Taj West End

I had the privilege of visiting Bangalore for two weeks. When I wasn’t working with my colleagues at their office in Manyata Park, had the opportunity to explore the city and make a day trip to Mysore.

Manyata Tech Park

Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka and commercial hub of the Deccan (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh states). According to National Geographic, the city is the “world’s third most important IT city… a more international city than even Mumbai.”

Bangalore is indeed an amazing place; a combination of high-tech and old world. It is the third largest city in India and the fastest growing city in Asia, increasing in population from just over 1 million people in 1970 to nearly 8 million today.

Commercial Street, Bangalore

One of the most incredible things about Bangalore is the population density. Bangalore has ~8k people per square kilometer, or about 4 times that of New York City. Mumbai weighs in at over 20k/km^2, roughly ten times more people per area than in the most dense American cities. Density exceeds even Hong Kong by a factor of 3.

Lal Bagh Rock

Formerly known as the “Garden City”, a few signs of Bangalore’s greener past still remain. One is Lal Bagh, a 240 acre garden near the city center which has hundreds of species of plants and many massive ancient trees. The park also features Kempegowda tower, built on the surface of Lal Bagh Rock, one of the oldest rock formations on earth, dating from 3 billion years ago.

Bangalore to Mysore

Approximately 150km outside of Bangalore is the city of Mysore. It served as the capital of the region through the reign of the Wodeyar dynasty and until 1947 when administrative power was shifted to Bangalore.

Ambivalas Palace at Mysore

The Ambivalas Palace built by the ruling Wodeyars is one of the most popular tourist attractions in India.

“The architectural style of the palace is commonly described as Indo-Saracenic, and blends together Hindu, Muslim, Rajput, and Gothic styles of architecture. It is a three-storied stone structure, with marble domes and a 145 ft five-storied tower.” The palace contains a wooden ‘howda’ (elephant sadle) decorated with 84kg(!) of gold.

Mysore to Chamundi Hill

The palace also contains many images of Durga (aka Chamundeshwari), the goddess, who according to Hindu mythology, killed the demon Mahishasura, allowing good to triumph over evil. The Chamundi temple which sits atop nearby hills on the outskirts of the city was built in honor of the goddess.

Chamundi Temple

The road to Mysore from Bangalore passes through the towns of Channaputna, known for its wooden crafts and toys, Maddur and Mandya. It also cuts across numerous sugar cane fields from which “jaggery” is extracted.

Jaggery Factory

Jaggery is made by boiling raw sugarcane juice in large shallow vessels. Jaggery is used in a variety of sweet dishes in India; it can also be added to curries. Jaggery is considered to be healthier than other sweeteners because it is prepared without the use of chemicals and it contains minerals not found in sugar. It has also been found to prevent lung damage from “particulate matter such as coal and silica dust”.. potentially quite useful when spending any time riding an auto-rickshaw on the streets of central Bangalore.

Bullock Cart Sharing the Road

Speaking of, one of my colleagues treated me to a ride on the back of his motorbike through Bangalore’s notorious traffic where it isn’t uncommon to see three cars side-by-side, jockeying for two lanes along side bull carts, pedestrians, autorickshaws and the occasional wayward cow or stray dog.

The video can be found here: Bangalore Motorbike Ride

The Law

If you are watching the video thinking “well, that isn’t nearly as cool as the Evel-Knievel vid I just watched yesterday”… Please! The driver was going easy on me. Thankfully, as I was holding the iphone in one hand, clutching an umbrella and the edge of the seat in the other, all the while trying not to lose my Nikon and the lense collection dangling from my shoulder. For some reason, I thought I’d be able to shoot some stills and video. Maybe not.

On the Cell

One of the mysteries of Bangalore is why they need so many traffic cops (literally dozens of them at some intersections) to enforce so few traffic laws. Driving is absolute and total chaos. Out of the chaos, though, some semblance of order seems to emerge from the honking, flashing lights and arm waving.

Brigade Road

I’m not talking about the occasional honk or flash. I’m talking about continuous honking and sometimes frantic dimming of the lights. I initially thought it might be morse code. Meanwhile, everyone seems to maintain perfect composure.

One Lane, Many Vehicles

When I say hand gestures, I’m talking about waves of the arm to allow or warn of a merge. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere, if not for Boston drivers, perhaps for a research paper on chaos theory or self-organizing systems.

sources:

• population and density data.. wolfram alpha wikipedia
• historical facts.. “India”, National Geographic Travel Guide and “Experience Bangalore: a travel guide”, Penguin Books

Stone Bridge.. 320x240 should be big enough?

In 1995 I purchased an Apple Quicktake 100, one of the first consumer market digital cameras. It could store just 8 photos at 640×480 resolution (0.3 megapixels) on an internal 1MB EPROM. It had no LCD preview, no focus, and no zoom controls. Images were transferred via serial cable. What more would you want for $750?

At 320×240 resolution, uhhh.. 0.08 megapixels, the device could store 32 photos. Competitive with a roll of film! Sadly, I took quite a few photos in this mode. Nowadays, those same photos make nice thumbnails, or desktop icons.

QuickTake 100 at Night - Zurich

Low-light performance was poor; there were no sensor sensitivity controls, and no way to preview shots. Still, the device did manage to take some decent night photos without excessive noise. Of course, there wasn’t much opportunity to overexpose with a minimum shutter speed of just 1/30s..

AOD255e Unwrapped

The new Acer Aspire One AOD255E features intel’s new dual-core Atom n570.

The n570 is the first n-series Atom chip to include hardware virtualization (or VT-x) extensions. Add dual cores with hyperthreading, and the system has the potential to perform more like a higher end notebook.

Not bad for $329, but the system ships with only 1GB of RAM and a 250GB mechanical HD.

SSD and RAM Upgrade

To bring these components up to par with the processor, increase the performance and reliability, I opted for a 128GB SSD and 2GB DDR3 memory module.

AOD255e Keyboard

Although AOD255e isn’t designed to be user serviceable, replacing the HD and RAM isn’t too difficult.

• Power off the machine and remove the battery
• Locate the tabs along the upper edge of the keyboard above the F1, F4, F8, F12 and DEL keys.
• Using a flat-head screwdriver and working from right to left, starting above the DEL key, carefully depress each tab and pry up the edge of the keyboard.
• Once all of the tabs are depressed and the upper edge of the keyboard released, it can be carefully removed.
• Remove all the screws marked “1″
• Push a blunt object through the access hole marked, releasing the access panel on the bottom of the system.
• Locate and replace the desired components

Fedora

Finally, I replaced Windows 7 with Fedora 14. Yes, it is indeed twice as good, maybe more… :/

System runs very smoothly with KDE4 and all visual effects enabled.

AOD255e Running Fedora 14

Here’s /proc/cpuinfo showing dual cores with 2 hyperthreaded execution units each and ‘vmx’ flag indicating VT-x support.


processor : 3
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N570 @ 1.66GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 1000.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 3
initial apicid : 3
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 3325.21
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:


To perform the upgrade to Fedora, I used ‘BFO’, a small network bootloader.

The BFO boot image is only 300KB, can be written to a USB stick and used to do a network-based bootstrap of the Fedora installation process. Find Fedora’s BFO image here…
http://boot.fedoraproject.org

Summary

$329 – Acer Aspire One AOD255E-1664 Netbook, w/ dual-core Atom n570 and 10.1″ LED
$24 – Crucial 2GB 204-PIN PC3-8500 SODIMM DDR3 Memory Module
$240 – Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB SATA 3 GB/s $240 2.5″ Kingston 128GB SATA3 2.5″ SSD

iPhone4 HDR

Much has been written lately about the high quality of the latest iPhone’s camera, how megapixels aren’t the only metric, and how it outperforms other cell and consumer cameras.

The ability to easily take HDR and panorama shots, with zero postprocessing effort, and instantly share them, gives the iPhone4 some advantages over even the highest-end SLR’s.

Even the low-light performance has improved dramatically. With previous generation iPhones, I wouldn’t even bother to reach in my pocket unless there was an abundance of light.

Boston Common Bridge, iPhone4

It is about the software.

Despite the improvements, though, low-light continues to be one area where small, noise-sensitive sensors like the one in the iPhone have a very long way to go. They say “the best camera is the one you have with you”. If it is dark, and you aren’t far from home, then it might just be worth going to get the camera you don’t have with you.

Compare the following two photos taken on subsequent nights with the iPhone4 and Nikon D300.

Boston Common Bridge, Nikon D300

It is impressive that the tiny phone sensor is able to resolve any image whatsoever. But, beyond the engineering feat, the photo isn’t worth much.

table salt at 200x

Received an EyeClops BioniCam for Christmas.

Device records magnified movies/images to a removable USB stick, in FAT16, which is hence, Linux (and Mac OS X) compatible..

Manufacturer warns that “the Eyeclops is a handheld bionic microscope meant to be used as a fun toy – not as an educational aid.”

I’m no expert, but a tech gadget, particularly an electronic microscope, which is easy to use, magnifies whatever you point it at to 400x, and captures live video or photographs… that seems fun, and educational, to me..

serrated blade at 100x

Downtown Denver Driving Route

On July 27th, we carried out a thorough scan of 802.11 networks in downtown Denver. A Columbus V-900 tracking device was used to log location and path, validating that all streets and alleys were traversed. Meanwhile, an iPhone 3G and Wififofum were used to detect and log detected networks, their location, and attributes.

The area bounded by Speer Blvd to the SW, Broadway to the East, and 20th Avenue to the NE were covered. Total area traversed was approximately 1.4 square miles and 125 square blocks.

9,522 networks were detected in ~200 minutes.

Downtown Denver's 9,522 Wifi Networks

Security

Strong (45%)

• WPA2: 2418 (25.3%)
• WPA: 1843 (19.4%)

Weak (55%)

• WEP: 3294 (34.6%)
• None: 1967 (20.7%)

11.8% of the networks observed were hiding their ESSID, 88.2% were broadcasting.

On average, a new wifi network was discovered every 1.3s during the scan.

Number of wireless networks per…

• square mile: 6,800
• city block: 75
• acre: 11

Total population of the scan area is not known. A portion of the area, though, known as the Golden Triangle, has a population of 630 residents. In that neighborhood, 1506 networks were detected, for a total of 2.4 access points per person.

Downtown, pass 0 KML, Golden Triangle
Downtown, pass 1 KML, 17th to 20th
Downtown, pass 2 KML, Champa to Court
Downtown, pass 3 KML, Arapahoe to Wynkoop
Downtown, pass 4 KML, Commons Parks, Speer, Colfax

San Francisco WiFi nodes, circa 2001

Since Pete Shipley first pioneered wardriving in the San Franciso-Bay area, many people have cataloged the locations of 802.11 networks around the world.

I still remember the excitement, in the early days, driving the streets of downtown with a makeshift antenna, Orinoco ‘Gold’ card, and the soft glow of a Thinkpad 600x illuminating the passenger seat. You could often drive several miles before the faint signal of a distant access point would flicker across the screen.

Much has changed since then, as the number and density of networks have exploded.

Seattle Wi-Fi nodes, circa 2004

Also, small hand-held devices like the Nokia n810 and Apple iPhone are able to scan for networks, track location via GPS and log results, in a small and compact form-factor.

Still, though, it seems that few, if any, network surveys published offer truly comprehensive details on all detectable networks within a given area.

A couple of exceptions are a survey of metro Seattle performed by 100 undergraduate students who detected 5,225 networks in 2004 and the annual RSA/EMC wireless security survey of New York, London and Paris which attempts to log, and provide some analysis of, detectable wireless networks within those three cities.

Most other surveys continue to focus their efforts on main arteries and thoroughfares where large numbers of networks can be detected in short amounts of time.

Approach

In the following survey, an attempt is made to detect all available 802.11 wireless networks within the target neighborhood by traversing all publicly accessible streets, alleys and side-roads.

A constant and slow travel velocity is maintained to ensure that, given the antenna’s sensitivity and the detector’s scan rate, no available networks go undetected.

Multiple passes are made through the neighborhood to verify consistent detection.

Target

Observation Path - Cherry Creek North

For my experiment, I chose the Cherry Creek North neighborhood of Denver, CO.

According to the 2000 US census, the area has a population of 5,028 in 3,198 households. In addition, 320 businesses, mostly restaurants and boutiques, are located on the southern edge of the neighborhood.

The area covers approximately 0.5 square miles, and is bounded by 1st and 6th Avenues to the south and north, and by University and Colorado Blvds to the east and west.

Discovery

On July 18th, a test scan was performed. A small segment of the target area was scanned repeatedly on foot, and by car, at various velocities. Results checked for accuracy and completeness.

On July 19th, I carried out a thorough scan of the neighborhood. A Macbook Air and Columbus V-900 tracking device were used to view precise location and path, validating that all streets and alleys were traversed. Meanwhile, an iPhone 3G and Wififofum were used to detect and log detected networks, their location, and attributes.

Results

The 70 city blocks which make up the neighborhood were covered in just over two hours.

1,948 wireless 802.11 networks were discovered.

11.6% of the networks observed were hiding their ESSID, and 88.4% were broadcasting.

Most of the networks (57%) had weak or non-existent security activated.

WiFi Networks Detected in Cherry Creek North

Security

Strong (43%)

• WPA2: 422 (21.7%)
• WPA: 406 (20.8%)

Weak (57%)

• WEP: 797 (40.9%)
• None: 324 (16.6%)

The location of the highest network density along the scanning path was detected at the intersection of 3rd Ave and Fillmore St, where 65 networks were detected simultaneously.

Summary

1,948 networks were detected in 2 hours, 29s within a 70 block area (0.48 square miles).

On average, a new network was detected every 3.7s during the scan.

Number of wireless networks per…

• square mile: 4,091
• city block: 28
• acre: 6

Let’s compare with the 2008 RSA/EMC study of New York City.

Their scan detected 9,227 networks and covered a 16 square mile area (conservative estimate) which included “the entire area of Manhattan, including Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges”.

That’s 576 access points per square mile, or less than 1/5th the density observed in the Cherry Creek North neighborhood.

It is doubtful that Cherry Creek North has a significantly more dense distribution of WiFi networks than Manhattan. More likely, the survey presented here is more comprehensive in its coverage.

The results show that, by using a rigorous scanning process, which utilizes multiple passes and takes into account the sensitivity and operational characteristics of the detector, network survey accuracy can be drastically increased.

In this survey, 1 wireless network was detected per every 2.5 residents in the neighborhood.

I have not been able to find any other documented survey which shows a higher density of access points per person or square mile.

If you’d like to view the results in Google Earth… click:
Cherry Creek North WiFi Scan KML

DJIA Daily Return Distribution, 1928-2009

The financial market meltdown has caused many to re-evaluate their models for expected market returns.

In reality, though, the recent market swings are not out of the ordinary in terms of what has been observed in the past. They are still within the fringes of the ‘long tail’ of the distribution of daily market returns.

If there is an unpredictable and high impact event, waiting to spring on the market and challenge the perception of normal or ‘expected’, the “dot-com” bust, 9/11 and financial market meltdowns have not revealed any. None have been a ‘Black Swan’, to use Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s term.

DJIA Daily Return Difference Distribution, 1928-2009

When it comes to the financial markets, if there is a large-impact event which requires counter-factual reasoning to model or comprehend, it has not yet occurred.

Daily leveraged funds have been the topic of numerous articles recently which have questioned whether they should be held for periods longer than a single trading session, and in turn, whether they are suitable for individual investors.

YTD Russell 2000 Index vs. Daily Leveraged Funds

Take, for example, the Russell 2000 Index (^RUT), the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), which tracks the index, and the various daily leveraged funds which attempt to track the index to the tune of -3x (TZA, Direxion Daily Small Cap Bear 3X Shares), -2x (TWM, UltraShort Russell2000 ProShares), -1x (RWM, Short Russell2000 ProShares), 2x (UWM, Ultra Russell2000 ProShares) and 3x (TNA, Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull 3X Shares).

Over the YTD period through 6/19/09, all daily leveraged equivalents of the fund, both the bullish and bearish versions, have underperformed the index.

Indeed, the market’s extraordinary recent volatility highlights the perils of daily leveraged funds. Daily rebalancing over periods of price fluctuation, without successive days of monotonic price decrease or increase, have a significant negative impact on the value of leveraged funds.

Performance and Holding Period

Does that mean that leveraged ETF’s are always inappropriate for investment over periods longer than a trading session?

Leveraged funds are a relatively new invention in the ETF world, and most don’t have sufficient history to compare longer-term performance vs benchmarks.

Russell 2000 vs. Daily Leverage - Actual & Calculated

Performance – Real vs. ‘Ideal’

Leveraged ETF’s do, though, track relatively closely the benchmarks they follow, with daily performance magnified by the intended degree of leverage. Take, for example, the +2x and +3x daily leveraged equivalents of the Russell 2000 index, over the first two months of Q2.

‘Ideal’ leverage can be calculated by applying a factor of ‘x’ to the daily returns of the Russell 2000 benchmark and comparing the result to the returns of the corresponding daily leveraged ETF. In reality, the daily leveraged ETF’s underperform slightly the synthesized ‘ideal’ returns. The difference represents tracking error and fund expenses, including management fees and the fund’s internal costs of borrowing to maintain leverage.

In this example, at the end of the period, the value of $1000 invested, and held, would be:

• +3x: $2117 – ideal (synthesized)
• +3x: $2080 – TNA (Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull 3X Shares)
• +2x: $1750 – ideal (synthesized)
• +2x: $1746 – UWM (Ultra Russell2000 ProShares)
• +1x: $1364 – ideal (Russell 2000 Benchmark)
• +1x: $1363 – IWM (iShares Russell 2000 Index)

Tracking Error and Expenses

The +3x leveraged fund (TNA) underperformed the ideal by $37 or 1.7%. The 2x leveraged fund (UWM) underperformed the ideal by $4 or 0.2%. And, the 1x leveraged fund (IWM) underperformed the Russell 2000 benchmark by just $1.

So, the leveraged funds do a pretty good job of tracking ideal leverage, even over periods far longer than a single trading session.

Long-Term Performance

How about performance; can daily leveraged funds produce performance proportional to the daily leverage rate, over longer periods? In this example, during which market gains were mostly monotonic, they do. The benchmark was up 36.3%, the 2x fund up 74.6% (2.05x the benchmark), and the 3x fund up 108% (2.97x the benchmark).

This example period, though, was chosen with the benefit of hindsight, just as the selection of other, more volatile periods, can be chosen to highlight the risks.

Synthesized Long-Term Performance

Nasdaq vs. Calculated 2x and 3x Daily Leverage

How, then, do leveraged ETF’s perform over much longer holding periods? The data does not exist, because leveraged funds don’t have sufficient history, but using methods similar to those used to calculate the ‘ideal’ data points highlighted in the charts above, data can be synthesized by applying daily leverage to historical market data.

How would the $1000 invested in the NASDAQ composite perform versus $1000 invested in 2x and 3x leveraged versions of the index, over a very long period, such as since the index’s inception?

Certainly, not very well, since leveraged ETF’s aren’t appropriate for long holding periods, and since NASDAQ has been wracked by the “dot-com bust” and the recent world financial crisis and “meltdown”? Right?

Wrong. To the contrary, even if the recent recovery is excluded, daily leveraged investments perform handsomely, outperforming the index by factors which far exceed the daily leverage target:

$1000 invested in NASDAQ since inception (2/5/71) to 3/20/09…

• unleveraged: $14,572
• leveraged 2x: $46,236
• leveraged 3x: $31,026

Sure, leverage is not without its risk. And, the risk is significant.

For example, a $1000 investment in leveraged versions of the index, at the height of the “dot-com boom”, through 3/20/09, is nearly wiped out…

• unleveraged: $289
• leveraged 2x: $35
• leveraged 3x: $2

But, when timing is more fortunate, leveraged versions of the index can far exceed their advertised daily performance targets, even over long periods. $1000 invested in NASDAQ from 7/6/95 to end of .com boom (3/10/2000)…

• unleveraged: $5,360
• leveraged 2x: $22,456
• leveraged 3x: $73,262

Conclusion

Leveraged ETF’s are good at what they advertise, magnifying daily performance by their leverage ratio.

The performance of leveraged funds are influenced both by daily results and by the compounding leveraged effects of those results, which are affected more heavily than unleveraged funds, by the volatility of the target investment.

The real risk inherent in daily leveraged ETF’s isn’t really their performance or behavior when held long term; it is the fact that such funds are more volatile than the unleveraged versions by factors which exceed the advertised leverage ratio. Over longer periods, this translates into disproportionate risk which isn’t necessarily compensated by the leverage ratio.

Driving a Z06, I took super-stock for the third year in a row. Points average was up by more than ten points per event, barely enough to ward off the challenge posed by several determined and talented Lotus Elise drivers who have kept things very close in the ultimate stock class.

'07 Z06 at '08 rmsolo #9, photo by Cliff Lawson