Vikas Kamat is a programmer- entrepreneur
living
in Atlanta. This blog is a complex mix of Indian
culture, life in southern USA, computer sciences, and sports. Opinions are his
own. About - Bio - Contact
Computing, Libraries, Tennis, India & other interests of Vikas Kamat
Misc. Stuff
Reprint of Vangadarshana
Just heard that Bappa's travelogue of Bengal titled "Vanga Darshan" will be reprinted by Karnataka Literary Akademy. The book gives a graphic encounter of life in West Bengal in late 1960s. It had been out-of-print for a long time, and exposes the Naxalite and Communist movements of Bengal during the years the author lived in West Bengal.
Sociliast Movements in India
Talking about Communists and Socialists, I am very happy to compile an interesting exhibit of Socialist Propaganda in India through wonderful period posters.
This week, my maternal grandfather (who passed away in 2002, when he was 97) would have turned 100, and Amma has an article: Remembering Baba on his Birth Centennial
TiNamShri and DLN Centennials
This year is also the 100th birth year of great Kannada scholars T.N. Srikantiah, (writer of "Bharatiya Kavya Meemamse"), and D.L. Narasimhachar.
Enjoy these rare portraits...I get mail all the time from family members of all these great men and women that they've never seen these pictures.
I have had a great Tennis season this year. I lost only one singles match in Birmingham B League and only one Mixed-Doubles match in the USTA 7.0 League. My team made it to playoffs in the Men's league and won the city championship in the Mixed Doubles league.
That means I will be at the Alabama State Championship June 8-10 2006 (Mobile, AL) and Sept. 14-17 2006 (Dothan AL). I have won the city championship several times, but never has had a chance to play at the state level. I am looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, exciting day of tennis at French Open. Sharapova and Mauresmo are out. Federer advances. I'm sorry to see James Blake exit.
Link Suggestions
Link Suggestions
Robert Scoble, who put on a human face to Microsoft is leaving the company. I think that's good.. In the last couple of years his views were warped and he'd lost objectivity... Good luck Scoble, and thanks for that one link you provided to this site on Pictures of "Long Horn"
Here's an flame mail email I got about Kamat's Potpourri.
Your website alone is enough to put India down.
Example, when someone searches "indian women" in Google, your site shows up as the first result.
No one wants to look at poor old rural old ladies of India.
Indian Art Supplier Wanted
I'd like to develop contacts with an art gallery in India or a wholesale supplier of Indian paintings (preferably miniature paintings on paper, canvas). Please contact me via e-mail at if you are in the business, or have a reliable relative or friend who'd like to get involved. I could also be reached via telephone at 205-531-6951 (Central Time Zone)
Stories the Kitchens Tell
I am delighted to see many new Konkani recipe blog sites emerge. They are doing an important activity -- document traditional recipes that are on the decline (due to the complexity of preparing them, and lack of expertise among the new generation in tradional Indian cooking). As I read them, I go back to my childhood when my grandmothers, grandaunts, and aunts spent the entire day in the kitchen, laughing and toiling. And I can regurgitate the aroma of the traditional Konkani kitchen, with all the smoke (wooden stoves were used then), spices, and colors.
I thought it would make an interesting effort to put together a webpage on the kitchens of India. I didn't have many pictures, but they all are real people in their real kitchens, and depicted honesty, devotion, and the struggles of the times. They were photographed over many decades, and are an interesting exhibit.
The Indian Kitchen -- Photographic exhibition of diverse kitchens of India, and a commentary on the subtle stories they tell.
See Also: House of Commons -- Habitats of common men and common gods.
News from Kamats
Adding News to Kamat's Potpourri
I know, somewhere I've said, "There's no stocks, no weather, no news on Kamat.com", and so far I have refrained from digressing from our core theme. But the "ad-infestation" (for example, just now I noticed that Sulekha news is featuring 15 advertisements, including animations and popups) of other India related news sites has made me reconsider.
Hopefully, I will have sometime this month to crank up a news aggregator. I also want to add some "news from the trenches" -- you know, authentic news that will not get press otherwise.
Alabama State Tennis Championships
There's some new hardware in Kamat household. Kimbo's team won the Alabama State Tennis Championship at the USTA 3.5 Level.
The next stop is Charleston, South Carolina for the Divisional Championships.
BTW, I had a hard time photographing the transparent glass trophy. Neither black nor white backgrounds work and the transparency takes the attention away. The above photograph was taken with diffused sunlight and flash used together after keeping the plaque on a ping-pong table.
Biography of Poet Bilhana
Remember the amusing story Romancing the Teacher, where the student was told the tutor has an infectious disease and the teacher was told that the student is blind?!
Amma has the Biography of Bohemian Poet Bilhana, who travelled the whole length of India in the 11th century seeking beauty and knowledge.
Multiple Forms in .NET
I have been working on a templated system architecture for a forthcoming product (I do other things than update this website, you know) and one of things Remokon does is, store look and feel of a website in a database (or file) and the engine dynamically renders the website.
Something like this is very easy in PHP or systems that support include files (like ASP), but apparently not in ASP.NET.
I have struggled an entire day now to do a simple thing like this in .NET -- multiple forms posting to multiple pages. Grrr. Very Disappointing
I think my problem is due to my use of .NET's literal control to apply the the look and feel, following the Rainman architetcure that was once used on AOL, and the literal happens to be a server-side control. Apparently, a server side control may not contain other forms even if they are non-postback forms.
Moving the submits to JavaScript also don't seem to work...
Update June 24,2006: I was able to get what I wanted by avoiding the use of the literal control and using the good old fashioned Response.write.
Another Thumbs Down for .NET
Search engine traffic is the the lifeline of websites such as Kamat'
Potpourri -- we spend no money promoting our website, and completely rely on
Google,Yahoo and our own search engines to let the readers discover what they
need. This mandates that the content we provide be extremely
A Catalog of New Complaints on Web Technologies
Bob Parsons (of GoDaddy.com):The problem of Domain Kiting and explaining possible reasons why even the obsure domains are now taken.
Yahoo, Don't Make me Think!
Tip to Yahoo mail engineers: Your new interface to the Yahoo address book sucks. Where am I supposed to find "Kamat" ? There are two tabs under "Ka". Please bring back the alphabetical list!
And don't get me started on the new address-book interface for non-paying members (it's like a drop-down)...Golly!
Sharing Sessions Among Various ASP.NET Applications
Either my projects are too big for ASP.NET to handle or I do not know anything about partitioning .NET applications. You won't believe the troubles of sharing the Session state between two or more applications (they are different projects assigned to different engineers) running on the same server and under the same virtual folder! Grrr.
And what the heck is: "Reference to non-shared member requires an object reference" Error?
Makes me want to give up programming and take up art or something to earn a living.
Powered NOT by Blogger or MovabaleType or
WordPress, but by SimplyBlog, a software I wrote to
create blogs.
See details
of implementation or download SimplyBlog.
This is how I surf the web. Turns out
creating your own start page beats all portals, back-flipping,
personalized corporate pages, and book-marking tools.
(requires Flash)
Update June 24,2006: I was able to get what I wanted by avoiding the use of the literal control and using the good old fashioned Response.write. 
