Zazzle

Press release for brand building. Looks like the site was not doing as good as they expected it to do, so they put together a press release.

Site itself sounds like a highly improved version of righthalf.com.. weren't they doing something similar?

डबल्युडबल्युडबल्यु.जितेन्द्र.काम

Non-english domain names. Some more time before we have these names.

कभी तो
Heard कभी तो नजर मिलाअो sung by Asha Bhonsle after a long long time. I first heard the song when Maushmi sung this song in a party 4-5 years ago. My first comment was, wow ! its a good song, nice lyrics but Maushmi should avoid singing it in front of other people. The song was instant hit in our company and many people bought the CD. Adnan Sami became a hit with this song.

More later.. got to go :>

Mapping India

From Slashdot. Ok this guy is not exactly asking about India (rather west africa).. but people are thinking about developing countries. (I hate to use the word undeveloped for India)

Why flickr?

I am not yet able to understand why people are going ga-ga over flickr. Why would I like to pay them the amount that they ask for a pro account when I can get a shared server space (much larger space) for much less money? Backups?

If you want free photo upload facility. Why not Yahoo photos which is free and provides unlimited upload and storage.

Basically they have provided an unusable interface to yahoo photos and flickr has some real cool utilities. If user interface is the reason people might subscribe to flickr, why isn't Steve Jobs the richest man on earch?

Please please don't ruin this one

Sholay Remake. Ram Gopal Verma has made some good films but he has to be VERY careful with this one.

After plethora of remix songs are we going to see an era of remakes of old classic movies?

Paramount's Great America Park and Stanford

I went to the PGAP today, a lot of thanks to Simha for providing the tickets. I took just two rides, the grizzly, a wooden rollercoaster and Eagle's Flight, suspended cable car ride. Others were really scary I and preferred to stay away.



I also met Raj Uparkar and we visited Stanford university campus. Will try to upload images soon. Very beautiful campus.

Photoblog

I have started posting pictures to my photoblog. Roam around with me.

Civil Engineer in Me

Vivek's entry led me to this site.

I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Quebec around the year 1350.Your profession was that of a builder of roads, bridges and docks

Wow, I took a long time in re-incarnation, what was I doing in meantime? Haunting some of those bridges?

Your brief psychological profile in your past life: Person with huge energy, good in planning and supervising. If you were just garbage-man, you were chief garbage-man.

How flattering. garbage? didn't you just say builder of roads? I am not sure environmental engineering and waste management were part of civil engineer or road building back then. Did they have roads in 1350? in Quebec?

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation: You are bound to solve problems of pollution of environment, recycling, misuse of raw materials, elimination of radioactivity by all means including psychological methods.

Yes, I am solving a lot of pollution problem by working 16 hours a day on computers.

Try it, its fun :-)

Monterey bay aquarium and 17 mile drive

I went to Monterey bay aquarium 'again' with CP and Alon. I was meeting CP after 4 years though we're in touch on phone and mail all these years. Whole monterey town is very beautiful. See some photos here and here. This time we spent nearly 4 hours in the aquarium and got to see otter feeding. Thanks to CP we saw a nice t-shirt Harry Otter, a cute otter with HP style glasses etc.

A very satisfying day, this time I also managed to touch a ray fish, the fish is extremely soft. We also stumbled into penguin feeding show(I know the photos could be better).

Finally we went to the much talked about 17 mile drive. The drive is a closed loop with multiple entry and exit points. We took the Pacific Grove Entrance and same exit. More than half of the drive is along the pacific ocean and rest in woods. A lot of seagulls can be seen on the drive and a lot of other birds were also resting on the rock. Looks like nature had decided to use all hands approach to make the drive beautiful. The Lone Cypress Tree is estimated to be around 250 yrs. old and is a major vista point. After a good sunny afternoon, evening turned out to be a total contrast a whole place was misty.

Another very nice, surprising and humbling experience was when I was trying to take a photograph from across the road. 4 cars stopped so that I can take the photo. I didn't even request them and surely took a long time, finally CP told me that I am holding traffic and I actually saw the cars, they had stopped very early not to disturb me. I can't say about other countries but I don't expect to have a similar experience anytime soon. I felt very bad when I had read about some US girl using the world civilized world for US and implying that India is not civilized (a couple of years back), but America surely scores here. I don't know where do people in US get all the patience and courtesy.

Sequoia national park

3rd of july was spent in Sequoia National Park. Among other things most noticable was The General Sherman Tree. It is the largest living thing on earth and estimated to be 2300 to 2700 yrs. old. The place is full of tree that can be rated in top 50 largest living thing but number 1 steels all the light. We walked only on one trail in the whole park, Congress Trail. This Trail is around 2/3 miles long and starts from General Sherman. We got to walk under two fallen trees and one standing and alive tree. One lone and big tree on the trail is called The President and just 50-60 ft. away there is group of Sequoia called The Senate.

Highlight of the day was Moro Rock, we must have been at around 6000 ft. elevation when we parked and climbed the stairs for another 300/400 ft. elevation. The place looks like a custom made look out. It is highest rock in the nearby area, offering near 360 degree view of the area. It reminded me of Dauna Paula at Goa, but this one was much more exciting. Coming down was scary as always.

We drove through a tree after this. Example.

This guy has written a nice writeup of his trip here. I highly recommend googling for Moro Rock for a real good collection of stories and pictures about this place.

We had driven more than 800 miles in two days. I would love to go there and spend some more time some other time. Next US visit is highly awaited (under the condition that I get 3-4 day long weekends).

Now that's what I call cool technology

Google invests in power-line broadband.

तिरंगा
देर अाये दुरुस्त अाये।

तिरंगे की पाबंदियाँ ढीली हुईं

To start with, I would like to see the tricolor on an F1 helmet as Naren was planning earlier.

Bombay, Jinxed !!

Monday was the third time I tried to watch Bombay. The movie undoubtedly was a hit and highly recommended by all.

First time I went to cinema hall was the first day first show (the only fdfs till now for me) of the movie with a big group just to find the cinema halls closed, thanks to party of goons called shivsena. Yes ! that is exactly what I think the party is, no less no more. We ended up watching Hum apke hain kaun after delibration on other films like Najayaz.

I got a DVD from the New India Bazaar a few weeks back and was very excited about watching the movie and ended up going to Monterey bay aquarium and carmel beach that day. I was very afraid to attract comment from Umang when I chose the Bombay DVD among 100s of available movies, but he I was reassured when he mentioned that he has not seen Sholay yet.

I plan to break the jinx soon.

4th of July fireworks

We (me and Alon) went to the Chabot Space center to watch the Deep Impact event live (almost). But the ticket holder was stuck in traffic and I just saw the Nasa scientists clapping on TV. Missed a lifetime opportunity..

More later.

Long weekend

Sorry no links / photos for this blog entry

I didn't post anything about my visit to santa cruz, the roller-coaster ride on beach and long scenic drive along the beach, but I guess I will skip it altogether. 4th of July weekend is actually a 4 day weekend for Veraz and I spent the first day shopping with collegues Alon and Tal (names not modified). I don't believe shop till you drop phrase would be applicable for three of us. It would be more like shop till the stores close and that's exactly what we did.

Second day of long weekend, on Simha's suggestions we (me and Alon) decided to go to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. The whole area is divided into four places, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon N P, Sequoia National Forest and Giant Sequoia National Monument.

We have reserved a hotel in Fresno and I am typing the blog from hotel. Fresno is around 151 miles from Milpitas and and entrance of Kings Canyon National Park is 81 miles from hotel. Entrance of the park is marked by a Giant Sequoia tree. We headed towards the part visitor center and bought food and water first. A beautiful park ranger helped us in deciding that we should go to crystal caves next day and it would be good if we cover the kings canyon scenic byway in one day and next day for Sequoia National Park, General Sherman and the crystal caves.

We went to panaromic point (at more 7000 ft elevation) to have a look over the valley and Nevada Sierras, breathtaking views with peaks more than 14000 ft high visible from the point.

We went to the General Grant Grove and the same beautiful ranger, Ranger Elizabeth guided us around the grove for a funfilled and informative walk and talk. I enjoyed the guided tour by Sam in Mariposa Grove (yosemite) on tram but walking around the tree was much better. The General Grant Tree is the prime attraction of the grove and it is touted to be 2nd or 3rd largest tree in the world. Today we will get to see the largest, The General Sherman Tree. There are a lot of huge trees in the grove and some of them have a really good story associated with them. I can go an write the whole entry filled with this information and story but I won't bore you with those. ( I can bore you with something else instead )

Stopping at various places along the road to inhale the beautiful scenery around we drove along the north most road of the park. We didn't go to the end of road due to lack of time and returned back midway. It was really good watching the river from more than 3000 ft elevation and than driving along the river with hugh mountains stretching on both sides.

Next stop was at Grizzly Falls, not very high but very fast and noisy fall, we could go very close to the fall and still see it (as against bridelveil falls).

My first visit to natural caves. Among the granite mountains there lied Boyden Cavern, a small, cave made of metamorphosed sedimentry rocks. Ok, don't get confused, it was a 'Marble' cave. The guide (oops. I forgot the name it started from 'D' but guides should be beautiful lasses if they want me to remember their names) was an interesting guy, he made the cave visit a more enjoyable and memorable experience. I won't go into details of formations here but do some googling to see some real good pics. We experienced pure darkness within cave and I am a certified non-claustrophobic :-)

Another long scenic drive back to the hotel in Fresno, I was ready to crash and wrote this entry only in morning. I am sure that today it is going to fun.

Saw War or the worlds yesterday. I don't have anything to say about it. Anshuman has put it better.