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Entries from Raj Shekhar

  • October, 2010

  • Guns and Roses

    Today is my Significant Other's birthday. Some measure of romance was added by these flowers that I put on the bedside for her in the morning

    I treated her to a full day of fun.

    First, I took her shopping to a few of her favorite stores and gracefully took the burnt :-) .

    Next stop was at the shooting range, where we fired some rounds.

    Today also happened to be the Halloween. We dressed up for the night and had dinner at a nice San Francisco restaurant on Valencia street. In case you are wondring, I dressed up as a well groomed man-witch. Throughout the dinner we were entertained by the Halloween party goers in their well done costumes.

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  • Death Song statue

    The statue "Death Song" is one of the most moving pieces of art for me. I saw this statue at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

    In my first viewing of the statue, it appeared to be the statue of a hunter standing over the animal he had just hunted.

    I then read the description of the statue (quoted below)

    "Death Song" depicts a heroic member of the Miwatani Society of the Western Lakota. The warriors of this elite group of fighters, called "Sash Wearers," would stake their sash to the ground in the face of an enemy attack. This allowed freedom of actions, but under no circumstance could the sash wearer pull out the lance and retreat-an action would bring scorn from fellow warriors and Tribal members. Only exceptional performance in battle would allow another warrior to remove the lance and permit the sash wearer to escape otherwise certain death. In the bronze sculpture, one warrior, with his sash pinned to the ground, is standing beside the body of his exhausted pony preparing to do battle, singing his "Death Song."

    I did a double take after reading the description and looked at the statue from the side. I could see the stake and I could make out the horse lying on the ground.

    The statue really amazed me. From the front, it appeared to be ahunter with his prey. But closer inspection showed it to be a warrior most probably making his last stand.

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  • Yoda was supposed to be a monkey

    When George Lucas and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan decided to make the ancient Jedi at the heart of Luke's spiritual journey into a two-foot tall, pointy-eared alien, it wasn't clear how the character could actually be realized on screen using 1980 technology. At the time, animatronic technology wasn't thought to be advanced enough to pull off Yoda. .... they decided to try putting a trained monkey in a Yoda costume, including a full Yoda face mask. Rinzler showed a picture of the monkey on set, but he explained this idea was quickly abandoned when one of the people who worked on the primate scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey pointed out "Look, the monkey's just going to pull off the mask over and over again. It's never going to work."

    In the picture, a monkey is outfitted with a cane and a mask and measured. The simian was also briefly considered for walking shots of Minch-Yoda that would have been impossible to execute with a puppet.

    Pic taken from Vanity Fair

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  • July, 2010

  • make apt-get skip some packages in upgrade

    When doing an apt-get upgrade on my Debian (Lenny) box yesterday I received this message

    Since release 150, udev requires that support for the CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED feature is disabled in the running kernel. Please upgrade your kernel before or while upgrading udev.

    This was holding back the upgrade of all the packages. Looked around a bit and it seems that the solution for this problem is to let apt know that we do not want to upgrade the udev package. The way to do this is echo "udev hold"|dpkg --set-selections and then run apt-get upgrade

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  • June, 2010

  • in today's odd news: Scientists use Calvin Klein cologne to lure jaguars

    Biologists Rony Garcia and Jose Moreira from the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Jaguar Conservation Program rely on Obsession for Men, a cologne known for its complex scent, to help lure jaguars in the Central American country.

    Note that this scent works on jaguars. There is no research of its effects on cougars :-D .

    The discovery that Obsession for Men acted as a magnet for jaguars was the result of an experiment by the WCS's Bronx Zoo in New York. The WCS was looking for ways to get cheetahs in front of camera traps, and, after several years of testing with different fragrances, found spraying the musky Obsession For Men near the heat-and-motion-sensitive cameras drew the cats for longer than other scents.

    Links:

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  • May, 2010

  • today

    I wore a pair of torn jeans to office today. I was trying to look fashionable, but I later saw that I was wearing a torn jacket as well. I hope I did not project an image of someone-who-does-not-get-paid-enough.

    I watched the pilot of the X-Files tonight. Memorable quote

    What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.

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  • choice

    Now, since the real test for any choice is having to make the same choice again, knowing full well what it might cost - I guess I feel pretty good about that choice, 'cause here I am, at it again. — Oracle, The Matrix Revolutions

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