lunatechian (lunatech-ian) (Entries tagged as today)

Guns and Roses

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 11:28:00 +0000

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.

Shadow and light

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:57:13 +0000

Saw this beautiful sight on my way to the office.

I also saw a rather worrying sight. The car ahead of me changed lanes near a traffic light in a slightly wobbly manner. I slowed down and peeked inside the car to see what was going on. The "driver" had a book open on the steering wheel and was reading that.

Fall colors in Bay Area

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:03:03 +0000

View outside my window.

Message of the day

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:16:00 +0000

Avoid sugary, fatty and carb rich food.

Morning run

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:13:00 +0000

Run in the Bayland park. 1 mile in 15 minutes.

Handwashing instructions

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:08:59 +0000

Morning routine

nospam@example.com (moblog) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:18:06 +0000

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

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:16:07 +0000

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 .

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:

Scientists use Calvin Klein cologne to lure jaguars at Yahoo! News

today

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:52:39 +0000

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.

choice

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:37:52 +0000

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

weird dream

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:58:31 +0000

I had a very weird dream tonight. I saw that I was a space traveller and we came in contact with aliens who could live in 17 dimensions. These aliens did not try to kill us off, but they made us humans well aware of the inadequacies of living in "just" 3 dimensions. These guys looked similar to humans, but I do not remember what other things they could see that we could not.

realization

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:52:11 +0000

I arranged my closet and I found out that I have more shirts than t-shirts. Luckily, I have only one pair of pants and 6 pairs of jeans, so I am not handing back my geek badge anytime soon

word of the day: proscribe

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:40:40 +0000

Proscribe: to denounce or condemn (a thing) as dangerous or harmful; prohibit.

This word seems closely related to the word Prescribe, but I could not find any source which would mark proscribe as the antonym of proscribe.

interesting meetup on July 14

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:13:06 +0000

I attended the Hackers and Founders meetup yesterday. It was a high energy meetup and I liked it. When I walked in, I was already 2 hours late but there were still quite a few people around. I walked in, took a name tag and tried to "merge in". Merging was easy - the folks were friendly and did not mind if you joined the discussion.

Some observations

I did not have a good answer for "what are you working on right now" . This made me realize that from a technology perspective, I have not worked on anything interesting for some time now. I have tinkered with a few things in the past 6 months (man!), but have not really done a deep dive on any of them.
There was a focus on programming language in the group. I am not sure if the choice of a programming language is really a big deal when creating a webapp. Rails, PHP, Python, Perl, Java - all have a good web framework. One of the arguments was that it would be difficult to organize PHP code in a coherent manner. In my opinion, that is a matter of discipline instead of language.
I did not find people thinking of totally different ideas. Or maybe, the folks were not telling those ideas . The ideas floated around ads, community, social networking, websites etc.
I am not a unique case when it comes to the case of creating a startup. A few folks there had a regular job and were planning on side projects.

OMFG!! Is that a ..

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:55:20 +0000

OMFG!! Is that a Romulan Warbird decloaking in front of us. OMFG!! They are hailing us.

Actually, no. It is just me posting to my blog. I had a busy month and hence my website and my blog took a backseat.

So what all have I been up to -

Facebook is the new Orkut. I find myself logging into FB every day now.
Yahoo!'s iphone app is great.
Finally got myself a postpaid AT&T connection, with their data plan. In my opinion, it is easier to get a phone connection in India than it is in USA.
The iphone + google maps app + at&t data plan make a great way to explore new places. My wife and me used it when exploring places in San Francisco.
I am now cycling to work! After some research, I bought myself a Schwinn Frontier bike and I am pretty happy with it. The only problem that I see in this bike is its hard seat, but from what I heard, this is not a bad thing. This review pretty much sums up my opinion about the bike as well.
Oh yes - Star Trek!! I saw this movie and I was impressed. In fact, I was so impressed that I clapped when the movie ended (oddly, very few people clapped)
GIT. That has been a new addition to my programming arsenal. Git is really nice and I am loving it. I have to deep dive into the git branches, but even the basic stuff from git have made source control easy.
Oh yes - I checked out Songbird music player. If you are already using Amarok, don't bother with Songbird. Amarok is way ahead of it. If, on the other hand, iTunes is the only player you know, then give Songbird a spin. It is much nicer than iTunes.