New developments ...

in our backyard

A milestone reached..

Well specifically in the bay area, buying a house is considered more than just a milestone. It's a life time of savings put down on a mere 1600 sq feet of land that binds you for 30 years. Yes, if buying a house is an 'American Dream', that dream has been fulfilled. Now comes the real nightmare of maintaining the house, maintaining the backyard, making the mortgage payments, property taxes etc etc. Having said that, the pleasure of living and decorating your own house is a truly enjoyable experience. Well, we consider ourselves settled given the bare essentials have been unpacked and stowed away. The rest still lies in the garage, which is a real spoling factor. Garage is the prime real-estate in a house. You suddenly have this whole another area for your storage and I mean storage since the cars can stay in the drive way. Suddenly, you shop at Costco and all extras land in the garage, all the unnecessary furniture, all the shelves of Engineering books that you never read etc etc. It scares me when I talk to people and they say they haven't unpacked stuff from their garage in more than 5 years now. I hate to imagine being in the same state 5 years from now and I know I will be exactly in that state. Well that's for later. For now, a new beginning....in a whole new house.

iPod Nano

I just happened to chance upon the latest iPod Nano unveiled by Apple and I am so completely fascinated by it. That makes a regular iPod look like a brick in comparison(no offense but seriously!). I can't wait to offload my iPod mini so I can jump on the nano bandwagon. Any takers?

The Half Blood Prince..

I finally finished the 672 page Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the latest in the Harry Potter series. This has definitely been a more interesting read than any of the previous ones with more twists and turns that keep you asking for more. As the story unveils, the plot surely gets darker preparing readers for the final gruesome battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort. I think the most fascinating part of the book is how delicately the author deals with emerging romantic relationships and hormonal behaviours as the students enter their teenage years.
Surely this one has left me eagerly waiting for the next one....

I feel so small..

Literally speaking, I have felt small many times in life...all those years in school being resigned to sitting in the first row, traveling in a crowded train at peak hours dangling my head between people's shoulders or watching a street show and having to push myself right in the front to get a clear view of the entertainer. Life is full of such instances when you are 5 feet 1". Well for once, I feel so small and it really isn't about being 5 feet 1" at all. It is about feeling small and vulnerable in wake of nature inflicted disasters. We spend all those years securing ourselves for our futures and all it takes is one wild slap from nature and we are reduced to smithereens. Makes you wonder how vulnerable we really are. While the media has been flooding us with continuous images of New Orleans since the disastrous hurricane Katrina struck the coast, it has been hard to evade some of these bothering questions. Is the earthquake in San Fracisco next? If there is one, are we really prepared for it? The people of New Orleans had a 7 day warning before the hurricane hit, SF won't even have that luxury. Well, for once I plan to take some action and get a earthquake survival kit this weekend, if there is anything like that at Target or WalMart I hope.

Are you an interesting person?

Today at lunch time there was an interesting discussion on kinds of people that others classify as 'interesting'. This came up in reference to various interactions people had at OSCON with many prominent and industry leading specialists as well as other seemingly common people they met. For e.g. they refered to this one guy being very interesting because he had written the cartoon series on some obscure and abstract topics like Einstein's theory of relativity, big bang theory etc, something along the lines of Larry Gonick's History of the Universe series. There was this other person who has traveled to 13 countries researching on how cultural aspects play a big role in the adoption of the design principles. How coke had to change its traditional red can to a different color in some countries because it was considered inauspicious. And then there are all these other people pursuing obscure hobbies like origami and create wonders with it (someone brought a big cuckoo clock made with origami for a demo at OSCON). This and many other similar tales really made me wonder. Would my life sound anything this 'interesting' when mentioned?

OSCON this week..

Most OSAF people are off at OSCON this week. I had to cancel out last minute due to other competing priorities. I was just reading people's blogs and reports on various tutorials they attended. Anthony Baxter's Effective Python Programming seems to have been a hot favorite. Today was Ted's tutorial on Programming in Chandler where he covered how to extend Chandler to add additional features. We now have 3 extensions prebuilt in Chandler; an RSS Reader,a Flickr parcel to look up photos based on tags and the Amazon wishlist parcel to query someone's Amazon's wishlist based on the email address. There was also a Cosmo (OSAF's WebDAV server implementation) demo by Brian Moseley at the CalDAV panel where we also demoed interoperability with other CalDAV servers like Mozilla's and RPI's. Overall looks like all the presentations and demos from the OSAF side went well. Last 2 months of work has finally paid off!

End of an era..

Yes, I finally got around watching the entire Star Wars series in sequence. I waited all this time before watching episode III just because I needed to refresh parts I and II. I enjoyed watching the series this time given the continuity. Took me almost 2 months to finish all the 6 parts but it was worth it. I have to say, my favorites were parts 1, 3, 5 and 6. Somehow the others seemed like fillers. Well, unlike a generation of people who grew up with Star Wars, I have to admit I can't call myself a big Star Wars fan. Let this not sound like a blasphemy! I hope I don't lose friends over this confession.

Moor's Last Sigh...

After my trip to Spain and having visited the enchanting 'Alhambra' in Granada, quite coincidentally there were references to it in 2 of the books I have read since then. The one in 'History of the Universe' series part III as they discuss the history of Spain and how the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille conquered Granada and drove the last of the Nasrid Sultans/Moor Kings from there. The beautiful Alhambra was the palace or the royal court of the Moor Kings in Granada. The Moor dynasty bore 20 kings until King Boabdil was forced to surrender to the catholic kings. To avoid humiliation, he escaped from Alhambra in the nite on his horse through a tiny pass which is still called 'El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro' (the last sigh of the Moor). It is believed that the King uttered his last sorrowful exclamation as he turned his eyes from taking their last farewell gaze from Alhambra. Coincidentally, Salman Rushdie's 'Moor's Last Sigh' covers some of the same ground in the historical context of the novel. The story revolves around the protagonist, Moraes Zogoiby or Moor, who is a direct descendant of King Boabdil and whose ancestors fled Spain to avoid persecution and generations later found themselves in India. Truly riveting how Rushdie weaves the story around history of Spain and more modern India. I guess I enjoyed the book a lot because I could relate to both the references now.

Traveling to Dallas and Houston..

I am traveling to Dallas and Houston for a week, coming back next wednesday. So blogging might be light to none. Have a good long weekend!

'You've got to find what you love', Jobs says

This is the text of the Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I found this extremely moving and inspiring and worth sharing with all friends.

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

OSAF in the Boston Globe..

A great front page article about Mitch and OSAF, along with the lunchtime picture!
A non-flattering side of me in the picture ...sigh!

Software knight Kapor takes up new quest

Mars Spectacular!

For all those astronomy fans who have dreamt to be on Mars, here's a chance to get the closest to it. Quoted from an article sent by a friend..

"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next,
Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the
closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time
Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs
on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars
has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as
long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to
within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the
brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and
will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will
be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at
10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will
rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. .
That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in
recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see
Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month."

Les Miserables

This saturday we went to see the musical Les Miz. I had set my expectations low knowing it was a 1500 page novel by Victor Hugo being rendered into a 3 hour musical. Having read the english translation of the novel which goes into intricate details of the pain and suffering of the bourgeois leading on to the French revolution in the 18th century, I wondered if this musical would do any justice to it. But I saw amazed me beyond words. I have to say, this is by far the best musical I have seen. The outstanding performances by the cast, the melodious vocals, heart warming music by the orchestra and the extravagant sets made this a memorable experience. It is no wonder that the show has stood the test of time by running successfully for over 18 years now. Music lovers, don't miss this extravaganza!

10-hour wait, 3-sec hug

That's exactly the headlines on today's San Francisco Chronicle. While the picture on the front page looked like a middle-aged Indian woman hugging a white kid, I had to be sure I was seeing it right. And what I saw really surprised me. Here it is, right here in the bay area, a spiritual Indian Guru who goes by the name 'Amma' (meaning mother), hugging her followers en masse. She is apparently the spiritual master of thousands in US and Europe, most of whom are non-Indians. And then there is ofcourse the long article about Indian spiritual mysticism that has lured westerners for years. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 70s who had the starry reputation of spiritually guiding the Beatles, Swami Muktananda, Rajneesh, Swami Prabhupada(ISKCON) all have had wide follower base in western countries. While living in India I had always believed Indians to be the more spiritual & superstitious kind, who believed in the supernatural, who believed in the outer elements, who believed in spiritual masters for changing the course of their fates etc etc. And now when I am here, I see no difference. Though the level of faith following is different, in the sense it uses more high-sounding words like 'transcedental meditation', 'awareness of the being' , 'the art of living' , at the very core are we all the same? Still seeking answers to questions we can't answer? Do we all need Gurus to instill faith and show us the right path? Or are we just terribly lost and desperately seeking to hold on to anyone who promises to show us the light?

OSCON is coming up..

O'Reilly Open Source Convention is coming up. It is scheduled for Aug 1-5. Even though I wanted to attend it this year, due to other competing priorities I will have to pass. Some of the notable speakers include: Mitchell Baker from Mozilla Foundation, Jonathan Schwartz from Sun and ofcourse our very own Mitch Kapor who will be talking about CalDAV, the new calendar sharing standard. There are a few tutorial sessions, the advanced Python tutorial by Anthony Baxter as well as idioms talk by Alex Martelli. Ted Leung from OSAF will be giving a presentation on how to build parcels(extensions) for Chandler.

This will be a good occasion to meet lot of our volunteers in person!

Giants v/s Kansas City Royals

I didn't believe people when they said the SBC Ball park had wifi access. I am currently sitting in the stadium, watching the game of Giants v/s KC Royals (Giants winning 4 to 0) and writing this blog. Enjoying this moment while Giants are still winning (I hear that doesn't happen often). Given baseball is a game where generally much doesn't happen, this can be very useful. I just got my 4th tutorial on baseball rules and terminology from my colleagues (and I am sure to forget them by the next time I am here). Well it's OSAF's day at the game so I better get back to bonding with my colleagues.
Here's a picture I took from my camera phone and uploaded to flickr and added to my blog, all while sitting in the stadium.

This American Life..

Last weekend on my way to an errand, I happened to hear an episode of 'This American Life' on NPR hosted by Ira Glass. If you've never heard this series on NPR, you are missing something! At a time when the subject of seperation of church and state is at the core, this episode hosted two stories about people who suddenly realize they're the only ones around who value the seperation and are attacked by the local press and the politicians for their views. In act two, Julia Sweeney, tells her story of how her faith began to crack after a careful reading of the Bible. It's story is excerpted from her play, 'Letting go of God'. What came as a surprise were some excerpts from the Bible that she read on the show. For someone like me who hasn't ever read the holy book(and heard even fewer stories even from my mom who was a catholic before marraige), I had the impression it had stories that instilled love, care, devotion etc (remember phrases like 'Love Thy Neighbor like yourself' , 'When someone slaps you on one cheek, give the other etc). But I was indeed taken aback with some of them. I believe a lot has been said about the stories being symbolic and not to be interpreted literally but this incident has made me curious enoughto add it to my list of books to read at some point.

SUN invites Apple to use Solaris 10

On the eve of the big announcement by Steve Jobs about Apple switching to Intel processors, here's an offer from Jonathan Schwartz :

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20050605

Creative Commons..

For the past one year we have been sharing our office space on 543 Howard Street with another non-profit organization called Creative Commons. All I knew for the longest time was they were an offshoot from Stanford, a bunch of Stanford Law School graduates who had gotten together to do some ground-breaking work. Today we had an inter-entity meeting where each entity show cased their work. We had our usual Chandler demo from the OSAF side. It was quite interesting to hear about Creative Commons, a non-profit that offers flexible copyright for creative work in music, literature, art etc. While regular copyright is based on "all rights reserved", creative commons license allows for "some rights reserved". This allows fledgling artists to share, collaborate and create new stuff with their and other's work. Recently Yahoo! announced beta version of the new Yahoo! search for Creative Commons and our friends at Mozilla have also added support in the latest version of Firefox to display CC licenses of sites as you go thru them. So next time you see the CC license on a website, remember our friendly folks in San Francisco.

An indian wedding and an oil painting..

We attended a highly elaborate and distinctly colorful Indian wedding of one of Viral's friend/distant cousin this weekend. The wedding and the pre-functions spanned over 3 days. People were dressed in the most exotic outfits, ranging from traditional saris to chaniya-cholis to more modernist indo-western outfits. The amazing medley of colors has inspired my next oil painting. I am using a palette of warm colors consisting of red, yellows and oranges, with designs inspired from a few lace and batik fabrics I got from India. I am experimenting with a new design theme so am a little anxious to see how it turns out. Hopefully I will have a good picture to post in a few weeks. I also ordered the first 2 in the series of Larry Gonick's History of the Universe series on Amazon today. I can hardly wait for those to arrive.

Chandler demo at the "D" conference

Well, our efforts have paid off! The Chandler demo at the "D" conference (Wall Street Journal's technology and media extravaganza) went really well. We worked quite hard last week to setup a live working demo on Mitch's laptop to showcase all the cool calendaring features, including sharing and synching calendars thru' a webDAV server. Mitch announced at the staff meeting that it was welcomed with enormous enthusiam. While both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs could not stay back till the Chandler presentation, we sure hope other people from both the camps had some good stories to take back. Also, this means it has just raised the bar on our next release of Chandler.
Further details on Mitch's blog.. (May 29th entry).

9 days in Spain

We just returned from a wonderful 9 day trip to Spain. For someone whose knowledge of Spain was only limited to knowing it's delightful cuisine consisting of Tapas and Paellas, the trip was a real education in history and culture of Spain. A country that underwent multiple conquests from Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Jews and Muslim rulers with each civilization leaving it's distinct mark in the architecture of the forts and palaces built at that time. Alcazar in Seville, Alhambra in Granada and Le Mezquita in Cordoba are fine examples of that. This comes in sharp contrast to urban life in Barcelona which is way-more more westernized, fun-filled and throbbing with life and activity. Here's how we divided our time between Barcelona and the more historical districts of southern Spain:

1. Day 1 - Barcelona
Took leisurely walk along La Rambla, the most famous street of Barcelona for getting a good taste of it's friendly and lively atmosphere. This pedestrian boulevard lined with cafes, bars, shops and ethnic restaurants is usually buzzling with activity well past the midnite. Next, stop was the the old Gothic Quarter consisting of narrow, winding streets, quaint little plazas and wonderful structures from the city's golden age. Also visited Port Vell , Barcelona's old port at the bottom of La Rambla with a lovely view of the harbor and the water.

2. Day 2 - Barcelona
We took the Bus Turistica to visit all of Antoni Gaudi's (one of Spain's most inventive architects) landmark architecture creations. This included the Casa Mila' (La Pedrera) - an apartment complex built by Gaudi that is highly inspired by natural elements like light, water etc; La Sangrada Familia - a neo-gothic cathedral inspired and designed by Gaudi that is still under construction after more than 100 years since its start and the landscaping work at Park Guell.The highlight of the day was inarguably the spontaneous dance performance by the locals in Park Guell.

3. Day 3 - Fly to Seville
We visited the magnificient Cathedral Barcelona in the Old Gothic Quarter, ate lunch at a local street side cafe on La Rambla and left for Seville, Andalucia's biggest and most exciting city. We reached Seville in the evening, checked into our hotel and took a stride along it's quaint, winding streets and lovely squares lined with flowers and orange trees. The highlight of the day was the Flamenco dance show at a local bar called Los Gallos in city's most characteristic square called Plaza de Santa cruz.

4. Day 4 - Seville
We visited the two main attractions of Seville namely the Cathedral (and the Giralda) and the Alcazar palace. The cathedral in Seville is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and overall 3rd largest after St. Peter's in Vatican and St. Paul's in London.

5. Day 5 - Drive to Granada
We drove 3 hours from Seville to reach Granada. Visited the downtown, Plaza de Nuevo and St. Anne's Cathedral. We took a late nite bus ride to Albayzin (country side) and went up to St. Nicholas's square on the hilltop to catch a spectacular view of the Alhambra in the moonlight.

6. Day 6 - Alhambra, Granada
This fortress come palace is looks like something taken off from an exotic fairly tale book. From outside, its red fortress dominate the Granada skyline from its hilltop perch. Inside the Alhambra, you're in for a treat, especially in the marvellously decorated and carved emirs' palace , the Palacio Nazaries. It is considered one of the most impressive Muslim building work in Europe with its intricately carved stone and marble walls and wooden ceilings.

7. Day 7 - Drive to Cordoba
The day was dedicated to the magnificient Le Mezquita, this unique structure comprising of 16 the century cathedral built over an ancient mosque. You see the harmony between the original Islamic structure and the Christian alterations made thereafter. The highlight was the delicately carved prayer niche called mihrab whose arch is superbly decorated with mosaic flower motifs and inscriptions from the Quran.

8. Day 8 - Drive back to Seville
Visited the Plaza de Espana in Seville and took the flight back to Barcelona.

Well that marked the end of a wonderful trip to Spain and life is back to it's gruelling routine.

Tiger is in the house...

Today I got my copy of Mac OSX 10.4 "Tiger" and upgraded my powerbook to the new version. The upgrade was suprisingly simple and straightforward. My favorite is the Spotlight feature, an instant search capability that dynamically limits results as you type the text. I am guessing this is Apple's answer to Microsoft's desktop search engine designed to ship with Longhorn. If you want to be instantly impressed, try the new Dashboard application launched with Tiger. It comes with 3 widgets built in: Calculator, Date-Time and Weather. You can add additional widgets by dragging them from the Dashboard sidebar. For e.g I added the Flight Tracker widget that helps you to track flights of all the airlines using a single app. Ain't that cool?
Besides that, there's the iChat AV that now supports audio-video chat and is compatible with open source jabber IM as well as AIM. Now I have to figure out a way to get my hands on an iSight camera to try out the 3-way video conferencing.
I also ran the latest Chandler code on Tiger and it came up with no additional tweaks.

Hotel Rwanda..

In a world where basic comforts of life have been taken for granted, this movie comes as a brutal realization of how people have battled and died in nations consumed in political and ethnic strife. The conflict between the Hutu and the Tutsis tribes that led to the 800,000 killings of the Tutsis by the ruling Hutu government in Rwanda is a devastating example of that. Rather intense for a friday evening viewing but surely a good one.

A poet's words..

Here are some inspiring words of an urdu poet that I recently came across that I thought was worth sharing:

Khudi ko kar buland itna
Ki har taqdeer se pehley
Khuda bandey se khud poochhey
Bata teri raza kya hai

Which means: Allow yourself to become so great
That, God before He writes your destiny
(Feels the need) to ask you
What your desire is (How you would like your destiny to be)

Big Sur Marathon...

Recently I met an ex-colleague from Chicago who flew down all the way to San Francisco to run the Big Sur Marathon. Kudos to him, he finished the race in 3 hrs and 26 min, his best time ever and his third marathon in the last 1.5 years. The question is what really motivates one to run the marathon? It is the journey or making it to the finish line? Is it the adventure of taking up something that requires months of rigorous training and physical discipline or purely driven by the competitive spirit of making it in better time than the last run. Why do I know people who never stop at one and most go on to running more than one marathon in a lifetime. Does the fact that they even participate make them better than thousands others who don't even try? And again, is it for everybody? I have been struggling with these questions and many more. Well, then again I am not much of a runner, more of a brisk walker, and that could be the short answer to it all. But I do want to run a marathon at some point, at my own pace maybe. Hopefully some day....

Here are some gorgeous pictures of the big Sur landscape. If not for anything the stunning landscape could be a good motivation for one.






Don't call, just 'skype'

Just when I had completely written off the whole internet telephony, something like 'Skpe' comes along and blows you over. This really cool software has entered our day to day lives without making much of even a tinkle. It's super easy installation and simple user interface has made it a tool of choice esp at work for making those long calls to remote colleagues for lengthy design and technical discussions. I tried it with a friend yesterday and the connection was so clear over high bandwidth internet that I have decided to try it with a few more people. And the silver lining is it is free as long as you are calling from a computer to a computer! Go Skype!!

From a different story, Apple is getting sued over using Tiger for it's 10.4 release by a software firm that has trademarked Tiger, TigerDirect etc. Hmmm, why did it wait till one day before the much awaited release of Tiger before suing Apple, remains to be seen.

Planning for Spain..

The trip to Spain is right around the corner and we haven't been left with much time to do all the planning. Charmaine and Sudhir who just got back from their tour, and Andi and Philippe from work had some good suggestions on what places to visit, where to stay etc. Our barebone itinerary is now ready: Barcelona, Seville, Rhonda, Granada and Cordoba. It's only when we got around to looking at the map did we realize how HUGE Spain was and how little we could cover in 8 days. Finally as of last nite our hotel, car and airline reservations are all done. I feel all this detailed planning does take away the excitement of an unplanned adventure. Oh well, that's for another time and age. For now I want to be sure the hotel rooms have A.C and the bathrooms are attached. Like Viral says, I like adventure only as long as they don't involve compromising living comforts.

The new food pyramid...

While all these years many health and diet conscious people based their diets on the food pyramid, the recent study by USDA has completely invalidated the old system of food structure and replaced it with a swanky new colorful pyramid with a sporty figure climbing steep steps on the side of the pyramid, with the slogan: "Steps to a healthier you". Like many of you, I felt completley cheated that something that that was so religiously referred to by people for many years had been overnight turned around. Will this make me question the next study result they come out with...absolutely. It is only a matter of time before this will be replaced by another square, circle, triangle or God knows what.

Beautiful Bodega Bay ..

It would be rather unfair to not comment on this beautiful bay area vacation spot. Ideal for all kinds of outdoor and water activities from hiking to sailing, Bodega bay comes at number 1 on my list of best places to visit for outdoor activities in the bay area. I know some might contend that Monterey Bay and Big Sur are better, I think they still are no match to Bodega's pristine beauty supported by the lack of commercial tourists. And it surprises me how little is known about this place just 2 hours north of San Francisco. Luckily we had read a review in the Travel section of San Francisco chronicle some 2 years ago which peaked our interest. Together with about 10 other friends we visited this naturally rich and luxurious location and rented a nice 5 bedroom house on the golf course and walking distance to the beach. It was one of those weekends where we packed more activity than we would in an entire month. Since we got a good head start, we hit the beach by about 10:30 am and played dodge ball, then the others followed and we played Cricket, Volleyball and Dodgeball again. By evening, every muscle in my body was hurting but only till we discovered the Hot Tub at the back and then we knew no pain.
Well, for anyone ever coming to visit, make sure you add this to your list.

Let the world change you ...and you can change the world

That's the message from this hugely entertaining and heart warming motion picture 'Motorcycle Diaries'. The movie is a dramatization of motorcyle road trip across South America by Ernesto(Che) Guevara in his youth that showed him his life's calling. Well, the movie got me all interested to know more about the life of this mystery man who is so little known in the western world but had so much to contribute in the third world socialist movements.
He was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerilla leader. He was a member of Fidel Castro's movement that seized power in Cuba in 1959. After the Cuban revolution he incited other movements in Congo and Bolivia. He was later captured by the CIA and put to death. After his death he became a hero of socialist revolutionary movements.
The movie is a great tribute to this little known Hero. The gorgeous travelogue depiction of diverse Latin America(Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru) calls for a big-screen watch.

Housing woes and more..

The housing demand in the bay area has reached an all time high. Single family homes in Santa Clara county have gone up by 21% since last year. This makes non-home owners like us completely priced out of the market. Lets see where this real estate surge is headed while we patiently wait and watch.

A colleague recently pointed me to this interesting search site: http://www.yagoohoogle.com/
which combines the results from Yahoo! and Google and displays it in 2 different panes on the screen. Talk about creative projects!

Last week there was an interesting posting on slashdot.org about a program that some students at MIT have writen called 'SCIgen - An automatic CS paper generator'
The program generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. Well, this is not the interesting part. What's amazing is that one of their randomly generated papers was accepted to WMSCI 2005. The students are now looking for funding for presenting the paper ..hehe.

Spring is here!

This was one of the most pleasant weekends after weeks of rain. Viral and I have decided to make the most of this spring and summer by doing a lot of outdoors stuff. It was volleyball in Sacramento last weekend, followed by tennis this friday and basketball on sunday. Thanks to the beautiful weather and our enthusiastic friends, hopefully we can do this on a regular basis.

I think we finally have the verdict on Google Gulp. Viral, you were right, it was a silly april fool's joke from Google. blah!

Chandler 0.5 is live!

I have been looking for the right start to my blogging venture and what better than to announce the release of Chandler 0.5. We are ready to showcase the last 2 months of work focused on core calendaring features for individual and collaborative needs. The stability has been a lot better on all the 3 platforms (Mac, windows and linux) than the last release. Feel free to download the product and play around. For more information see the Chandler 0.5 Readme document.

A bunch of OSAFers are back from PyCon and I have spent a good time of the day today reading their reports on the various sessions. We had a few sprints at PyCon where developers wrote Flicker and Delicious parcels on Chandler and we got a demo of that at the Thrusday's staff meeting. It was very impressive.

On the personal front, we just planned a trip to Spain and southern France in the middle of May so I am eagerly looking forward to the break.