The Lonesome Road

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Water and Light 2, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Was in Connecticut for the weekend to visit an uncle. It’s a really beautiful place and I finally managed to get some good snaps of the colors of Fall.

If you are going to Connecticut, I recommend a trip to the East Rock Park. Beautiful place and has an amazing view from the top of the hill.

Enjoy!
PS: I like the interaction of light and water in thos photograph - the new photos can be seen on the Photo page .

I’ve been having trouble with the integrated wireless card on my laptop since the day I started using it. The problem basically came in the fact that every once in a while it would simply forget that it was supposed to be connected to a network and drift into la-la land.

The thing is - I spent a month wondering whether the problem was from the router side or the card side. So, as any Computer Science person knows, the only way to test out is to change the hardware. The first change involved the router. We shitched from a D-Link to a Netgear router. Though the performance did improve, it was nowhere close to the net speeds that I have seen possible in this country.

Obviously, the only remaining option was to plug in a new external wireless card. The only problem was that I really didn’t want to buy one just for testing purposes. Luckily Fate smiled on me. One of my housies (like roomie - but we all share a house) got a new laptop and lent me her external wireless card to play with. I plugged it in last night - and the speed difference has been nothing short of amazing!

Unfortunately, everything comes with a price. The sound card and PCMCIA slot on my laptop (Sony VGNFS630W) are located very close together. Thus, whenever I surf, it is to the accompaniment of static hissing through my speakers. Highly annoying. When I ran a quick Google search on it, I got this gem of a page from Microsoft and a nice discussion on Google Groups. It seems that if there is not enough shielding, the sound card will produce static every time the card sends/receives data. And there is nothing that can be done about it. As simple as that.

So, I called Sony (LiveChat) and had a nice chat with customer support. They gave me two generic problem solution pages - New Card Installation and Sound Card Setting. Both useless. Ok, to cut to the chase. The problem was solved using the usual method that fixes almost all Windows problems. Reinstall driver and restart. Could have kicked myself for not doing that first.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. Have high speed and good sound

Later!

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Golden glow, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Took some more photos today when I was in college. As usual, there are some nice cloud shots (they seem to have become staple now). Also, reappearing after a while, some close up flower pics.

But the two I like the most in the bunch are Birds 01 and Birds 02. The first one gives you an idea of how far away the birds actually were and the second snap taken at almost full zoom gets the classic V-pattern of flight that they follow.

Hope you enjoy them!

The Sri Lankans have come to India to play a series of cricket matches. I caught this bitof info a few days back - and recalled it again when the local Mumbai team won a close victory over the visitors. But then it simply went out of my mind again.

Until last night.

I was busily doing nothing when Anshul interrupts to tell me that Tendulkar and Sehwag are letting the world know that “Boost is the secret of their energy” by smashing the ball to all parts of the ground. Rudely interrupted out of my reverie, I pronounced that they would get out. Though I predicted Tendulkar would get out first, Vaas ruined my prediction by removing his bunny* Sehwag.

Pathan came next instead of Dravid and helped send the ball to it’s home in the boundary - no matter how many times the bad fielders brought it back. And soon I was hooked reading the commentary on cricinfo. Believe me - the only reason I stopped reading the commentary was the fact that I nearly gave my self qwerty-itis by smashing my head on the keyboard. Oh - by the way - we crushed SL by a 152 runs!

Thing is, cricket is in the blood of just about every Indian. It’s the game that gets us fired up and plunges us into the worst of depressions. It’s the one thing that can plunge the entire nation into euphroic fits, supreme disappointment and a really bad rage. And it never really goes away from the Indian psyche. Take last night for instance. I wash my hands of the Indian cricket team with great regularity - especially when they (always) keep screwing up. Last night when Anshul told me about Sachin, my first reaction was - does this guy *still* believe in the team? Then I thought - might as well see the score. And then I was up almost all the night waiting for us to win. It made my morning when I found out we won. It will get me just as riled if we screw up and lose the rest of the matches in the series (and the pessimist in me says that is exactly what is going to happen).

What is in this game that causes all (well, most) Indians to go through the yo-yo syndrome every time? Anyway, here (for what it’s worth) is my match analysis : We won because Ganguly didn’t play. Simple

Later!
PS : Bunny -> A batsman a bowler has a particular liking for. Unfortunately the relationship never lasts as the bowler keeps sending the batsman back to the dressing room.

I was browsing around the net the last couple of days - didn’t really have too much work to do. I came across this quote from Jay Leno that I find funny every time I read it.

To quote : “Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes having a baby! That’s the big story. So I guess Oprah’s couch isn’t the only thing he was bouncing up and down on.” End quote.

The other one is a headline from the BBC news service : Amazon ’stealth’ logging revealed. Now, I saw the headline and immediately assumed that the good folks at Amazon.com were upto no good. When I did get to the article - I got a bit of a surprise - it is about stealth logging and about Amazon. But it deals with the real world problem of people cutting down the Amazon rain forest, which is a more serious problem than all the stealth logging that Amazon may do - but that’s not the first thing that came to my mind. Brings into focus the thought patterns of a person in the tech age. Sad, but true.

Later!

Taking a cue from Anshul’s post, I tried out the quiz for myself. Never expected to be *this* character - but hey, that’s the way it went! Anyway, give it a shot - and see for yourself what you truly are!

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Clouds 01, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

I was originally planning to post tis mini-piece tomorrow morning, but you know, life never goes as planned. So, am writing it now.

I’ve always loved watching the sky. It always strikes me that we are almost like the figurines inside a magic ball when I look up to the heavens. I love seeing the sky when it’s a rich, deep blue. Somehow seems to take all the cares away. In the shadow of such a huge umbrella, all worries seem small.

Cloud watching is also something I enjoy doing. From the light layer of clouds (as can be seen in the photo), to the fluffy, almost 3-dimensional ones. It’s very simple really - lie down on your back (preferably in a place where you can see the sky ) and just look up. Takes no effort - and yet can give so much. It’s amazing how the clouds change shape before your very eyes. Morphing constantly, they run a gamut of shapes - from the fantastic to the mundane. Very soothing.

Finally, I love looking for the “silver lining” photo. It’s a beautiful sight when the edge of the clouds are lit up by the rays of the sun. It somehow makes me feel all is right with the world.

Anyway, I’ll let the pictures do the remaining of the talking. Have uploaded 8 new pictures. You can see them here.

As always, feedback is eagerly awaited.

Until next time, Adios!

Man - a 150 posts. Who would have thought that someone who (mostly) writes for an audience of two would actually limp to a 150 posts. Well, it’s done and I’m pretty happy about the whole thing.

Anyway, today’s article is a little mixture of a few things. Let’s start off with cricket. You know, after the Ashes series, everyone started writing off Australia. Why? Cos after a really long gap, England managed to reclaim the Ashes. I felt Australia could have won the Ashes if their star players hadn’t been injured. A lot of paper was wasted explaining why Australia no longer ruled the cricket roost and how the other teams would soon challenge their superiority. Well, all those articles are so much junk now. The recent series (3 one day internationals and 1 test match) between the World XI and Australia ended with the australians walking all over the “best of the world”. They won the ODI series 3-0 and wrapped up the test match with 2.5 days to spare. Hopefully, the next time around, critics will wait a while before doing the whole “open mouth, insert foot” routine.

As I said previously, I’m using Picasa these days to manage my photos. It’s a pretty good software, but here are a few changes I’d like.

a) The import feature needs to be revamped : In order to exclude photos from being copied, you have to click on every single photo that you don’t want and say Exclude. Secondly, even with exclude duplicates turned on, some photos escape the net and are ready to be copied again. Finally, I see no option to delete the photos from the camera once they are copied.

b) The slideshow should offer an option where the labels can appear during the show. Currently, the labels are only visible when you advance the show manually.

c ) When importing the photos, there should be an option to add the photos to an existing directory.

d) This is more on the wishlist front - please release a Ken Burns Effect plugin for Picasa!

Well, that’s all from me. Now I need to get something for breakfast before I pass out from hunger. Adios!

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Sun n Clouds, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Another 1000 words of happiness from me that the sun is back!

To see the sun and feel warm after a week of unceasing rain is an awesome sensation. I’d almost forgotten what a clear sky looked like!

Anyway, this weather should continue. At the most I’m hoping for partially cloudy skies - am sick and tired of the whole rain thing.

That’s all from me for now. Later all.

I’m pretty sure that a certain person who reads this series (i.e the PC v/s Mac) is smiling away. He’s thinking somewhere “I told you so..”. Anyway, all that aside, let’s talk about today’s little software gem that I found.

So, the last time I saw the Mac, there was a nice launcher software that basically had a list of all the applications that were installed on the system. When you started typing the application name, it simply started eliminating and presented you with the application you need to run. Pretty neat huh? For those of you using the Mac and who have not heard of the launchers - do not fret. Here are two of the most popular ones : Quicksilver and Launchbar. I’ve seen Quicksilver in action, whereas about Launchbar I only know what they say on the site.

That covers the Mac aspect of things. And the title says Mac and Windows. Chill and do not fret. The Windows equivalent is a program called AppRocket. It looks very similar to Launchbar and there is a site which pretty much accuses it of being a rip/port of the software to a windows platform without permission from Objective Development (though the news is a little old). Coming to the software itself, the overall design is pretty well done. Settings can be done depending on the amount of memory that you want to give the software. I personally found that removing all the eye candy reduces the amount of memory the program uses (appx 13 Mb). Approcket scans certain folders automatically using a “smart search” algorithm. Folders can also be added to it’s scanning list at any time and the file(s) are dynamically updated in the program. A shortcut key can also be set to bring the program into the foreground and focus on the bar. The default is Alt + Space, but I would recommend - especially for those who use the keyboard to maximize and minimize - to change this combination. I am using a Alt + z combination at the moment.

The software detection is well done and there is no real slowdown when the program is searrching/launching applications. Be warned though, if you indiscriminately add folders and keep including sub-folder searching in all of them, there will be a system slowdown. Also, the .NET framework is required for the program to run - it checks for the framework after setup and auto-installs it if required. Overall, it’s a good program that has helped me get rid of my Quick Launch bar. Recommended.

In other news, some digital cameras and camcorders are having CCD problems when exposed to high temperature/humidity levels. The complete details can be found on here [vnunet.com] which also provides links to the official sites where a list of affected devices are given.

Well, that’s all from me for now. Catch ya all later!

I hate - no abhor the rain (well, at least at this time). When I came here from India it was raining in both the cities I was shuttling between. And it’s irritating to have that rain follow me all the way to a new continent.

I mean, come on - how many times does a person need to be rained on? And somehow the gray, leaden skies really don’t do much to improve my mood - and I’m supposed to be studying for a test. Sheesh.

I’m ranting cos the rain got into my splitter and took out my net connection for the last four days. Believe me - it’s a pain when the net goes off. Especially when you get an appointment with tech service after a gap of three days.

If there is one positive thing about the whole gray sky thing - it’s the lighting (of course - when it’s not raining). It makes for some really good snaps. Especially of old buildings and brightly colored subjects (flowers for the most part).

And those of you who enjoy the rain - party on - there’s a week more of it coming your way. And all those who don’t like the rain - well, we can just sing “Raindrops keep falling on my head” for a week more. Hopefully, someone will put us out of our misery.

Later!

Well, the government of Maharashtra thought they were going to get lucky. Guess what - their luck just hit a dry spell (pun intended). After pouring rain for the last couple of months, the rain gods have decided that the state has had more than it’s share of water and are looking to withdraw.

The problem with the scenario is that in India, October is a bad month in terms of weather. In this month, which is a buffer between the rainy season and “winter”, temperatures shoot up - big time. In cities like bomaby and pune, it can go from 30-40 degrees celcius. This corresponds to a large increase in the power demand.

It seems though that the state government is powerless (literally). According to this article on Rediff, it seems that maharashtra is suffering from a shortfall of around 2300-2500mw. Basically, this means that the masses will have to suffer the agony of rolling blackouts once again. And I feel extremely sorry for the rural areas as they will have to bear the brunt of the load shedding once again.

Anyone with a bright idea for a solution?

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Bee, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

So, the poll has been running for a week and so far the only response I have is from Anshul - who will say yes. The rest have been the standard junk comments which have started plaguig Blogger.

This can mean one of three things
a) My blog does not get that many hits
b) My photos suck
c) People see - but don’t bother to vote.

Well, whatever it is - let me know. And spread the word a little. It’s the first poll in more than a year of writing.

Come on people - let’s do this!

PS :New photos up on my Flickr site .