Duo - Duoful?

At first glance the Maruti WagonR Duo looks quite normal. Well, that is if you think the WagonR's boxy looks are normal to start to start with. Frankly, for a car that has to get around a city, I really don't care, because the Duo is all about LPG, and the fact that it is first factory fitted LPG car in India. Factory-fitted means one major plus, your warranties don't get voided because of the gas fitment.

The problem is that despite the not insignificant cost savings, you save a rupee a kilometer on LPG over Petrol, which even makes the extra Rs 24000 you have to pay for the car seem worth it, the Duo just wheezes at times. And this is despite two important facts, first LPG has more energy than CNG (that other gas) and because this is a company designed car, Maruti engineers have really played around with the engines tuning.

Firstly, they've cut the power of the 1.1 litre engine by around 10 per cent, and on your first drives around, you really can't notice it. But if you live in Delhi, and flyovers are a constant facet of life, if you hit a flyover carrying too little forward momentum, you'll need to mash the gears a bit, sometimes going all the way back to third, and even that isn't enough at times. Of course, with a CNG vehicle very often you'll have to go back all the way to first just to find the right power band. Yet, you do wish this car had more in it.

But despite the cars asthmatic display in the lower-end of the rev range, once you get the car moving, it doesn't do a terribly bad job. The problem then is to find a decent place to fill the gas. There are only 16 IndianOil ‘AutoGas' stations in Delhi, and they aren't always on your office commute route, the situation is a bit better in Mumbai, but it is only IndianOil which is selling auto-grade LPG right now.

Another major problem with the Duo is that the WagonR's measly luggage space has been compromised further thanks to the LPG tank taking the space of the spare wheel. The wheel has now been moved on to a complicated jig on the floor of the luggage rack, cutting its space by half. Maruti should have given the option of 60:40 split rear seats to increase space. This effectively rules out the Duo as a viable option the primary car of a family.

If you go in the LPG variant, Maruti dealers will try and convince you that more LPG filling stations are on the anvil, which I'm sure there will be, but even at Rs 2.50 a kilometer as compared to Rs 3.50 a kilometer on petrol, anything more than a 4-5 kilometer detour is silly. However, keep in mind the car is a bi-fuel car, which means it can run on petrol as well, and the switchover isn't the cheap shoddy jobs you often see on after-market jobs, the changeover switch is nicely integrated to the fascia on the side of the steering wheel, one switch and you're on petrol. In fact, combined range on both fuels is an impressive 600 plus km, but range on LPG only is a miserly 200km because the tank stores only 22litres – LPG gives around 10-11km to a litre on the Duo.

There is no denying the cars cost advantage, this is the cheapest Maruti vehicle to run, and that in itself is a massive statement. The redesign of the car hasn't just meant a fresh exterior look, it has also meant a new interior - rotary controls on the panel and a very neat looking display with an all new speedo.

The Duo, to me, is a very cheap and effectively city runabout and nice for short hops out of town. It is not a car you would buy if you like the occasional burst of speed, or if you travel a lot. The WagonR Duo LXi (with power steering) is available ex-showroom Delhi for Rs 3,79,000.

Best cities to live, invest and earn in : Rediff news

November 26, 2007 16:12 IST
Last Updated: November 26, 2007 17:18 IST
India is a land of paradox, it is said, even the rapid economic development in the last few years hasn't helped in managing the contradictions.

A latest survey has now revealed cities such as Gurgaon that are most preferred to earn a living and where employment growth is the fastest, are not among the best places to live.

According to data compiled by economics research firm Indicus Analytics on residences, earnings and investments, none of the ten cities in the 'reside-in' list figure in the 'earn-in' list of places with most employment opportunities.

Moreover, the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai did not figure among the ten best cities to reside, earn or invest. However, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai were among the cities preferred by millionaires to spend their life.

The list of 'earn-in' cities has been topped by Gurgaon, followed by Silvaasa, Noida, Faridabad, Rupnagar, Chandigarh, Surat, Bangalore, Gandhinagar and Pune.

The best cities to reside are Kochi, Kozhikode, Shimla, Thiruvananthapuram, Mysore, Goa, Thrissur, Pondicherry, Kannur and Thiruvalur. Interestingly, five of these cities are in God's own country, Kerala. Shimla is the only northern city in this list, while Chandigarh, among the few fully planned cities in the country, failed to find a place.

The 'invest-in' index was topped by Silvassa, followed by Coimbatore, Ludhiana, Shimla, Noida, Gurgaon, Gandhinagar, Surat, Itanagar and Chandigarh.

Indicus considered six parameters - health, education, environment, safety, public facilities and entertainment - for preparing the 'reside-in' index. The 'earn-in' list was based on growth rate of employment, per capita income and listings on popular job websites.

Vani Jairam

Considered to be a child prodigy, Vani Jairam is known to have recognized the different ragas of Indian classical music before the age of five. Her voice was first heard on All India Radio, Madras, at the age of eight. The fifth daughter in a family of six daughters and three sons, Vani always secretly yearned for a career in film playback singing. After her marriage to Jairam she settled in Bombay, a city where she also saw her dream come true.

In 1970, she realized her childhood ambition of becoming a film playback singer when the veteran hindi film music director, Vasant Desai chose her voice for the hindi feature film Guddi. She recorded three songs for that film. Bol Re Papi Hara, her song from the film, based on the hindustani raga Miyan Malhar, instantly made her an household name in the different corners of India. The song was awarded Tansen Samman (for best classical-based song in a hindi film,) The Lions International Best Promising Singer, The All India Cinegoers Association, and the All India Film-goers Association awards for the Best Playback Singer in 1971. Vani recorded her first tamil song for the tamil film Thaiyum Seiyum, for S.M.Subbaiah Naidu, in the year in 1973.

Besides Hindi and Tamil, Vani Jairam has numerous recordings in other languages of India. These include, Gujarati, Marathi, Marwari, Hariyanvi, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali and Tulu. For her work in these languages she has been awarded many prestigious awards, among which are: Best Female Playback Singer for states of Gujarat (1975), Tamil Nadu (1980) and Orissa (1984).

Vani Jairam was chosen for the Indian President's National Award for Best Female Playback Singer of 1975, for her work in M.S. Viswanathan's Aboorva Ragangal (Tamil). Her songs in the Pt. Ravi Shankar scored film Meera brought her the Film World (1979) Cine Herald (1979) and Filmfare (1980) awards for Best Playback Singer in Hindi. Shankarabharanam (Telugu), the film scored by K.V. Mahadevan, gave Vani Jairam her second National Award as Best Playback Singer of 1980. Once again, she was awarded her third National Award for Best Playback Singer of 1991 for K.V. Mahadevan's Swati Kiranam. She is also the youngest artiste to be awarded the Sangeet Peet Samman.

Vani Jairam studied Karnatak music under the tutelage of Kadalur Srinivasa Iyengar, T.R. Balasubramanian and R.S. Mani. Her Hindustani light-classical music guru was Ustad Abdul Rahman Khan.

She has indeed been famous in the other major film scene in India, i.e. the Hindi Film Music world. Her performance in the film Guddi got her great accolades and was instantly deemed by all to topple all the singers. However, her talent had to be ignored by the hindi film music directors apparently because of pressures from other top singers. In the recent days, she has been concentrating on devotional songs and bhajans, written and composed by herself.

Her hindi score - the very first song boluree papi -the debut movie of jayabhadhuri was a masterpiece. Infact for this song she had won the tansen award for which lata mangeshar was also one of the contestants!!!

Guess what....She also won National Award as many times as Lata ji (3 times )and she didn't need to sing as many songs as Lata ji or Asha ji.

"I need songs with substance. It was music rather than name, fame and glamor that always captivated me."
- Vani Jairam

LIFE : Read and reflect…

A professor stood before his Philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.

They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.

He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.

Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full.

The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.

The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

"The golf balls are the important things - your God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

"The sand is everything else--the small stuff.

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

"The same goes for life.
"If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Play with your children.

"Take time to get medical checkups.

"Take your partner out to dinner.

"Play another 18.

"There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.

"Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter.

"Set your priorities.

"The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

"It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a cup of coffee with a friend."

Please share this with someone you care about.

Creating class instances dynamically from loaded SWF's

A few days back I posted on a simple factory-like method for returning class instances from a loaded SWF file. At lunch yesterday with Matt Chotin he mentioned another way which I thought was worth posting. It seems that there is a property on Loader or SWFLoader called 'loaderContext' and in turn it has a property called 'applicationDomain' and this object has two methods worth knowing about 'hasDefinition' and 'getDefiniton'. Interesting! Here is how to use them:

Say I load a SWF9 file into a SWFLoader instance like so:



In content.swf I have a class named 'Foo'. To create an instance of Foo dynamically I would do this:

if ( contentLoader.loaderContext.applicationDomain.hasDefinition('Foo')){
var FooClass:Class = contentLoader.loaderContext.applicationDomain.getDefinition('Foo') as Class;
var fooInstance:Object = new FooClass();
}

In this case hasDefinition return a boolean to tell if a class is present in the loaded SWF and if it is present we can obtain the Class using 'getDefinition'. Then by simply using new with the returned class you can create instances.

What I like about this is that you can obtain Class instances from any SWF9 file without additional code within the loaded SWF. The only downside is that there is no metadata within the SWF file listing the classes available. It would be easy to denote the classes in a SWF file with an array at the root of the loaded SWF file. Regardless, this is a great technique to know about. Kudos to Matt for pushing me deeper into the AS3 APIS.

Cheers,

Linto

COPIED from Ted's blog

http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/11/creating-class-instances-dynamically.php

Framerate in AS3

When a MovieClip is playing, it progresses along its timeline at a speed dictated by the frame rate of the SWF file. Alternatively, you can override this setting by setting the Stage.frameRate

property in ActionScript.

frameRate

property

frameRate:Number [read-only]

Language version:

ActionScript 3.0

Player version:

Flash Player 9

The nominal frame rate, in frames per second, of the loaded SWF file. This number is often an integer, but need not be.

This value may differ from the actual frame rate in use. Flash Player only uses a single frame rate for all loaded SWF files at any one time, and this frame rate is determined by the nominal frame rate of the main SWF file. Also, Flash Player might not be able to achieve the main frame rate, depending on hardware, sound synchronization, and other factors.

The parent movie will load any Flash SWF into it regardless of FPS, but will run the loaded movie at the FPS of the parent movie.

Example: Your main movie is 12 FPS. You load a SWF into it that is 24 FPS. The main movie will run the loaded movie at 12 FPS anyways.

If the loaded SWF FPS can't be changed, consider upping the FPS of the parent movie. This way performance will be equal.

I would also highly recommend that you build all movies at 20 FPS or higher. The default is simply too slow. The three best FPS rates to be using are 21, 31, and 59. These three FPS are the only rates that perform equally on both a MAC based Flash plug-in and a PC-based one. Most other framerates when run on a MAC will run anywhere between 2-5 FPS slower than it would if run on a PC.


You can break free from the parent movie if you install streaming sound. Then the loaded movie will run at whatever fps setting you want.

To do this without incrementing file size too much compress the hell out of a sound. Bring it in to Flash set it to Mp3 and stream and worst quality. Double click on the frame where the sound is located and then select sound tab.

You will see a graph. Lower the volume all the way down so you can not hear it.

Now your sound will stream, and keep frame rate as specified in your movie settings regardless of Parent movie.

Of course if you have a sound track, your problem is solved just set it to stream but dont loop streaming sound it doesnt save you file size live event sound