Live from Above

May 12 2018,

Overwhelming pre-monsoon rains have rendered exorbitant beauty in my village and adjoining areas ahead of monsoon season which is a month away. The trough over Karnataka is the main reason behind such a healthy pre-monsoon shower. The area is completely filled with greenery and the water bodies have resurrected. The atmosphere is azure during day and the horizon filled with beauty during golden hour. The shore nearby the water bodies is the best place to rejoice the beauty of nature presenting splendid contrast between warm and cool tones. During this day, I chose to visit the Kaup beach during evening to relish the beauty of nature. It's baking in Karnataka being voting day and nature was not behind. The sweltering weather is soaking the body with profuse sodium chloride. The humid weather is what keeping the rains alive and consequently everybody bears it inevitably.

As I reached Kaup beach, the beauty was profound. It has been long time since I hiked to summit of Kaup beach light house. This was golden opportunity to capture evening golden hue. The overlook from light house was obviously spectacular thanks to haze free sky. The entire 360 degree area around the light house was worth the capture. Here are the pictures from the summit of light house. "Live from Above" the light-house provided some extraordinary glimpses of backwaters, coconut trees, the sea-shore and the golden western horizon. Hope you enjoy the pictures too!

Dont miss the impeccable music from SoundLift "Live From Above" and feel the rhythm of nature!!

And an equivalently extraordinary remix by Arctic Moon

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Improved software in SBI ATM

If you are regular SBI ATM user, you must have noticed the ATM openly exposing your account balance to the public. This is OK if nobody is present in ATM, but in cities like Bangalore where crowd never dissolves, the uncontrolled balance display intimidates the user and opens up a lot of insecurities. This balance display is peeked by people who are in the queue and the situation is worse when there are parallel ATMs. I would say this was one of the worst designs in the financial world and being a software engineer this insecure feature is valued learning for me.

Earlier, the ATMs insecurely displayed account balance without user's consent.

Recently, I visited the nearby SBI ATM which always held "out of cash" placard. Fortunately, fresh notes were fed into the ATM and cash was available. When I finished the transaction, I noticed this prompt from ATM.

"Do you want to display account balance?". Finally, SBI learned from users that exposing account balance is insecure and updated the software. Now the user can control the balance display and most of the occasion, it would be a confident "No". Since the user receives SMS on transaction along with available balance, my opinion is to ditch this facility in near future. This software update is a welcome step by SBI and hopefully, every ATM is updated with the latest enhancement.

As of now not all ATMs have updated software.  Considering that software update could be performed remotely, every SBI ATM should have the update available already. My suspicion is that the machines dispensing newly introduced notes only have this software. The legacy still carries older software.

A stroll down to fields

May 13, 2018

After dabbling with colors of nature and befriending the mighty sea-tides, it was time to relax and behold the morning rays shimmering the deserted paddy fields. Soon these areas will be filled with  ploughing activities or even may be sometimes morphed into rivers :D. A month later, upright saplings garnish these fields enlivening the bucolic charm. As of now, the heavy pre-monsoon rains have scribbled verdant sketches over the dormant fields which photographer admires a lot. This morning me with my nephew went for a stroll towards these paddy fields to share the joy with nature.

I turned nostalgic for a moment, ruminating those school days during monsoon season. We strolled along the pathway between the fields fearlessly and enthusiastically amidst the brimming fields. Few days were declared holiday as well during torrential rains. Despite the lack of roads, safety measure we sailed through those furious moments of nature seamlessly.

Back to today's musings! It was fresh grass grown over the field and the cattle were enjoying it. The sumptuous meal was unbounded. They were free to wander even towards adjoining fields to devour the fresh grass as much as they want. It was beautiful day to capture photograph as well! Miraculously, a small cloud system was moving from north to south blocking the way of Sun. This is the ultimate moment landscapers look for. The rays dispersed by Sun through the clouds over the rural arena is just impeccable to photograph. I grabbed few moments till the clouds faded away. It was 10AM and not an ideal time. Despite the scorching Sun, the clouds hindering the rays entering the field momentarily provided an excellent aura to photograph the nature.

Nature is tough riddle and its manifestations are unpredictable. At the end, the complacent photographer was enthralled with fruitful stroll.

Linked to Skywatch Friday