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.