The Lonesome Road

Last morning I “woke” up around 8:30 AM. Well, actually, I tried to. My eyes felt like they were glued shut - but my body refused to sleep any more. By the time I actually got up and brushed my teeth, things seemed to be back to normal - i.e eyes open (check), body working (check).

I sat in front of the laptop to check my mail and see who was online. Somehow, I just could not concentrate on the screen. I wanted to be anywhere but in front of the comp. I tried turning on the TV as well, but it did no good. I spoke with a couple of people (online) and decided it was time to get off the comp. Time : 10 AM.

So, I took my book (Runelords - David Farland) and resumed my reading. I think I read all of 3 pages before I fell asleep again. Not that the book is boring. It’s a nice book with a very diferent explanation of magic.

Let me digress a little. The book is a fantasy novel which describes a battle between the four elements of nature i.e Earth, Fire, Wind and Water. What I liked is the rune system. A person may take endowments (gifts) from other people. For instance a person may endow another his strength. The person who receives gets the strength of two people. However, the person who gave up his strength becomes as weak as a baby. The same for any other attribute that is given up. The Kings and Dukes of the land take a large number of endowments to protect their kingdoms and are called Runelords. The people they take endowments from are called Dedicates and are cared for. Also, if a dedicate dies, the receiver loses the part of the endowment that the dedicate provided. For instance, if a dedicate provided wit, a receiver may lose the memories that he stored in the dedicate’s brain.

Of course, the rest of the story is standard fantasy. One person wants to take over the world and there is a chosen one (The Earth King) who has to oppose him.

Anyway, the next thing I know is the phone is ringing and it’s 2 PM. Spoke to my cousin and decided to check the mail. Good mail - the library found the book I wanted. Straken - Book 3 of the High Druid of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

This could not be ignored. So I heaved myself out of bed, took a bath and headed off for the library. The weather was not in a co-operative mood and I was blown all over the place by the wind.

Came home and promptly went to sleep - again. This time I came out of my stupor at around 8:30 PM. Just in time to help the guys make dinner. Dinner finished, I came back to my room, turned on the TV - and went to sleep again. Time : 10:30 PM.

Woke up at 1 AM. Shifted around till I was comfortable. And - you guessed it - slept. Just woke up. Hopefully, this day will not go the same way.

Until next time - catch your zzzzzzzz’s!

Yes, once in a while I feel like writing bad poetry.

If you don’t like it - deal with it. Better yet - drop me a comment saying how much you hate it. The choice is yours and yours alone

Until next time - keep on rhyming!

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Aztec Sun Disc, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

Psst :
1] Longish post due to a lot of photos
2] Those who want to see the photos only, go here
3]50+ photos uploaded today! Crossed 250 and 300 photos - all in one shot. Woohoo!

The weather gods have decided to be kind to us this weekend (for me the weekend begins on Friday. Don’t be jealous ). Temperatures over the last two days have been around 20 degrees celcius. It’s such a nice feeling to walk around without a jacket and gloves. It’s like freedom!

Anyhow, today’s program began with lunch at the Popover Cafe. Great place - a little small - but amazing food. They are famous for (as the name says) Popovers. If you go there, I can recommend the Pop-Art Sandwich over a popover. Delicious.

Lunch done, the AMNH beckoned. I still have to get used to the fact that things are BIG in this country. The AMNH has four floors of goodies! Here’s the dude who gave us our tickets :

Taking that as a promise of good things to come we moved on. First stop - The Hall of Bio Diversity. It’s a slightly creepy looking place. Low light and all. But there are some amazing displays in there. Like this :

They even have an full size recreation of a giant squid hanging around!

After taking a fill of that, we moved on to the ocean view. The centerpiece here is a life size recreation of a whale. It was dark in there, so I had to touch up this pic a bit. It isn’t the whole whale, but it will give you an idea of the size. The tiny dot you see is the eye of the whale :

The entire room is lit in a soft blue light to represent the ocean depths. Beautiful. Also check out the display of the Sperm Whale fighting off a Giant Squid. Really cool. Also worth a special mention is the Dolphin exhibit.

We moved on from the ocean depths to the past i.e The Dinosaur exhibits. I don’t know about you guys - but there is something about these huge lizards that always makes them seem larger than life

Ok. I will stop with the stupid jokes.

Here’s a size comparion photo. Long necked dinosaur next to tiny dude :

From there on, it was three halls full of dinosaurs. Bones, reconstructions and evolutionary mechanisms. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Didn’t know if I should read the displays or take photos!
Here is a really special mention from the dino exhibit.

What say??

I also learned today that there were two types of mammoth. There were the wooly and the non-wooly mammoth. Nice. The dinosaur exhibits are huge and occupy almost the entire fourth floor. By the way, they also have a real dinosaur egg that you can touch!

After seeing - and being dwarfed by the skeletons, I was thankful that these guys decided not to stick around. Self preservation and all that you know.

Once that was done, we moved on to the special exhibit. The AMNH is showing a Darwin exhibit through the 29th of this month (if I remember correctly). No pics here cos it’s not allowed. Go see it for yourself!

Then came the animals of africa exhibit.The funny part is, a couple of days back, I was reading Catch me a Colobus by Gerald Durrell - and there they were :

Of course, then I had to see the Asian animals exhibit. Not too many of those though. I thought the tiger stuffing they had in the Bio Diversity room looked a lot better than the tigers they had in the Asian animals display. You decide for yourself.

That’s all the time we really had today. There’s so much more to see. Planning to make another trip there in the near future.

I leave you with a picture of the museum exterior :

Until next time - happy exploring!
PS : The first picture is an Sun disc - which if I remember correctly, is also a calender.

When I fire up my browser (Firefox), the page that I usually head to first is the Gmail website.

Over the last week or so, I have noticed that if I have an open tab or two and then open Gmail in a new tab, Firefox crashes. As a smart person, I have the session restore extension installed. It manages to catch the failed session and restore it. Unfortunately, the reloaded session also crashes.

The other thing is that the crashing does not depend on the site/sites that is/are open in the other tab(s). I have tried it out with different sites and the same result - a crash.

If I let the system crash and then don’t restore the session, things are back to normal. I’m using Firefox 1.5.0.1. Anyone else with the same issues?

Until next time - don’t get bugged!

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Bird in the braches (again), originally uploaded by shadowfall.

This post is a couple of days late actually. Can’t be helped. For some odd reason, assignments seem to take priority over blogging. Am still trying to figure out why.

In any case, I have a new found respect for bird photographers. Was making lunch on sunday when I heard bird calls from outside. I grabbed my trusty camera and decided to take some snaps.

Now, the weather is getting warmer - but Sunday was cold and windy. So there I was freezing away in the wind, trying to take some snaps. I got in a few good ones. Really like the ones of the bird in red. I only wish I could have taken a few photos without all those branches in the way.

For the most part, the birds were stationary on their perches, so the shots were easy. However, there were these gulls - beautiful birds. All white with black tipped wings. Unfortunately for me, they seemed to be more interested in gliding rather than perching. I spent half an hour standing in the wind to get a clean photo.

I got a lot of photos of the sky.

I also got very annoyed.

There are a couple of snaps I did get with the gulls. However, they are not as zoomed in as I would have liked.

I also managed to get a video of the bird that you see above. You can catch it here. I don’t like the degradation in quality - but I guess it cannot be helped for free online storage.

We started with the red, and we’ll end with black. Here are photos of a black bird (no idea on the species).

All the photos you see here (and more) can be found on my Birds and animals photoset . For other photos, click on the Flickr badge or here .

Until next time - happy warbling!

My friend and I went grocery shopping today. By the time we finished picking up all that we needed, there were 6 bags filled with “stuff that we really need” and 2 bags full of stuff that we actually needed (read milk, rice, etc).

Now, since we are poor students, we don’t own a car. The grocery store is a 20-25 minute walk in good weather conditions. It’s a lot longer with 8 heavy bags and a stiff wind.

And we had to take a detour to return a book at the library.

Anyway, here’s the wierd experience part. I was telling my friend “I hope someone gives us a lift. My shoulders are killing me.” My friend didn’t reply - he was too busy lifting his four bags. So, we were crossing this parking lot and a car pulled up next to me. The front passenger side window rolled down, and the lady called out to me.

Car Lady (looking slightly horrified at the weight I was lifting) : Hello

Me (Feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders) : Hello

Car Lady (sounding concerned) : Do you have a car?

Me (sounding hopeful - I was still far from home) : No.

Car Lady (rolling up window) : Ok.

And off they went looking for a parking space. Guess that’s life.

Believe me - this is the second time in two days that I have stumbled home fighting the wind. Today had the added fun of weight lifting. When I dropped the bags, I can swear I almost felt a moment of weightlessness. I’m glad it’s over.

Until next time - plan your shopping wisely!

I went to college for some work this afternoon. Before leaving, I checked the weather report. It said : -2 C (feels like -9). An extended forecast revealed the same pattern of high winds and low temperatures would prevail through the day.

When I left the house though, the weather was quite pleasant. The sun was shining brightly (note - I did not say warmly). Made me think that the weather dudes were being pessimistic about the temperature.

I finished my work at 5:30 PM and was soon at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to arrive. 5:45 came and went and there was no sign of the bus. The warmth retained from sitting in a heated area was soon leached away by the wind. All of us were looking at the road, praying for deliverance from the cold and the wind. But it was not to be. I was standing wearing a thick T-shirt, a sweater, a jacket, leggings and a thick pair of jeans. Also a winter cap (the one that covers the ears), gloves, and thick woolen socks. And I was cold. Really cold.

The bus finally decided to show up at 6:25. I have never been happier to see a bus in my life. Unfortunately, the heating system on the bus had decided to give up the unequal struggle with the atmospreheric conditions. I will not say the bus was freezing - but it didn’t do much to warm me either.

I thought the worst of my journey home was over.

I was wrong.

The walk from the bus stop to my house is between 8 - 10 minutes. I never knew 10 minutes could seem so long. The tone was set when I stepped off the bus and was nearly blown off my feet. Things did not get better from there.

As I continued moving (struggling) forward against the wind, I passed a sign flashing the temperature. I did not want to see it - but curiosity killed the cat - and the meter showed 25F (around -4 C). If you think that is less - please factor in the wind chill and the temperature plummets to -13C.

So, here I am, manfully struggling onwards - only to confront a new problem. The ground, thank’s to yesterdays snow, rain and sleet is covered with a thin layer of ice. Really slippery ice. Imagine walking while being pushed around by the wind and then having to look where you put your feet. Long ten minutes.

Finally, I saw the welcoming lights of home. In my hurry, I quickened my pace, stepped on the sidewalk - and encountered ICE! Only luck, and some nifty hand-and-footwork saved me from a nasty fall.

The worst part is when you step inside the house and start to thaw out - it hurts! As the circulation is restored to the frozen parts of the body, they start complaining - loudly. Still, I am glad to be back home.

Plan for this weekend : Stay indoors!

Until next time - believe the weather forecast!

I woke up today hearing that there was a severe weather alert with a day of sleet and snow. Even so, I woke up hoping for a day that looked like the photo above. What I got can be summarized below.

Depressing grey skies and a bunch of forlorn birds. And a lot of snow, rain and sleet. In all possible combinations.

Well, every grey day has a silver lining somewhere. It seems that my college thought that the weather conditions were severe enough to justify cancelling evening classes. This means we have to go shovel the snow tomorrow. Ah well….

So here I sit, opening a book on C# - assignments do not depend on the weather.

But my mood - oh that’s like the top pic

Until next time - Shovel it!

This is one of the new Mac Minis on the Apple line up.

The problem is that I am sorely tempted to buy it - even though I have a perfectly good laptop. Why? Well, first of all it’s a Mac - well, that’s not exactly a reason. But who cares - human beings are illogical creatures.

For those not in the know, here are the feature specs :

Buddha wisely said - Want is the cause of all suffering. I can tell you - he’s right.

Until next time - keep wishing!

Will make this a short post - have a mid-term today.

The smart guys at Encyclopodia have come up with a way to transfer Wikipedia onto iPods. Thankfully they have created the trnasfer software for Windows and Linux. Find out more about it here.

Now really I gotta run.

Enjoy!
PS : I just wonder how they will handle updates….

I take (a small amount of) pride in my vocabulary. To be honest, I don’t have no idea how many words I know - but the number I know usually serve me well.

Till I play Boggle.

I suck at Boggle.

What’s Boggle? Oh - I assumed that it’s common knowledge. Boggle (the physical version) consists of a 4×4 grid. Each grid has a cube with a letter from the alphabet - one on each side placed in it. The base is then covered with a clear plastic cover - it’s like a cuboid dome - and shaken. Vigorously. Once you survive the noise assault of the shaken plastic, the dome is lifted and a 3 minute timer is started. You now have all of 3 minutes to find words.

Words can be found by connecting adjecent letters horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The only prohibition is a letter may not be reused. Minimum word length is usually 4. Scoring is simple. You and your opponent(s) compare lists at the end of 3 minutes. Every common word is crossed out. Then for every unique word points are awarded. 4 letter words = 1 point. 5 letter words = 2 points and so on. Decide a limit to be reached - and that it.

Sounds simple? The rules are. The game isn’t.

First of all you have the timer ticking away. But once you get into the groove, the timer is usually ignored. The second problem is running through combinations. You have 16 blocks on the board and each brick has 3 possible outgoing paths. I’m not saying it’s as complicated as chess - but you have to be fast to see, use and discard combinations. The best Boggle players will make words and quickly look to see if they can make multiples and use them in various tenses. For eg. Test - Tests - Tested and then similar words such as Tester.

And you better know a lot of words.

Why all this interest in Boggle? For one, I think my vocabulary is good (see article start) - but my cousin wins big time at Boggle. The rumor in the family is that she cheats - but I don’t agree with that theory. It’s all about vocabulary and pattern matching. So, today I found a Boggle game on GameHouse and downloaded it. There’s a solitary mode in it. I thought - why not. That’s where I got a bit of a beating. I’m getting 36% of the possible words on each board. Ouch. Even if you factor in the fact that this board allows 3 letter words (which I hate looking for. Consider the minimum should be four) - it’s still pretty low.

So here I sit. A little humbled - but definitely not defeated. I’m going to hit the game again and show it who’s the boss.

Until next time : Keep your mind sharp - play a word game!

My friend and I were cooking dinner today (yes, I do cook - so there) and we had to get a new can of salt.

Now, I have this thing about reading ingredients from cans. And this one boldly proclaimed itself as REAL SALT - with Iodine. I was intrigued. Iodized salt is something I am familiar with - Real Iodized salt was something new.

So, I turned the can around to see if they provided any more information. That brought me to the second piece of information : Real Salt - with 33% less Sodium. Now, I am a poor computer engineer and have not actively been reading chemistry books for the last 5 years. But some things do stick in ones mind. One of them is that common salt is made of Sodium and Chlorine. Na+ and Cl- in an electrolytic bond form NaCl i.e common, table salt.

Now, if these guys have 33% less Sodium in their “salt”, it logically (to me) suggests that there is an imbalance in the sodium/chlorine ratio. i.e it’s more like salt with free chlorine. I know that excess sodium is bad for health - but I don’t think swapping it for chlorine is a better option.

I decided to see if they provided an explanation that did not involve the presence of excess chlorine. According to their box : “unique flake shaped crystals are larger, yet lighter than cube shaped granules which help you consume less sodium with every use.”

Again, I have no concept of crytal shapes affecting the chemical composition of a molecule, but I don’t think that flakes of salt with have any less sodium than cube chaped granules. But then, that’s me.

Personally, I long for the iodized salty salt of home.

Salt ho!
[PS : Please, please do not take this article seriously. Oh - you didn’t. All right - I’ll go now.]

My grandmother passed away today.

I sit here, trying to let the words flow to take away some of the shock and disbelief. Even though I got the news early this morning, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact.

I know that in time acceptance will come, but in the interim it feels very hard to believe that someone who had so much energy is no more.

I miss her most in the small ways. Her snacks of toast and pickle. The way she would insist that my friends ate well - and try her best to stuff them. The special sweet that she would make just for me (no one made it like she did). I miss her boundless energy - she would be ready to roam all over Bombay - every day. Why? Just because she felt like it.

I miss the small things we shared : She would always pass me family news - including information about people I didn’t even know about just when I would be relaxing with a book. I would always tease her that I knew more songs of her generation than she did - I’d even play song openings are ask her to guess which song it was. She almost always did.

I’m going to miss her presence. Dignified, stong, and above all - fiercely independent.

My last conversation with her was on thursday night. And it went along lines long established.

G’Mom : Hello.
Me : Hi pati, it’s me. How are you?
G’mom : Have you eaten yet?

At that time I thought - some things will never change…

So, pati - let me end by saying Thank You. Believe me - I miss you a lot already - and I wish that I could have met you once more before I left India.

na jayate mriyate va kadacin
nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah sasvato ‘yam purano
na hanyate hanyamane sarire

For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

Until we meet again…..

There are some software with which you get so comfortable that moving away from them seems alomost painful. One of them - for me - is Winamp. Been using it for such a long time that it seems like a permanent fixture on my computer.

Then there came a time when music management seemed to be required. I wanted lists, songs arranged by certain criteria - basically the whole media manager bowl of wax. So, I started experimenting. The first one was MediaMonkey, which I used for quite some time. Worked well, but ultimately, was not for me.

Then I moved on to MusikCube - which is a nice piece of work. Supports ogg and mp3 from the get go, can play internet radio, has some nice plugins to help extend it’s functionality. But most importantly, it’s fast and very light on system resources.

I must also mention Foobar, which I did try. While it lives upto it’s claims of speed and low memory requirement, it also lacks features that I want it to have. Was a bit disappointed - specially considering the glowing reports some people wrote about it. May go back and play with it some other time.

One of the major problems I initially had with both MM and MK was that when you search for a song, they take you to a new screen - and keep you there. You will have to come back manually to the library (iTunes is better on that score). Secondly, after a search if you double click on a song, it will play the sond AND add it to now playing - and replace all that was already there. Very bugging. Thankfully, MusikCube offers an enqueue feature. Finally, I am addicted to keyboard shortcuts - they just make my life easier. MediaMonkey has none, and MusicKube has a really wierd key setting to make it work. Winamp by far has the easiest set of the lot - or it’s just that I am too used to it.

Finally, I decided - enough is enough. I need something to play music - not manage it. Downloaded and installed WinAmp, created my multiple playlists - and I am in a happy place. You just cannot beat the convenience. Press J - the search screen comes up - even if the Playlist Editor is closed. Type what you need - press play/enqueue/repeat - and there you go. Instant gratification. The annoying thing about the enqueue in MM and MK was that in these software, enqueue simply moves the song to the position following the current song. In case shuffle is on (which on my player(s), it is by default), they will NOT play that song next. Winamp will. And for all the times a song is stuck in your head, open the playlist editor, find the song and press “Q” with it selected. It will repeat that song once for every Q-press.

I just want one feature back in WinAmp. In version 3 they had this extra colomn in the Playlist Editor which kept track of all the created playlists. It was really useful as I could switch playlists at will. I don’t really care about their media library - I just want this feature re-implemented.

Until next time : “Winamp - it really whips the llama’s ass”
[PS : That’s not me - that’s what plays when you start WinAmp for the first time]

I had a great day today. Went to Manhattan to meet my cousin for brunch - and then went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It’s been a very long time since I set foot inside a musem. The last one went into was the Prince of Wales museum in Mumbai (Bombay) - and I don’t have very fond memories of it. Well, today I tried to make up for all the years of non-exposure to history and culture.

Today, in the span of 4.5 hours, I saw paintings, sculptures, castings, stone work and architecture. We started with paintings. To be very honest, paintings are not my thing. I have never been able to decipher/read what the artist is trying to convey with the medium. That being said, I do admit that some of the paintings did manage to capture my interest - though modern art will forever remain beyond the realm of my comprehension.

We were wandering around, looking for the Santiago Calatrava exhibit (more about that later) when we came across some of the Mayan and Inca section. Almost all the exhibits were made of stone or gold. One expects jewelery to be made from gold, but consider humble implements like tongs created from gold. Amazing. My favorite item in that entire display was a set of gold lime skewers - each one of a higher order of workmanship than the one before it.

Moving on, we went to the Santiago Calatrava architecture exhibit. For those not in the know, this gentleman is going to design the new WTC station and the Verizon building in Manhattan. The exhibit was astounding. Amazing designs tranlated into revolutionary architecture. His works have been known to use straight lines to create curves. The centrepiece of the exhibit was a giant wave made of staight horizontal cubical colomns. These were moved via motors to create the effect of an undulating wave - and you could see how this man translated straight lines into curves. If you have the time, definitely go see it - it’s running until March 5th.
[Click here for pictures]

The exhibit I understood the least was Robert Rauschenberg Combines. This gentleman combines paint, furniture, fabric, wood, paper, bricks, stain glass, tires….basically anything he can to create works that straddle the areas of sculpture as well as painting. Well, that’s what the plaques said. As I was walking around, I overheard one patron say to another - “Every time I look at it, I see something new”. I am happy for him - all I saw was a big mess in all the displays. But that’s probably just me.
[Click here for pictures]

After all this wandering, I wanted to see what the museum had in terms an Indian exhibit. So, off we went - and I wasn’t disappointed (well, a little). The exhibit was divided into periods and once could see the artwork from different eras of Indian history. Here’s where I was a tad disappointed. Most of the displays were Buddhist in nature. It’s not that I have anything against Buddhism, but I would have liked to see a greater representation of other artifacts. The best exhibits were in a room which had black walls and spot lighting. In that room were two statues - one of Garuda (who is Lord Vishnu’s mount) and one of Lord Vishnu. The room had the look and feel of a temple (though I don’t know if this effect was intentional). The statue of Lord Vishnu was huge - and according to the plaque, it’s the largest single piece they have in the Indian exhibit. The other display piece I liked a lot in the Indian collection was a pair of gold earrings. They were cast in a floral motif and were embellished with intricate carvings of a lion and an elephant (royal protectors). Simply stunning.

The second part of the Indian exhibit was smaller and contained stories on Alexander from a book comissioned by Emperor Akbar (not sure on this - wasn’t paying too much attention to the details of the exhibit). The display consisted of pages of the book with translations of the stories on a plaque.

One last piece - we exited via the Egyptian section. As we were entered the room leading to the exit, a piece caught our eye from across the room. It was made up of two masks and a terracotta figurine of a ram. The display got our attention as the pieces were a deep and rich shade of blue. The work on the ram was simply beautiful - it’s back was made of small blue terracotta squares.

So, that was my afternoon. An afternoon steeped in art, history and culture. If anyone from NY (resident or visitor) is reading this and has not been to the Met, I strongly urge you to go. I have plans to go back there when the weather is better - I still have not seen all that I want to. Of course, the dumbest thing I did today was not take my camera. I will rectify that situation the next time.

And what can be a better topic than this to celebrate my 200th post

To the next 100 posts - salut!