this grizzled scientific look, sparkling blue eyes. He smiled and we rode together. We talked geology, archeology, and meeting points. We ended up drinking beer together in Needles. I digress though.

This trip will commence on Friday and then I’ll be gone for some bit of time. I’ll be summering in Chennai and taking a few holidays here and there. I’ll be back but be blogging still from points over there. I’m very excited at this trip and the potential to do a thing I used to do which was travel and live in places. Thanks to the best job, boss,  and co-workers in the world for making this happen.

Codeweavers Pro – Codeweavers has released version 8.0 which may work with Outlook. It has IE 7 integrated so it may work. In the past, it never worked and I tried for hours/days to get it working. It would mean that Outlook would show up in a true seamless mode on the desktop (Ubuntu desktop).

VMware – Player, Workstation only here. I want the unity mode which allows the windows applications to show in their own window and not have the desktop showing through. The desktop means I lose the window really and there is this coolness factor.

VirtualBox – My choice for a few reasons for this task. The seamless mode of VMware seems to mess up and it wants some heavy duty system to run it on. My T43 Thinkpad will not handle Unity mode. Moreover I don’t think its well worked out. Virtualbox OTOH, is quite suited for light weight systems and its seamless mode seems more developed.

Now down to what the ideal underlying OS is for all this. I approach this at a tool user level so it could be Windows Server 2008 or 2003. It could be Ubuntu AMD64 Jaunty. What works the best for me given my needs to run a single application? Windows seems to be a lot of OS to just run stuff. I would probably not use much of the underlying Windows goodness since I tend to veer away from Windows stuff in favor of Linux. So I think either Debian or Ubuntu make the best underlying OS. Perhaps that underlying OS is never really seen and you run the emulation full-screen. I just trust Linux more as a real system and Windows more as a virtual one. Whatever I run on top, be it VMWare, Codeweavers, or Virtualbox will thrive with Linux under there. If it misbehaves, I have the command line and SSH and “PS ax” to resort to. What do I use on Windows? There is no real command-line mode to shell into.

So, my selection is to run Windows virtually and Linux on the hardware. Its a “duh” factor type of thing. I just don’t trust Windows on real hardware. Not enough command and control. Windows does just fine when it can be killed by process controllers in Linux and rebooted safely. I can snapshot it, roll it back, make it sane again.

Lets face it. Windows 7 is a nicer cousin even undone. Still, I’ll choose to run it in a virtual space in a seamless mode with Linux underneath.

You all need to decide if Virtualization can work for you. If the answer is yes; ask yourself what you need from the guest at a tool level. One tool or ten? It may form what choice you make for the host OS. If its games you are after, this analysis does not really apply. I don’t do games. For me, its a dash of word, excel, and powerpoint on occasion; but mostly talking to our exchange 2007 server. Seems the best tool for that is outlook 2007. But it does not equate that I need to run it in real space…

I did upgrade the blog engine to wordpress latest and it keeps on churning. I’ve been playing with foswiki as an alternative to twiki. I’ve given up on GTD. I just cannot do it. It beats me because I cannot focus on it and make it work. I get caught up with the tools, wondering how to make it better and I cannot just take things. I don’t have a system now to remember things or to give things contexts or actions. Know what? I’m happier. I think it was a false thing for me. After awhile no matter what system I used, it grew tedious.

I do too much managing time these days with work; its hard for me to apply discipline to a tablet of paper or a laptop or a smart-phone’s nagging about doing something in less than 5 minutes if I can do it. Honestly, what if I don’t want to do it in 5 minutes. Am I damned to hell? So, I’ve reached the consensus opinion that GTD never let me get things done. I toyed too much with the apparatus. I don’t like the “contexts” either. Its all false to me. I make something this context or waiting for or that context or someday/sometime. Who the hell cares? I don’t care and it made me go through things way too often and get frustrated.

I tried though. I think some of us are not meant to do GTD and its okay. If you feel like me, its okay. GTD for me was difficult and I never was satisfied with any “trusted system”. It was like why should I do things this way when I could… I’m too much of a software tool user.

I now return you to creating 1000 contexts and assigning your life experience to them. Hopefully you remember what you put where

Here are the steps to taking a small guest image and blowing it up:

1. Create a new virtual disk using the media manager in Virtualbox. I create a dynamically expanding one because its quicker. Add it as a primary slave using the disk media manager. Don’t worry about formatting it or anything.
2. Now download the two tools and mount the clonezilla ISO image in virtualbox so it boots when you power up the guest. Clonezilla will run and you will take the disk to disk copy and make a copy from the first disk to the second disk. The first disk was my 10g smallish XP partition. The second disk was the nicely larger 60g slave partition I had just created.
3. It will take about 15 minutes or at least it did for me. When done, power down the clonezilla ISO image. Now using the media mangler in Virtualbox remove the measly partition and add the new one as the primary image.
4. Boot the new image and its still only 10g or whatever in size. You need to run the easeus disk partitioning tool, resize the partition all the way, and the tool will want a reboot. It will reboot to its system console, run the ntfs resize and then reboot again. When it reboots, it will check things again and pronounce success!
5. Boot into the XP installation and I had to redo the OS validation with Microsoft HQ. That’s okay for me since I own it from Technet. Now if you check the disk size in Windows XP, it says that I have a 60G disk drive. Yay!

All done folks! BTW, this worked for me 4 times without an error so I can say that its replicable and works without an issue on XP. Don’t know about the Vista beast. I’m staying away from Vista. Next MS OS I play with will be in October when 7 rears up.
That would be it.

Things I got accomplished this trip:

1. Got to see a bunch of Tokyo and learned basics about the subway lines here.
2. Learned an easy way to plan out a day of activities and how to effectively tourist in Tokyo.
3. Redid the friendship with a few places I had been before; notably the Emperor’s Palace and the Lion Beerhall.
4. Got to see and meet and eat with Jay. That was one of the bright spots. Don’t even mention we had burritos
5. Figured out I truly love Japan and want to come back.

But now, in a few hours, it all ends. Its the day of changes and move backs. Thanks for reading along. I’m sure to be here again but it will never be like this time.

Pretty incredible! Lonely Planet says that Shinjuku has the most skyscrapers of all Tokyo and I believe it. I went for a stroll which took me quite a bit away from probably the biggest subway/train station I have ever seen. Shinjuku station is floors of malls, restaurants, pubs, deli’s, posh restaurants, fashion. The place is divided into east and west. East is a rather incredible place with a variety of interesting elements. Have to be seen to be believed. West is the land of what my daughter calls “skyscratchers”. So many that almost defy belief. Some are shaped strange and have hotels on various floors. Others are just awesome.

Then I left there and decided that Tokyo is the land of differences and went to Meiji-jingumae. This is where the restored Meiji shrine sits in a beautiful, peaceful and rather longish up and down hill walk. Check it out!

You cannot take photographs past the gate you see above so this is the best it gets. What can I say about the park? Lonely planet described it as the most peaceful spot in Tokyo and I believe it.

Then coming home I got mixed up and did not do the stations right and had to walk about 1.5 miles back to the hotel. Oh well, today was a day of walking. Feet are tired, body is tired; but I feel good!  Tomorrow is it for me and I come back home to work, family, stuff. I think stuff is going to get more significant but family always rules. I bought some momentoes at the shrine for the wife and kidlets. Wife will appreciate; kids will not. They always want more.

Wow! That’s a lot of places and a lot of lines that go all over the place. It took me a day or so to get myself familiar with how to get around but some practice on the system pays off. Now I can plan out the trip.  Anyways, here is what I do:

1. First I need coffee in the morning so I call room service. I’m pampering myself a bit so this is a nice indulgence.
2. Then I look at the Lonely Planet guidebook and my trusty subway map and target an area. I’ve picked geographies that are closer to each other in Tokyo. Like first day it was Yuen and Asakusa. Then next day a bit south around Akihabara and the Tokyo Imperial Place.
3. Next I plot out what trains I will need to take. I try to consider all the stops I want to make so I can see what goes where. This saves me a bit of confusion time.
4. Next, another cup of coffee over breakfast
5. Then, its time to prepare. I suggest a daypack or shoulder bag to carry needed stuff. For me its, glasses, guidebook, subway map, pen and paper. I try to write down what I see but am not too good at that part.

If you stay at the ANA Hotel, the nearest Tokyo Metro station is merely yards away. Walk out the Level 2 lobby entrance, walk down the street, voila! On the train its fun. I sacrificed my seat to two older Japanese women and they laughed, blushed, and bowed and took the seat. Riding the subway is just fun. All announcements are in english, train names are in both, each stop is numbered. Can you say, “cannot get lost?” Well, you can and I have here. I got all turned around and a kindly policeman showed me that a subway station was only about 100m away. I thanked him effusively for his kindness to stupid tourists. He just smiled and in almost collegiate english informed me that they were used to such questions and that no question is stupid besides the one not asked.

So, in essence, that’s how I do Tokyo each day. I pick an area, plot its location on maps, research it a bit. But I always change in mid-stream which makes the travel more like what I told my friend Todd at work. “We blindfold ourselves and hop on the next subway”. I wish Todd could be here. I missed the last chance to do Tokyo with him January of this year.