Pure Anarchy

Greek Salad recipe

2010-11-20T11:48:00.002-08:00

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon white sugar
2 1/2 cups cooked elbow macaroni
3 cups fresh sliced mushrooms
15 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup sliced red bell peppers
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 (4 ounce) can whole black olives
3/4 cup sliced pepperoni sausage, cut into strips

Directions

In a large bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, garlic powder, basil, oregano, black pepper, and sugar. Add cooked pasta, mushrooms, tomatoes, red peppers, feta cheese, green onions, olives, and pepperoni. Toss until evenly coated. Cover, and chill 2 hours or overnight.

Ingredients

1 (16 ounce) package penne pasta
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 cucumber, coarsely chopped
1 cup black olives, chopped

Directions

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling water until al dente. Drain, and rinse in cold water.
In a small bowl, mix together oil, lemon juice, basil, garlic salt, and black pepper.
In a large bowl, combine pasta, tomatoes, green pepper, onion, cucumber, and black olives. Add dressing, and toss to coat. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Recording more recipes...

2010-01-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

1. Vegetarian Enchiladas
Ingredients : Tortillas, Can of refried beans, grated mexican cheese, Enchilada sauce, taco seasoning, onions, green peppers, lettuce, guacamole, salsa.

Take a little oil, saute the onions, add taco seasoning, 2 spoons of salsa and the 3 spoons of enchilada sauce and refried beans. Mix it well.

Spread enchilada sauce on top of the tortillas, put the bean filling, wrap it up and lay it out in the baking tray and smother it with enchilada sauce.

Add grated cheese on the top and bake it for 30 mins at 350 degrees.
Add lettuce, guacamole, and sauteed onions and green peppers on the side while serving.

2. Mexican Rice

Ingredients : Rice, green peppers, onions, taco seasoning, garlic, tomatoes, cabbage, spring onions, can of refried beans

Take a little oil and saute the onions, green peppers, garlic, cabbage and spring onions.

Add taco seasoning and the can of refried beans.

Add cooked rice slowly and mix it with the gravy.

First saute the onions and garlic in oil, add sliced green peppers, spring onions, tomatoes and cabbage. Add little water and little taco sauce and ketchup. Prepare the rice separately with little salt.

Add rice little by little to the gravy mixing it as you add. Sprinkle with spring onions.

3. Paneer wraps

Ingredients : paneer cubes, flour tortillas, green coriander-mint chutney, onions, green peppers, Shaan masala for marinating, yogurt, ginger, garlic, green chilies, black salt, chaat masala

Take yogurt in a bowl and add the Shaan masala, ginger, garlic, green chilies and mix it well. Marinate the paneer pieces in this and keep it aside for about 4-6 hours.

Cut onions and green peppers into big pieces and saute them in oil and add black salt and chaat masala to it for seasoning.

Layer the paneer pieces on a baking tray or put them on to skewers and bake them for about 20 mins till the pieces are brown and paneer has really softened up.

Take the tortillas , spread some chutney on it, then add the paneer pieces, onions and bell peppers and top it with black salt and chaat masala.

Wrap up the tortillas with the filling.

4. Pita Pizzas (English muffin pizzas)
Ingredients : mini pita bread or english muffins, basil pesto or marinara, garlic, zucchini, red bell pepper, mushroom, broccoli, olives, roma tomatoes, feta cheese

Finely cut the garlic, zucchini, broccoli, bell pepper, mushrooms and tomatoes.
Take a skillet, add some olive oil, add the chopped garlic and zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli and bell peppers.
Take the pita bread and apply basil pesto/marinara and lightly toast it in the oven.
Add the cooked vegetables and top it with feta cheese, tomatoes and olives and re-toast for 2-3 minutes so the feta gets crisp.

5. Burrito Bowl

guacamole:
4-6 small (or 2-3 large) avocados (depends how much you want)
2 handfuls cilantro - chopped
2 roma tomatoes diced
1 lime - juiced
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Tony Chachere's - green

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and season with garlic onion and Tony's.
Generally speaking I use about 2 tsp onion and garlic (each) and 1 TBSP
tony's (depends how spicy you like it though so maybe start out with a
little less). Let it sit for about 30 mins in the fridge for best flavor.

Cilantro-lime rice:
2 cups basmati rice
2 limes (zest and juice)
2 handfuls cilantro - chopped
Salt (1 -2 tsp kosher or sea salt) or to taste.

Cook rice according to package... 20 mins then let sit 5-10 mins (don't pick
up the lid!). Fluff cooked rice with a fork and add lime zest, juice, salt
and cilantro. Fluff again and enjoy!

Bush's black beans (straight from a can and warm in microwave or on the
stove). Add salt for added flavor if needed.

Burrito Bowl:
Rice, beans, sauted peppers and onions with taco seasoing if you like, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, cheese and guacamole... Tada!

You could also mix taco seasoning into your beans or your sour cream to give
it a little extra flare too! And using Old El Paso Taco sauce (in a bottle)
is divine!

6. Stuffed Eggplant

small eggplants - 4 or 5
1/2 cup peanuts
2 tbsp sesame seeds
chilli powder
dhania jeera powder
1/4 tsp garam masala or kitchen king masala
1 tsp tomato paste or tamarind extract
a little bit of jaggery
1/4 onion chopped (i usually don't put these since mummy does not eat but it tastes good with onions)
salt to taste

Roast peanuts for 45 sec or a min in the microwave.
Coarsely grind the roasted peanuts and til
Mix in everything else in the peanuts (except eggplants) and make a dry masala paste (you may add a tsp of water if required).
Make crosswise slits in the eggplant keeping the base intact.
Stuff the above masala in the eggplants. Save the remaining masala.
In a pressure pan, add oil and do the baghar (mustard seeds, jeera, curry leaves and hing).
Then add the eggplants, remaining masala and stir on low heat for a min or 2.
Then add 1/2 cup of water to this and put on the pressure and cook for 1 whistle. (only 1 whistle otherwise the eggplant gets overcooked).
Add some coriander leaves on the top if you like.

Movie of the year....

2009-12-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

2009 is ringing to a close and what better way to end the year than watching a wonderful, heart warming movie like the '3 Idiots'.
I watched the 3D animation flick 'Avatar' last week which was hugely raved about. Even though the special effects and the theme of the movie were quite extraordinary, it failed to leave the kind of mark '3 Idiots' did. Having read the book 'Five point someone', from which the movie's storyline is loosely adapted, I was wondering how a movie based on the sufferings and travails of the Indian engineers could possibly be an interesting movie. But the movie really transcends all speculations and once again the director Raju Hirani succeeds in making a heart warming movie with a strong message. Of course the stellar performances of Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi and Madhavan all contributed to making such a wonderful experience on screen.

The Canadian Rockies

2009-08-23T12:00:00.001-07:00

We just got back from a 6 day trip to the Canadian Rockies. Cataloging the main points of the trip here.

Day 1 : Left from San Francisco and arrived into Calgary. We stayed at the Residence Inn Marriott in downtown Calgary.

Day 2 : Left for Banff after breakfast. Arrived into Banff and visited the Johnston Canyon. We took the trail to the lower falls. Then visited Mount Norquay and stopped over a few vista points on the way.

Day 3: Took a day trip to Lake Loiuse and Moraine Lake (about 45 mins from Banff). Also visited the Takakkaw falls. Took the trail to the bottom of the falls

Day 4: Took the gondola ride to sulphur mountain. Visited Lake Minnewanka and Vermillion lake and Bow Falls.

Day 5: Drive to Jasper. Stop over at Peyto lake and Columbia Icefield (Athabasca glacier) and Bow lake.

Day 6 : Day in Jasper. Visited Maligne Canyon, Maligne lake and Athabasca Falls.

Day 7: Drive back to Calgary and visited Mistaya Canyon on the way.

Fantabulous Big Sur

2009-04-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's a shame that we have lived in the bay area for over 10 years and it is only now that we visited a fabulous place like Big Sur. Why isn't everyone making a big deal about this place? We hear about Monterey, Carmel, Yosemite but not much has been said about Big Sur. Well, the place was a real treat doubled up with great weather. We enjoyed a small hike to the pfeiffer water falls, made sand castles on the pfeiffer beach and enjoyed the plain old playing with kids in the green meadows of the park. We stayed in the Big Sur Inn lodge which is in pfeiffer state park surrounded by beautiful mountains on either sides. One of the main attractions of the area is Point Lobos which unfortunately we missed this time around. But I am happy in a way 'cos that just gives us a reason to visit this fantastic place again.

Proliferation of 'Twins'

2008-08-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

Some 10 years back I barely knew one or two families who had twins. Over the last 5 years I have known a few more. But lately the twin phenomenon seems to be going strong. Here's what I mean:
1. I worked for OSAF for 3.5 years and during that span 4 of us had twins
2. I take the kids to MyGym and among some 12 kids there are 2 sets of twins and the instructor herself has twins.
3. My kids are enrolled for a Music Class and among 8 kids there are 2 sets of twins
4. At ParentsPlace and last Friday I met 2 other moms with twins (among 15 kids)
5. Our local Mothers Club playgroup (ages 2-3) includes 2 other moms besides me with twins.

Is it that just because I have twins that I have begun to take notice of more and more twins around me or there is really some phenomenon going around that cannot be dismissed?

3 is the new 2

2008-08-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

In case you have been too busy to notice, let me tell you 3 is the new 2. Being in various classes all week with the kids and being part of the local mothers club, I meet lots and lots of moms and there is one pattern that stands out clearly. More and more families are going for 3 kids. Yes, brave ones indeed and I applaud them. I have also met moms who are having their third kid in late 30s and early 40s. I have tried prodding them to figure out what exactly motivates them to extend their families beyond 2. I haven't found a general answer except the fact that these people are just family oriented people. They enjoy babies and kids and as soon as their older kids grow up they miss having little ones running around at home and that's part of the reason. Having 2 toddlers at home, I can completely relate to them but it would take a lot more convincing to get me to have a third. I mean just the amount of work involved and support required single handedly tilts the decision in favor of no. In the past I have worked for a company in the mid-west where having more than 2 kids was the norm. Everyone around me had at least 3 or more kids. Yes, some even 5 and these are people of our generation. It is true that beyond a point, there is economy of scale but there is certainly a delta of work that must be done by parents.
Anyhow, kudos to those parents who are going for larger families. Especially kudos to Casey, who is having her third baby anytime this week while her older twins just completed a year 2 weeks back.

Wild day with Thomas

2008-08-03T23:50:00.001-07:00

If you have a 2 year old, you probably have heard, seen, worn and eaten anything and everything resembling 'Thomas the Tank Engine'. What's a silly looking train has the kids by their wits. My 2 year olds' first toddler toothbrush, toothpaste and underwear had Thomas on it. And it doesn't end there, next comes t-shirt, shoes, books, bag pack and what not. So when a friend mentioned that Roaring Camp in Felton, CA was having this event called 'Day out with Thomas' I naturally jumped on it. It was a dream come true for the kids, actually getting to ride on Thomas and hearing some of their favorite tunes. Of course, for the $18 that they charged us per ticket they could have made the whole experience a lot better than just a simple train ride through the redwoods. Everything else was an add-on. The place was packed with parents and kids dressed in all kinds of Thomas ensemble. The place is fun besides the train ride too. There are jump houses, clown shows, hay stack structures, playdough and bubble stations. The kids had a smashing time. Needless to say, we came back home more tired than the kids.

5 dump trucks and counting..

2008-08-01T23:57:00.000-07:00

5 dump trucks, 3 fire engines, 3 diggers, 2 front loaders, 1 cement mixer, 1 bull dozer and more.
You can tell there lives someone in this house who loves anything and everything TRUCKS!!

What's up popcorn?

2008-07-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

What's up with the different varieties of popcorn? What's happened to the simple old fashioned regular popcorn that we used to get. I visited a grocery store recently to pick up some for our movie nite. All I wanted was just regular popcorn.
I had to choose from:
1. movie theater butter style
2. blasto butter
3. light butter
4. kettle corn
5. caramel corn
6. unsalted and fat-free
7. 100 calorie
8. organic
9. buttery garlic
10. 94 % fat-free
11. fat-free
12. salt and cracked pepper
13. cheddar popcorn
14. Low-fat and low-sodium

Couldn't they just have one that is labeled "Regular"?

Vegetable Lasagna recipe

2008-07-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:

1. Barilla Lasagna pasta sheets
2. Marinara Sauce - 1 bottle
3. Ricotta cheese,
4. Low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella cheese
5. Parmesan cheese
6. Chopped spinach
7. Zuchini
8. Carrots
9. Summer squash
10. Radish
11. Red/Green/Yellow peppers
12.Onions
13.Garlic
14.Italian Seasoning
15.Olive oil

Making the vegetable filling:
1. Slice up all the vegetables in thin, small strips
2. First fry the onions in olive oil, add garlic and once the onions are done, add all the veggies and cook them.
3. Add italian seasoning and some salt to it and keep is aside

Making the cheese filling:
1. Mix chopped spinach with the ricotta cheese,salt and some pepper and put that aside
2. Mix the mozzarella and parmesan cheese and keep it in a seperate dish.

Layering the lasagna:
1. Boil the lasagna pasta sheets
2. Take a large (9'x13') baking dish and cover the base with some marinara sauce
3. Put a layer pasta sheets
4. Add the veggie filling and top it with some marinara sauce and the mozzarella and parmesan cheese.
5. Put a second layer of pasta sheets
6. Add a spinach ricotta cheese filling
7. Add the third layer of pasta sheet, top it with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese.
8. Bake it in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Texan heat, here we come!

2008-06-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

We are off for a family vacation to Dallas tomorrow. Yeah, I know lot of people have asked me why Dallas? When has Dallas become a popular spot for vacation and that too in summer. Well, my answer is 'Family'. Viral's family lives there and when you have kids there is comfort in going to places where you have family and home. I hear the temperatures there haven't hit the 100s yet so it may not be that bad. Besides there are lovely indoor pools and water parks to visit there. I will most certainly post the pictures after we are back. This is the third year in a row we are off to Dallas for the July 4th weekend. So Texan heat, here we come again!

Cleaning is theraputic

2008-06-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

When you are home all day with two toddlers, as naughty and hyperactive as mine, you need doses of energy supplements and pain relievers every now and then. And instead of popping half a dozen pills, you begin to explore solutions best available right around you. When I was single, meaning with no kids, shopping at a mall was the most effective means of beating my blues. Even getting a $5 trinket coupled with couple of hours of window shopping was best to get me in the best of the moods. Well with that being a luxury these days, I had to find other stress busters around the house. Lately I have realised that cleaning up and organizing household stuff had the same effect. Not necessarily scrubbing the floors or doing the dishes but simple stuff like organizing kids' toys in their bins, labeling them, organizing the closets, putting batteries in the toys, arranging books in the book closet, downloading photos from the camera onto the laptop and AppleTV and just simple things like that. Most of the stuff really takes 30 mins or less but at the end of the day there is a sense of having accomplished something. And again the rewards are in those countless genuine smiles that flash up when a dormant choo-choo gets going again or one of their favorite books that was misplaced for weeks shows up in the closet again.

cherries, cherries and more cherries

2008-06-05T23:27:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we set out for a picnic to Brentwood, the heart of Cherry farms in western California. The cherries were in full bloom but we missed other fruits like nectarines, peaches, apricots etc. We'd have to wait atleast a month more for those to be out in full bloom for picking but we were happy to just go pick cherries. Ripe, luscious and mouth-watering cherries were sitting in large looms waiting to be picked. The kids had fun picking at the low hanging bunches and shooting them straight into their mouths while we climbed the trees to grab the large ones looming at the top.

Viva San Diego

2008-05-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

This memorial day weekend turned out to be quite memorable. Viral had to make a business trip to Santa Monica and like a loyal spouse I decided to tag along with the kids. Given my were parents visiting, they tagged along as well and it turned out to be one nice little vacation with the entire family. We spent a day in Santa Monica visiting the downtown and the next 2 days with Shamu the whale at Seaworld and elephants and the giraffes at the San Diego Zoo.

Tomatoes, basil and more..

2008-05-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

Spring is in the air and you can't fail to notice those little flowers blooming everywhere - in the parks, along roadsides, in people's backyards, everywhere. Even the city does a good job planting those colorful shrubs along roadsides. It has especially been a delight taking the early morning walk and enjoying the whiff of fresh morning air muffled with fragrances of fresh flowers.
Taking this delight a little further we decided to embellish our otherwise barren backyard with some plants this year. So we started off with tomatoes and basil and if they survive the next two weeks we plan to add bell peppers,lemon grass, some more jasmine and possibly some mint.

Freshly planted basil and

and tomatoes

Roses in bloom

Visit to the Natural Bridges state park

2008-04-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

We discovered a true novelty of a place over the weekend : Natural Bridges state park near Santa Cruz. Pristine beach, clear water and beautiful warm weather. The kids had a great time playing in the soft sand making sand castles and tunnels. It was warm enough that we could take their clothes off and let them feel the ocean water, something that they don't get to do often.

We had to later make our mandatory stop over at the santa cruz boardwalk on our way back. The kids just can't get enough of the rides there. Ofcourse the cheese and garlic fries are an incentive enough for us adults to keep visiting the place again and again.

Drums, Maraccas, Triangles and more..

2008-04-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't think kids this age were attuned to music but here they are playing musical instruments to the melodious beat of 'Twinkle twinkle little star' , 'Wheels on the bus..' etc

An interesting article by Khuswant Singh

2008-04-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

An interesting article on prejudices, Islam and the Prophet by Khuswant Singh.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080216/jsp/opinion/story_8909500.jsp

a Mom's story...

2008-04-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Many years back this email (attached below) was forwarded to me and I remember feeling overwhelmed with nostalgia at how closely this related to my mom's life back home when we were growing up.

Yesterday when I read this email again I could appreciate it from a completely new perspective, from that of being a mom, and I have to say not much has changed since the last generation.

--
Mom and Dad were watching TV when Mom said, 'I'm tired, and it's getting late. I think I'll go to bed'

She went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches. Rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took meat out of the freezer for supper the following evening, checked the cereal box levels, filled the sugar container, put spoons and bowls on the table and started the coffee pot for brewing the next morning.
She then put some wet clothes in the dryer, put a load of clothes into the washer, ironed a shirt and secured a loose button.
She picked up the game pieces left on the table, put the phone back on the charger and put the telephone book into the drawer. She watered the plants, emptied a wastebasket and hung up a towel to dry.

She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom. She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher, counted out some cash for the field trip, and pulled a text book out from hiding under the chair.

She signed a birthday card for a friend, addressed and stamped the envelope and wrote a quick note for the grocery store. She put both near her purse.

Mom then washed her face with 3 in 1 cleanser, put on her Night solution & age fighting moisturizer, brushed and flossed her teeth and filed her nails.

Dad called out, 'I thought you were going to bed.'

'I'm on my way,' she said.

She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside, then made sure the doors were locked and the patio light was on.

She looked in on each of the kids and turned out their bedside lamps and TV's, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks into the hamper, and had a brief conversation with the one up still doing homework.
In her own room, she set the alarm; laid out clothing for the next day, straightened up the shoe rack. She added three things to her 6 most important things to do list. She said her prayers, and visualized the accomplishment of her goals.

About that time, Dad turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular. 'I'm going to bed.' And he did...without another thought.

First Art Class

2008-04-10T23:07:00.001-07:00

Kiddos in their first art class. I have to admit I had as much fun with colors and confetti as the kids.

Being a mom today

2008-04-08T07:57:00.001-07:00

Like a babycenter mom put it, "What does it mean being a mom of this generation? We have vaccines for our kids, disposable diapers, dozens of jogging strollers to choose from, option of working from home, shelves full of parenting books, partners who cook, clean and watch the kids and mom friends who are only a phone call or an email away.
But flip that coin and life doesn't look that rosy. There's controversy about the vaccines, guilt over sending those disposable diapers to landfill, way too many choices over what you want to buy as a parent, the need to work more hours than we like, the media messages are getting louder, the world in general is moving faster and the pressure is increasing. So whether this is the best times for the moms or worst is one of the hotly debated topics.

To get a better sense of what modern motherhood is like, we have a discussion at our mothers club in the next upcoming meeting.

I personally think this is a better time. The best part of being a mom today is access to information. Even though it may get overwhelming at times, I would much rather have access to it than none at all. I love choices and the fact that I know what effect each choice has. I am sure there are moms who can argue for the cons and it will be interesting to hear the other perspective.

who's being silly and who's being cute

2008-04-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Look who's being silly..

and who's cutely posing for pictures

Boys are boys and girls are girls.

This amazing thing called the 'play-doh'

2008-04-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Ever since I became a mom and have been exposed to all the wonderful toys developed for the kids of this generation, I strongly feel that we had a deprived childhood. Just walk into a toy-store and they practically have a miniature toy for everything an adult uses at home. The other day I saw a toy shaving kit and I couldn't stop laughing
Just recently I discovered this amazing thing called 'play-doh'. Why didn't someone think of this 30 years back? Not only are the kids having fun playing with it, but I have taken a liking to it myself. I have to admit, I have been stealing chances of playing with it whenever the kids are busy with other things. How this little soft dough of clay renders beautifully between the moulds of your 2 hands.

We started out with some standard shape moulds and then gradually moved on to creating more interesting objects like the bouquet of flowers as shown below.

Our little 'Zoo' project

2008-04-03T22:57:00.001-07:00

When you are a full time mom, your brains are operating on full steam looking for projects to keep the kids busy. Here's an idea I picked from a book. I got some animal stickers and cut out a big sheet from one of the cardboard packages we received in mail recently. I drew a basic landscape of a zoo - some grass, a few trees and a pond and had the kids stick the pictures of the animals all over it. Apart from some 'minor' discrepancy of crocodiles floating on trees and horses in the pond, the kids seemed to have a gala time working on this.

A nice 'Spring'y weekend

2008-04-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

The weather has been phenomenal lately. The sun has been particularly kind with the early onslaught of spring this year. We had to exploit the weekend by doing stuff outdoors. We were at the Santa Cruz beach and boardwalk on Saturday with couple of friends. The kids had a gala time on the Dolphin, water boat and train rides. The highlight of the trip were the signature garlic fries and caramelized kettle corn, a speciality of the place.
On sunday, we visited the Lemos Farm up near Half Moon Bay. The close proximity to the ocean always renders the place cold with some severe winds. Nevertheless, we were bundled up in 3 layers all determined to make most out of the sunny day. The kids had a fantastic time on the pony rides and the choo-choo train.

Aha, you may work for Microsoft after all

2008-02-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

You may run but you can't hide. You may have worked for a small company doing really cool stuff with web technologies. You may have grandeur plans of seeing the company make it big and a time comes along when your management decides to sell out for some big bucks to one of those Internet giants. Along comes Microsoft and some how (you can't tell how) sees some synergy in bying your parent company out. And here you are, you have been fighting all your life from joining a mega corporation just because you love the small company culture where everyone from the CEO to the last man in Support know each other by their first names, whatever you do for the business makes it on the company blog, and everyone just hangs together like one big family. Now you are a small frog in a large pond not knowing where this is all headed and how are you going to make a difference.

Ah, coincidentally there is just something along those lines in the news today..

'Family Wisdom' is in..

2008-01-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

Based on strong recommendation from my Dad, I finally started reading Robin Sharma's 'Family Wisdom'. It's a book on how to nurture leadership values in your children. The book has gotten off a great start and I can't wait to see how it pans out. I have read his previous best-seller 'The Monk who sold his Ferrari' and I loved it. So I am really looking forward to reading this one. If you find yourself with some extra time on your hands, be sure to get your hands on this one.

A sabbatical from work

2008-01-29T12:56:00.000-08:00

The 4 glorious years at OSAF have come to an end. I sincerely hope Chandler will get a second boost of life from the slowly growing community that is using it. I still continue to use it everyday to maintain all of the kids' and my personal schedule and task lists. I am still subscribed to the users and design list so that I can answer occasional questions from the users or provide input on the design issues. The hardest part was letting my team know that the funding had dried out and therefore this stint was coming to an end.

On personal front, I am taking time off to spend with my 20 month old twins. It's a long overdue sabbatical from work. Having just completed 10 year work span and with 2 demanding toddlers at home, I figured there couldn't be a better time. I have a long list of things I want to accomplish during this time and I hope to get through at least half of those. List includes stuff like catching up on reading, finishing an oil painting, spending time on photography etc.

For now it's a break I am looking forward to indulging in..

purchasing a DSLR?

2007-10-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

I am currently researching on DSLRs and found the following articles, pointed to my by a colleague, extremely valuable. Posting them here for wider audience reach.

How to buy a DSLR?
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-buy-a-dslr-camera/

Should you buy a DSLR or a point-and-shoot?
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/should-you-buy-a-dslr-or-point-and-shoot-digital-camera/

Top 20 DSLRs
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/top-20-dslr-models-reader-favorites/

OSAF on-site week

2007-10-01T22:57:00.001-07:00

We had a rather vibrant and happening week, this last week here at OSAF. All the remote people were on-site for the Preview celebration as well as planning for the next version of Desktop and Server.

Here are some pictures from the on-site week.

With Sheila's twins

At the Preview Party in Kate Obrien's in SF. Rather packed for a 80 people crowd.

Pro-social activity at Half Moon Bay

Mozilla launched new Email and Communications Organization

2007-09-24T13:32:00.001-07:00

Mozilla is launching a new organization to develop internet mail and communications software. It will use the open source email desktop client Thunderbird, as a base. It will remain a Mozilla subsidiary with Mozilla providing the initial seed money of $3 million to establish this new company.
The new organization will be led by Dr. David Ascher, currently CTO and VP Engineering of ActiveState, who joins Mozilla to carry out this job.

I am sure people invariably will have questions about potential cross-overs with Chandler but as far as we know, there are no news about an explicit collaboration between Mozilla and OSAF over the email application.

'Viral' marketing paid off - Yahoo acquires ZImbra

2007-09-18T14:24:00.002-07:00

As quoted by a Zimbra insider that they are ecstatic about the acquisition as this has essential business appeal for both the parties. The Zimbra team will be relocating to Sunnyvale, where Yahoo is headquartered. The relocation and subsequent commute is a minor let down for some Zimbra people, and there is one I can commiserate with, as he happens to be my Husband.

Here's the NY Times article on the acquisition.

Starups, how not to die.

2007-09-18T14:24:00.001-07:00

A very interesting post by Paul Graham from Y Combinator, a company that provides seed money to fledgling startups, on what factors account for success or failures in startups. I am sure a lot of us can learn from this..

Here's the link to the article.

iPhone early adopters get $100 back

2007-09-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

In this open letter to all iPhone early adopters, Steve Jobs has generously offered a $100 credit towards any purchase in Apple Store. Definitely a good move since the price slash came just months after intial offering of the product. A large number of buyers who were caught up in the excitement of the launch were not part of the early adopter demographic. So they were indeed shocked at the price slash. But people like us who live and breathe in technology land know tech gadgets aren't something you buy as an investment for future. You know if you wait, it will get faster, cheaper, smaller (or bigger) over time and what you have will become obsolete faster than you had imagined (remember the last laptop or digital camera purchase). Folks who bought the iPhone early got something for it, they got to be the first iPhone owners. They got to be the cynosure of everyone's attention and the unmistakable cool image it carried of truly owning something everyone around wanted to lay their hands on, or at the least gaze at. All in all, Apple did the right thing being focused on keeping the customer happy, rather than the bottom line at the end of the day.

Mullahs on the Mainframe

2007-09-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

My reading has surely taken a backseat lately but recently I read a book generously loaned by a friend titled 'Mullahs on the Mainframe'. It is a brilliant study by a young American social scientist who delves into the world of Daudi Bohras, a unique Muslim denomination in India whose religious beliefs and practices are largely compatible with modern ideology. It is a resounding example of how a community can live in peaceful co-existence while practicing orthodox religious practices and still maintaining liberal political and secular views and modernization of tradition. The book starts out with the historical background around the roots of the faith and then delves into day to day rituals of a Daudi Bohra life, religious festivals and their code of celebration, insight into domestic life, status of the religious leaders and royals and ultimately maintenance of spiritual and political hegemony. The study is a wonderful introduction of a peace-loving modernistic Islamic community that is often confused with the values of their more aggressive and violent counter-parts in the middle-east. We are used to living in our little cocoon of comfort constantly soaking in information as they are broadcast by the news channels and thereby creating a rather faulty image of certain people or groups of people, and until you read a book like this that completely dispels all your preconceived notions and broadens your mind to wonders and varieties of outside world.

Chandler Preview is here!

2007-09-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

After months of grueling hard work, we are proud to announce Chandler Preview.

Chandler Desktop is an open source, standards-based personal information manager (PIM) built around small group collaboration and a core set of information management workflows modeled on Inbox usage patterns and David Allen's GTD methodology. You can manage and share calendars, tasks, messages, notes and other information with the Chandler Desktop application and/or with the Chandler Hub web application.

The Preview releases are public-beta quality applications ready for daily use

Download the desktop application, sign up for an account on the web, look at screenshots, watch screencasts, read about features, read about the project and more: http://chandlerproject.org/

The set of new features are:

New Triage workflow featuring the new Dashboard viewFaster Sharing protocol
Compatible with Chandler Server Web UI using a single Ticket URL mechanism
Support for a OSAF hosted Chandler Hub free sharing service
Support concurrent edit with merge and conflict management
Support background auto Sync
Improved Email capabilities with support for In and Out boxes, Reply/Forward
New Edit/Update workflow allows Chandler data to be shared through email without using a server
Support for special Chandler IMAP folders to automatize incoming email treatment and parsing
Improved Calendar user interface: better visual, better Drag and Drop, new Preview area
New Quick Entry widget allows easy entry of new data
Improved Search
Improved Security with support for encryption
New Export/Reload version migration tool
Many architectural improvements (performance, API, command line arguments, optional launch dialog, troubleshooting tools, etc...

If you are one of my loyal friends following my blog, I am sure you will douse your curiousity about what I have been working on the past few years and download our product and give it a shot.

Be sure to report any enquiries, questions, bugs on our users list at chandler-users @ osafoundation.org

My new Intel Mac is here...

2007-08-14T09:51:00.001-07:00

Finally after having waited for months, I ordered my new Intel Mac last week. While I hate the fact that they don't carry them in the 12 inch models any more, everything else has things going for it.

Power and Performance (2.2 GHz and 2 GB RAM) - a powerful graphics processor and dedicated memory makes the entire computing experience better than ever.
Glossy widescreen LCD display - I watched a movie on it the other day and the resolution was far better than my plasma TV I say.
Built-in iSight Camera - No more fiddling with external, wired web cams which are cumbersome to get mounted and positioned. Now a sleek, built-in high quality iSight camera that is so neatly integrated. No need to worry about installing and configuring, only dressing up.
Built-in wireless and Bluetooth - Syncing your Macbook Pros with your bluetooth enabled phones and transfering images and data can be enormously handy. I use the feature to take quick photos on my iPhone and transferring easily to my iPhoto albums.
Multiple OSs - I just installed a version of Parallels and Windows XP on the virtual machine. So now I am able to run Mac OSX and WinXP seamlessly in an integrated environment. How cool is that

For now that's enough to get me going!

connecting in an open source world...

2007-08-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is the age of social networking and practically everyone you know is on some list making his/her network grow. While some of these tools form the A-list of people's primary networking medium, others are slowing coming up with niches that you didn't imagine existed. I have recently been drawn into Facebook by a handful of friends. I didn't think I belonged there but soon other friends found me, contacted me and before long I realized we had formed a small clique there. When I first read about Facebook I discounted it as some teenage-geeky tool that most youngsters might feel drawn to. I couldn't be more off. I am seeing more and more business professionals signing up on it, and like a colleague casually mentioned, it might soon become the tool of choice for shunning people with finesse and forming small cliques.

While these mediums do exist, I have to say that I have never felt myself being connected to so many colleagues and friends, purely through working in open source community. Just the other day, I heard from a friend I went to school with 11 years back, with who saw a post from OSAF in one of the open source forums and contacted me and here we were chatting, back like the old times. And I hear similar tales from others around me who have hooked up with friends through the community.

So while the social networking tools are doing their job, lets not discount the fact that networking just comes easy being part of an open source community.

I have a crush...

2007-08-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have a crush. A crush on something that is an indispensable part of my life. I didn't quite think at this age I could ever fall for something but here I am totally bowled over. Viral surprised me the other day bringing home this little thing, nicely coated and wrapped. As I removed the layers and saw the little black thing sitting on my lap, I jumped! It was the new iPhone. I really didn't think a tiny piece gadget would have me all over. I have to admit I am enamored by it. It's been a bit of adjustment getting used to owning a phone that has no keypad, no knobs and yet super-slim. It's cool, extremely functional and loaded with features. Music, video, photos, email, calendar, maps, weather and what not...it has it all.

Here's one of the many pictures taken on my iPhone. It's special because it is the first one. Riya sleeping on the cot cuddled up in her blanket.

Quote of the year

2007-04-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." - Tony Robbins

On why Bombay is a writer's city...

2007-04-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, has been a writer's paradise for years now. Like London and New York, there is a very specific sense of the metropolis, with a certain amount of self-mythologising and narrative-making. Life throbbing with activity, unstoppable pace, amalgam of different cultures ,a launch pad of talent and amazing juxtaposition of the riches and the poor - this city has it all.

Among the novels I have read, the following fiction novels' plots are based around Mumbai - my favorite city.

John Irving - A Son Of The Circus - ***/2
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children - ****
Suketu Mehta - The Maximum City - ***

Implicit Bias

2007-03-20T11:17:00.001-07:00

Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology from University of Virginia was one among the many distinguished and prominent speakers who walked the ramp of 543 Howard Street as an invited guest from our sister organization, LPFI. He gave us a scintillating presentation on unconscious bias - thoughts and feelings that exist outside of conscious awareness or conscious control that to a large extent shapes how we think and do things.
Recent results from his lab compared implicit - and explicit -
bias between self-identified conservatives/liberals, with these results,
as reported in the Washington Post:

"Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did."

Here's the complete article from Washington Post.

But better commentary yet was from Stephen Colbert on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show".

Twitter

2007-03-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

If you are in for hours of mindless voyeuristic fun, here's something for you:

http://twittermap.com/twittervision

"Small" is BIG

2007-03-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

I have been a proud owner of an Apple PowerBook for the last 3 years. While I possessed and used only Windows based machine for about a decade before that, I have to admit my loyalties switched as soon as I got used to a Mac. The resolution of the graphics, the slick user-interface and virus-free system that never crashed on me - all had me going for it. The package was all the more attractive since mine was a really slick 12-inch Powerbook that was handy to carry along and fast enough for running all my cpu and memory intensive applications (earlier version of Chandler included). Recently I was told by my IT guy that it's time to switch to a newer machine and I had to pick one out soon. Well, given practically everyone around me now owns the new Intel-based MacBook Pro and they rave about how swift it is, I couldn't wait to get mine soon. So I was checking out the Apple Store in San Francisco, I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed to learn that they have stopped carrying the 12-inch laptops anymore. All the MacBook Pros now come only in 15 and 17 inches. While I am looking forward to my new MacBook Pro I have to say I am going to miss my "small" book that had become the central domain of my work life the last 3 years. Who ever said, "small" is big has my +1 on that.

What is a brown-paper-bag bug?

2007-02-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

There's not much software jargon that I am unfamiliar with. Well, today in one of our discussions, I heard someone say "Can we test this quickly so we can forestall any brown-paper-bag bugs?" It had me wondering what that meant and as usual Google came to my rescue. And here it is for you:

"A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing that the author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head for a while so he won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular usage after the early-1999 release of the first Linux 2.2, which had one. The phrase was used in Linus Torvalds's apology posting."

The Grasshopper

2007-01-31T22:18:00.000-08:00

A very interesting article that was forwarded to me by a friend. So accurately reflecting the state of affairs in India I had to blog it.

Subject: The Grasshopper

OLD VERSION...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper
thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food
or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper
thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering
grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding
that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.
Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government
for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The
Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the
grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt
support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) . Opposition
MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West
Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala
immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat
so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian
Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism
Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of
the winter.
Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in
educational
Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having
nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by
the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony
covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it
'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of
the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN
General Assembly.
Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up
a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley. 100s of
grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in
India ...
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the
grasshoppers, India is still a developing country..... .

Bollywood on Colbert

2007-01-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

Amitabh and Shah Rukh Khan made it to the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. It's hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgVrygLx-hY

Multiples in the womb

2007-01-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Mr.PureAnarchy and I watched this absolutely amazing, intriguing, visually awe striking documentary on "In the Womb : Multiples" on National Geographic Channel. While our 'sitting-together-and-watching-TV' days are far and few these days, we had put this one on our agenda to specially it watch together. Using revolutionary 4-D scans they showed unique footage of how fetues mark their journey from inception to birth - their fight for space and nourishment during gestation and their final journey into the outside world. Some key take-aways:
1. It was fascinating to see how humans first interact with their siblings even before entering the world outside - reaching, touching, pushing and even engaging in some game playing that continues after they are born
2. The personalities they develop in adult life are to large extent groomed in the womb.
3. 95% of all multiple births in United States are twins and it has increased by 400% from 1980-1998.
4. The record number of human fetuses in one womb at any one time is 15

This gave us a good prelude to life ahead with Arin and Riya...

Chandler in the WSJ

2007-01-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

As part of Scott Rosenberg's book review by WSJ, Chandler made it to the WSJ. With the upcoming 'Preview' (beta) release of Chandler in Spring, we are hoping this will give us the right publicity we need before the launch. Go Chandler!

Dreaming in Code

2007-01-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

Scott Rosenberg's new book based on software development titled 'Dreaming in Code' will be out this month. He has used the software development of 'Chandler' - our PIM software as a basis for his book. Scott has been a friend of OSAF - sitting in our meetings, hanging out at lunches and gathering the data for his subject. I am waiting to buy a copy of the book to read about the early years of OSAF when Andy Hertzfield, Lou Montulli and others were active contributors. A lot has changed since then - the people, the product vision and the business strategy. The latest copy of Business Week(Jan 15th 2007) has also reviewed the book calling it a "fascinating look inside a software development project". Katie Capps has since then updated our osaf blog with where we are since Scott's narrative leaves off - around the end of year 2005. For all of you wanting to know where OSAF is going with Chandler and Cosmo, there's your read for the day.

the ultimate travel companion

2007-01-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

10 years back when we first came to this country and did some extensive traveling, I remember taking paper maps of the places we went to and as a co-driver/navigator my biggest role on a road trip was to make sure we were taking the right freeways, the right exits, the right turns. It felt quite equipped with paper maps even though we needed ton of them as we spanned different states and then narrowed down to the areas within each state. Then came the age of Map Quest and Yahoo! maps. Some 5 years back I remember making this statement that I couldn't imagine life without Yahoo! maps. It was as simple as mapping your routes and keeping those print outs handy while driving. Really that simple compared to carrying those dozen maps.
Just recently we bought a new GPS gadget the Garmin nuvi 360- the ultimate travel companion. Since the iPod I have never gone so gaga over any gadget. Not only does it map routes and speak out the directions, it has bluetooth, speaker phone and an MP3 player. That means my blue tooth phone connects to Garmin as soon as I enter the car and then I can use the speakerphone on it to chat while I am driving. Makes your driving experience truly enjoyable. I have always desired this in an automotive and now the wish has come true.
Wouldn't you agree technology has truely enhanced the quality of our lives? Just the last 10 years are an outstanding evidence. Wonder what we'll have to say in a few more years.

teething pain...times 2

2007-01-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

In some ways I and my 7 month daughter are going through similar experiences. While she is going thru teething pain for her first 2 pearly whites, here I am going thru the pain of losing 2 of my wisdom teeth. While I got orajel for her, I got the adult orajel for myself. While she is taking infants' tylenol for her pain, I am taking the extra strength tylenol for mine. She enjoys cold yoplait and so do I. The only difference I guess is she wants to bite into everything within reach and I am staying away from biting just about anything.

end of the year ritual..

2006-12-29T11:31:00.001-08:00

It's end of the year ritual for us friends to share our favorite 5s of the year.

5 memorable things this year:
1. gave birth to 2 lovely babies
2. spent quality time with my mom, something I hadn't done in last 10 years
3. been a good listener and support to a friend
4. learnt many many nursery rhymes
5. reconnected with 2 friends with whom I had lost touch

5 things I did this year that I have never done before:
1. well #1 above applies here
2. did not have any alcoholic drinks this year
3. made more online purchases than I have ever before
4. stayed indoors for 3 days without stepping out
5. had dental work done on 5 of my teeth(!!)

5 favorite books:
1. What's going on in there
2. Rishis, Mystics and Heroes of India
unfortunately the pregnancy books do not count so that's all I have.

privileged audience that we are!

2006-12-28T13:45:00.001-08:00

Being part of a fairly visible non-profit software foundation like OSAF makes us privileged audience to quite some prominent speakers. Last year we had Vice President Al Gore who gave us a truly enlightening talk on Global Warming which is now made into a movie called 'An Inconvenient Truth' - a must see if environmental facts interest you. We had no media, no cameras just some 50 of us between OSAF, LPFI and Creative Commons and him. Even though most of us have heard of the alarming effect of global warning, pure statistics presented in his slides were staggering. We all came out pretty shocked at how little we are doing to fix this. Eventually something was done about it - OSAF office became the only green office in all of San Fransico city. We use only recycled products, we recycle all unused food items into compost and use vendors and restaurants who adhere to environment friendly standards. It feels quite rewarding being part of such an environment aware organization.

Next was Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. An eloquent speaker who walked us through how he founded Wikipedia and how it became the biggest free encyclopedia on the internet. He also gave us some insight on how it is a self-governing organization managed by a handful of paid employees and hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

Later part of the year we had Mayor of San Francisco city, Gavin Newsom who had come for a student fund raiser hosted by our sister organization, LPFI.

Well, with the new year only a few days away we eagerly await the new list of prominent speakers who might walk the ramp of 543 Howard Street.

sometimes it's important to remind ourselves..

2006-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

A recent news item making it’s rounds in the blogs, describes the experience of a well known Kenyan author, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, being kicked out of Hotel Vitale, in the SF bay area. It just highlights how very different peoples’ realities are based solely on skin color – yes, even today. Ngugi was here to promote his most recent book. Here’s a post that made it around in the blogs, describing Ngugi’s experience:

“…What happened next could have been a scene from a pre-Civil Rights Era of a Black man caught in a “White Only” section of a hotel. A hotel employee approached the Professor and said:
“This place is for guests of the hotel. You have to leave.”
Handling the matter calmly and intrigued by the assertion of the man, the Professor asked
“How do you know that I am not a guest of the hotel?” ..”

Here's an interesting article on that.

Here’s another post that also prints the CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality response, which begins “Prejudice still exists in America. It is real and palpable…”

And finally, here’s one of the comments from a staff member at the hotel, which reveals the distance we need to travel to clarify the insidiousness of bias to people that consider themselves rational, logical, and only ‘doing their job’.

our little adventure to kauai

2006-12-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

We had little hope of making this trip anything close to a relaxing vacation but to much of our surprise it was quite so. Taking the twins on a 6 hour flight from SF to Honolulu to Lihue seemed quite daunting at first but turned out to be manageable after all, not pleasant but manageable. I have to agree with Viral that most important thing about traveling with kids is Planning, Planning and Planning. We had a good checklist of things we had to take - their everyday items, emergency items, medical items, play time items etc. Of course we also took our nanny along which is what made this easy. Viral and I actually got to spend some time together. Also the ensemble of 8 other friends were a great support around. While the reason for the trip was to cheer one of our dear friends Rakesh who ran the Honolulu Marathon, we didn't quite make it to the event. We cheered him with our enthusiasm and support remotely from Kauai. The weather switched between being scorching hot and humid in the day time to being cold in the evenings and night. The sunset on the Poipu beach was breathtaking. Here's one for a starter..

Open Source, Open Standards

2006-12-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Time and again this has come up in various discussions with people - how are open source and open standards related. Most people think they are entirely complementary. Finally here's a blog post from a fellow colleague who has done a great job addressing it.

after a long hiatus...

2006-11-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

This has been the longest hiatus in my 9 years of work life and if I may add, one that has sped most quickly too. I was away from work for the last 6.5 months resuming work only last week. Even though initially I had some withdrawal symptoms, I have to admit I soon got so entrenched into mundane activites of the day to day life taking care of the twins that I did not miss much being without my laptop and or the daily staple of online news, blogs and rss feeds. My twins are exactly 6 months old and with the luxury of having a full-time nanny, I am happy to rejoin the work force with renewed vigor.
Development of Chandler has come a long way in the past few months with a working dashboard and an almost usable Calendar. We are closing in on the alpha 4 release. For us intrepid dogfooders, it has some big advances including background synchronization and performance enhancements.

Why we do what we do?

2006-04-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

What's this working for a non-profit foundation all about?
I have been asked this same question a hundred times in different gatherings and parties and I have tried to answer it to the best I could. But here's a more pertinent response to that as posted by Mitchell Baker from Mozilla. Here's her blog post.

Sunshine is finally here..

2006-04-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

..and so is the update to my blog. Sorry friends for not having reported anything the last few months. Being pregnant with twins has taken it's share of toll on me. Being 5 weeks away, I am so big and bulky, I can barely drive, walk or even stand for more than 10 mins straight. And I have been told that life is going to change in even more ways once the babies are here.
As for the bay area weather, it has been depressingly cold and rainy the last 2 months. Finally we are getting some sunshine and everyone's keeping their fingers crossed. It's nice to see little flowers blooming in the backyard, people running in their shorts, mothers taking babies out for a stroll, kids riding their bicycles etc
It feels like the spirit of summer is finally here and I better get out and get some sunshine rather than being confined in a room with a computer.

New developments ...

2005-11-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

in our backyard

A milestone reached..

2005-11-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

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

2005-09-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-09-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-09-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-08-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-08-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-07-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-07-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-06-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-14T20:56:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-07T21:32:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-06-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-05-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-05-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

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'

2005-04-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-04-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-04-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

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 ..

2005-04-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

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..

2005-04-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-04-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-04-01T16:24:00.000-08:00

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.

Pure Anarchy

Greek Salad recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Ingredients

Directions

Recording more recipes...

Movie of the year....

The Canadian Rockies

Fantabulous Big Sur

Proliferation of 'Twins'

3 is the new 2

Wild day with Thomas

5 dump trucks and counting..

What's up popcorn?

Vegetable Lasagna recipe

Texan heat, here we come!

Cleaning is theraputic

cherries, cherries and more cherries

Viva San Diego

Tomatoes, basil and more..

Visit to the Natural Bridges state park

Drums, Maraccas, Triangles and more..

An interesting article by Khuswant Singh

a Mom's story...

First Art Class

Being a mom today

who's being silly and who's being cute

This amazing thing called the 'play-doh'

Our little 'Zoo' project

A nice 'Spring'y weekend

Aha, you may work for Microsoft after all

'Family Wisdom' is in..

A sabbatical from work

purchasing a DSLR?

OSAF on-site week

Mozilla launched new Email and Communications Organization

More posts on Chandler Preview

'Viral' marketing paid off - Yahoo acquires ZImbra

Starups, how not to die.

iPhone early adopters get $100 back

Mullahs on the Mainframe

Chandler Preview is here!

My new Intel Mac is here...

connecting in an open source world...

I have a crush...

Quote of the year

On why Bombay is a writer's city...

Implicit Bias

Twitter

"Small" is BIG

What is a brown-paper-bag bug?

The Grasshopper

Bollywood on Colbert

Multiples in the womb

Chandler in the WSJ

Dreaming in Code

the ultimate travel companion

teething pain...times 2

end of the year ritual..

privileged audience that we are!

sometimes it's important to remind ourselves..

our little adventure to kauai

Open Source, Open Standards

after a long hiatus...

Why we do what we do?

Sunshine is finally here..

New developments ...

A milestone reached..

iPod Nano

The Half Blood Prince..

I feel so small..

Are you an interesting person?

OSCON this week..

End of an era..

Moor's Last Sigh...

Traveling to Dallas and Houston..

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

OSAF in the Boston Globe..

Mars Spectacular!