Aero India 2005

I went to see the the Aero India show held at Yehelanka Airforce base (just outside Bangalore). The show ended this sunday and the road near my apartment was jammed for hours. Many people saw the show with cars/scooters parked outside (saving on the Rs 150 ticket). The show was enjoyable both for the quality of the air display and for the pride that you feel when so many Indian designed and manufactured crafts take to the sky.

Recently a series of articles by Kaushik Kapisthalam gave a nice insight into the achievements of DRDO. I think fighter aircrafts and space missions are the frontiers of technical achievment and it was a treat to watch the Sarang team perform stunts with the Advanced Light Helicopter - Dhruv. Also on display were LCA - Tejus, Saras, Intermediate Jet Trainer. The LCA may have taken a long time but the learnings have made it possible to speed up development of IJT and the CJT (which will replace the Hawks we are buying from britain).

The biennual show itself started small and has grown bigger with each edition. There are reports of lot of business deals happening and the civil aviation industry too taking part next year. These will add another worldclasss show to the list of international events happening in Bangalore.

The show ended with the splendid display of aerobatics by the suryakiran team (including a heart with arrow through it). The suryakiran team recently came third at one of the international air shows for their brilliant aerobatics.

Squeak Squeak

I had seen squeak some time back but was not able to use it much. Recently I was reading an interview of Alan Kay (Smalltalk creator) where he mentioned squeak again. I was curious and installed it again. And this time I had some fun. It requires some initial learning but provides for an excellent platform for small kids to do fun stuff on a computer and learn in the process.

Squeakland.Org is a nice site which is using this system. I found this tutorial on how to create a car and drive it and then actually did. See the result below in the pic :-) There are lots of projects on the site that can be used too. I hope this kind of a system is used soon in schools.

I have just started using it, will post again when I find more interesting things here.

The Robin Hood hospital

I have been a fan of Dr Devi Shetty and his heart hospital ever since a colleague had their kid treated over there. Bangalore is a happening place not just because of the amazing software industry but also people like him. Now Tarun Khanna at HBS is going to do a case study on him. Read this very nice and informative article.

Dr Shetty was awarded the Padma Shri last year (so its not all political!).