ASCII Art

Fall already?

2008-08-05T23:34:00.000-07:00

Stars

2008-08-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rainier

2008-07-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Mount Rainier, at Mount Rainier National Park, Washington. And my current wallpaper.

Bliss

2008-07-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

Swirl

2008-07-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

Rainbow at Narada Falls

2008-07-23T00:25:00.000-07:00

Taken at Narada falls at Mt Rainier National Park, one of the many waterfalls in this region and is named after the divine sage Narada of the Hindu tradition. Narada is a devotee of Vishnu, and is also known as the delightful character causing quarrels among Gods.

This shot was not a particularly easy one, given that there is a constant heavy spray of water. This meant that within seconds, both you and your camera lens would be completely soaked, and you'll have to back off, wipe the lens clean, point your camera at the general direction of the water and take another shot. Rinse and repeat.

Summer at the park

2008-07-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

Contemplate..

2008-07-19T00:17:00.001-07:00

Of Pebbled Water

2008-07-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

Where time stood still

2008-07-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

This small image here doesn't do justice to the original image. You can find the original image (larger size) at Flickr.

Peace

2008-07-14T01:12:00.000-07:00

Space Needle, fireworks and everything else

2008-07-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Taken from the Alki beach near Seattle,the picture shows the Space Needle and the 4th of July fireworks beside it (atleast relative to where I was standing).

Snowqualmie Falls

2008-07-12T01:54:00.000-07:00

Slightly tweaked using Aperture

One day at a time

2008-07-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

That's probably the only way I'm ever going to stop prcrastinating and actually post the few million pictures I've taken in the last few months. One day at a time, and atleast a photo a day.

This was taken at Pike Place Market in Seattle, one sunny weekend. This was a stall where engraved stones were being sold, ranging from texts like 'Serenity' and 'Kisses', to sunsigns and other seemingly random images.

Spring Cleaning

2008-03-30T02:34:00.003-07:00

It's almost spring in Redmond. I say almost, because it still snows from time to time (and it did today) and the sun almost never comes out. But then we have all the dead branches of trees giving way to millions of dots of pink and white and yellow on them. I have no idea what these trees are, but they make the prettiest sight in most parts of Redmond.

And then there are these neglected shrubs. You'd find them in the most odd places - on the grassy slot between parking spaces or on the small patch of soil leading to the side entrance of a shop or restaurant. These flowers don't have a name yet (as well) and they are pretty as hell.

This is probably the best spring I've ever seen. Tulips and daffodils and lilies and roses and hyacinths everywhere. And I figured I'll need a better camera to take in all of this season. Which is why, in addition to Snapdragon (the current point-and-shoot camera), I'll soon have a Canon Rebel XTi with a couple of lenses. I'm yet to get my shipment (ordered it through Amazon) and just can't wait. Spring is fun.

A new home, a new year

2008-01-13T22:18:00.000-08:00

It has been about a month since I moved to Redmond, Washington. My new role is that of a PM in the CLR team (in case you are wondering, I used to work as a Program Manager in the Visual Studio for Devices team at Microsoft IDC).

And that explains the long break from blogging (not entirely, but I'm going to use it as an excuse anyway). Most days consist of meeting folks in the new team, reading up on internal resources related to my work, meeting people outside my team, finding a house, buying stuff (where stuff = winter wear, furniture, random toys, a Chumby, an iPhone, a completely useless robotic flying insect (the operative work being "flying" - it doesn't even get off the ground for a second!), food, tons of convertors and a robotic vacuum cleaner (yes, the Roomba)), figuring out how road rules work here, getting lost and finding my way back in the cold, doing plenty of paperwork, taking driving classes, sitting beside Tameem while he drives to Fry's or to Costco or to one of the million another shops here, wandering in the cafeteria looking for vegetarian food options, jogging to the beautiful Sammamish lake and back and so on.

Day 1 - completely exhausted after nearly 36 hours of being out of my old home in India, just waiting at airports and waiting inside the plane. Waiting. And feeling claustrophobic. The only respite was Amsterdam airport - it was wonderful to be there, gaping at all the tall Christmas trees, at all the gadgets strewn around in the electronics section of a mall (inside the airport), at all the chocolates in the duty-free shops (I even got to sample a few - no, I didn't steal any) and at the enormity of the airport itself. Anyway, so it snows on the day I reach Seattle and it was pretty shocking since I didn't think it snowed in this part of the country (not that I had a problem - where I come from, snow is a novelty).

The best parts so far

1) I get to work with Jim Miller on a daily basis and I can't tell you how overwhelming and scary that feels.

2) This team is so full of geeks and I fit right in - everything from weird Star Wars posters to cup <> mugs to random corridor conversations.

3) I got to meet Raymond Chen in person (by 'meet', I am not referring to being-spotted-in-the-parking-lot, I actually met him) and by far, it is one of my best days at Microsoft.

4) I have a lot to learn - I work on particularly low-level parts of CLR and that's always fun.

5) I actually know a lot more people here than in Hyderabad. I miss folks on my old team and I really miss all the techie conversations (and ribbing each other about hitting the gym :)) during lunches with Kaushik, but overall, I have a lot of friends on this side of the world.

6) I like the weather here. It's unpredictable and rains a lot, but I love it. And talking about weather, it is an excellent conversation topic - everybody here seems to have an opinion on Seattle weather :)

7) Downtown Bellevue - I was at downtown Bellevue during Christmas eve and I *love* the ambience there. It's hard to explain.

I can't charge my camera because the charger is lying safe in India. I'm also thinking about splurging money on a Canon Rebel XT (or XTi) and a couple of lenses. This place is so green and quaint and beautiful that it almost hurts not to have a camera around. I borrow Sriram's camera for the time-being.

So that's the story of where I've been. The blog is up and will continue to run. And this time, pictures will be from this side of the world that still has a lot of exploring to do.

This blog will bloom shortly...

2007-12-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

I will soon be blogging again, and that too from a place far away from Hyderabad. I have been caught up in different things, some trivial and some not. For those who actually wrote to me (!) - I'm pretty touched that you're concerned. All is well and I will hitting the 'Publish' button at regular intervals soon.

At TechMela, Mumbai

2007-06-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

So I'm here at Mumbai doing a talk at TechMela along with my team folks and we are having a lot of fun. There are lot of people attending TechMela (trust me, getting my plate filled at lunch is *tough*) and a lot of talks and lab sessions. I know this is a little late, but if you are at TechMela, do come by and say Hi. You'll find me with the other folks in the Visual Studio for Devices team. And this also means that I'll have pictures of Mumbai (for the first time in this blog) next week.

Sea, Sand and Sky

2007-06-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

An entire week in Chennai - food at home, falling asleep while reading your favorite novel (or watching TV), old friends, known places, long car rides and the BEACH! Nothing, absolutely nothing, comes close to the beach at ECR (on your way to Pondicherry). And if you do find the right spot at the right time where the blue-green sea is shimmering , the sun is about to set and there are only a handful of people for miles ahead on either side, you've just seen what heaven on earth is like.

There's such a spot a couple of kilometers after the ECR toll gate with beautiful parking lots on either side of the road, an ice cream shop welcoming you as soon as you step out, banyan and pine trees, clean sand (hard to find - a good portion of the coast here is strewn with glass bottles. Sick.) and clear sea water. You have to see it to believe it.

This photograph below is probably my best shot of the sky this year - it makes a nice wallpaper (with the clouds on the right and blue sky at the left - typically, the icons on your desktop would be positioned at the left).

The rest are pictures of the beach itself.

I ended up taking a few hundred pictures, not all with the beach in focus. If you do happen to visit Chennai and have an evening to spare, you could probably spend the time at this place. Soothing and surreal.

Pop!

2007-05-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

A full week away from Hyderabad and away from Internet access (mostly) left me craving for computer time. I took a hell of a lot of photos and have to filter and upload them and then post them here. That should take a couple of days. Maybe more.

Sooooo, the big thing that happened last week was the announcement of Microsoft Popfly - this has been under wraps for a while now and it's amazing how well it turned out to be. People call it a whole bunch of things - a mashup creator, a tool for developers, a social networking website and so on. To me, Popfly is just fun. Pure, unadultered fun.

Popfly is still an early release and there's a scarcity of invites, which probably means that a lot of folks wouldn't have been able to create mashups or poke around. I got a chance to play with it and here are screenshots.

This is a small mashup I created..

And this is how it turns out to be right after two mouse clicks ..

And this is a game of Whack-a-Mole mashed up using Pink (I searched for Pink at Yahoo! Photos and mashed it up with Whack-a-Mole game) pictures..

Popfly is probably the best Silverlight application I have seen so far. I really like the look and feel of the site and totally adore the About Us page.

And oh, I have an invite with me which I want to give out. If you want to play around with Popfly, send me a mail, and I'll send you the sole invite I have.

The Woz Way

2007-05-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

I finally finished reading iWoz today and to tell you the truth, the book is written as if Steve Wozniak simply narrated his life's story and someone just took notes and made copies of it and left it on the bookshelves. The language usage is down to earth and the book itself is very inspiring.

The book starts off with his childhood where Woz talks about his gang of 'The Electronic Kids' and their adventures in building circuits and gadgets. It moves on to give a very interesting account of Blue Boxes and phone phreaking (Captain Crunch anyone?) and Homebrew Computer Club and then to him designing Apple I and II (this is described in great details - fantastic read). Woz says the book was mainly written to clear a lot of misconceptions (such as the fact that he never quit Apple, he is still on Apple's payroll to this day).

Woz is your friendly, neighborhood geek who loves playing pranks (and good ones at that!), loves electronics and engineering and "whose head mostly floats in happiness even today" (paraphrased). The book also talks about his '81 plane crash and subsequent loss of memory, his life later on at Apple and CL9. He also narrates his version of the music concerts funded by him to "make people smile and have a good time" and his love for teaching.

Throughout the book, Woz sounds like a good natured, excited kid talking about computers at length (though you might think that he tends to brag at times). If you have read books such as "iCon" or watched the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you'll probably know a lot of the facts in this book.

Enough said! You can read a good deal about him at his site here. Definitely worth a read, whether you are a geek or not.

And oh, the "Woz Way" is actually a street in San Jose, named after Woz.

Update: Changed the image since I didn't like the old one. Also listed out the names of related book and movie (I had mentioned them earlier as "this book and this movie") on request from a very fussy reader :).

More Power to Mutter

2007-05-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

You're probably trying to decipher what the title of this blog post means. Mutter is what my iPod is referred to (by me - sadly, not many people I know believe in naming their favorite gadgets). And why Mutter? Go figure!

So, I saw this post on Swaroop's blog and read about ion. The ion is an iPod charger that directly connects your iPod to a power source on the wall. I thought, 'Why not? Let's get one and take it for a spin!'. After all, my iPod takes a little less than forever to charge from my laptop and the most annoying part is, I'd almost always realize that it was out of charge when I needed it the most (like when you're at a really noisy traffic signal and your cab just won't move, or when you have reaallly loud fellow employees at work who loved to scream across (sometimes) phrases like "Can I TS into your machine now?" or "Anyone taking a coffee break?" or "@#%$%#! Found it!" (??). You get the idea.

Let's not digress. Anyway, I placed an order for the ion end of last week and in two days, the little package was on my desk! I connected my iPod to it right away (ok, I have to admit that I muttered a silent prayer..you know..just in case) and hey, it just worked!

So here's what I think

The BEST feature was to be able to listen to music *while* you are charging the iPod. Killer!

Knowing how iPod accessories are priced atrociously high, I thought the price was just great - Rs 399, all taxes inclusive.

I don't know why, but I expected it to be a much smaller, sleek looking charger when I looked at the picture on the website (after all, we are talking about a charger for the iPod of all things). Turns out that it as as big as my laptop charger. Not a big deal, but I'm just that annoying when it comes to design.

I really like the blue light in the charger - gives me a visual clue as to what's going on. And I like blue. Period.

On the whole, the ion is a nifty charger useful for folks who carry around USB devices and don't want to carry around laptops just to charge them. Yet another addition to my cluttered room of wires, and truly worth the money spent.

J and the 'dread'ful PSP bet

2007-05-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Ever seen a Corporate VP's "official" bio picture like this? Read more about it here. And this is one of the reasons why I'm a HUGE fan of J Allard (known simply as 'J' to a lot of us internally) - great attitude!

Mix it up!

2007-04-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

So this is it! After watching the streaming keynote video for more than 2.5 hours now, I can finally talk about what's been cooking inside a lot of Microsoft buildings.

Silverlight was announced a few days ago. In addition to that, in Mix '07 conference that starts today, we announced the RTM (or the final release) of Expression Studio. Trust me, the demos of Expression Studio will blow your mind away! Silverlight will now ship with a cross-platform CLR (a small one at that) which lets people write and run apps on browsers on both Mac and Windows.

My favorite announcement for the day is the DLR or the Dynamic Language Runtime along with IronPython and IronRuby (yes, it's called IronRuby) which allows people to go implement their favorite dynamic language which gets compiled to .NET bytecode. Waaaay cool!

So what are you waiting for? Silverlight 1.0 Beta and 1.1 Alpha lies here.
The blog posts are just rolling in and there is so much buzz all over Internet. You can probably catch the entire webcast here (with the terrific demos and Ray Ozzie + Scott Guthrie's interview with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch fame) in a while.

Whew! So there, I've just blogged it. Exciting times are ahead. Wildly exciting times.

At the end of the rainbow..

2007-04-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

..lies not a pot of gold, but someone who wishes for more rain (yes, it rained today!).