Friends

This is Mono Lake. One of the oldest lakes in America and certainly the most beautifully colored water body I've seen. The Mono lake we see today is supposed to be a remnant of a much older, bigger water body that was many times larger than the 69 square miles it is today. At an altitude of 7000 feet above sea level, with the Sierra-Nevada in sight, this is an absolutely gorgeous water body.





( Welcome to Mono Lake... )

I just started watching Coupling earlier this year and loved it immediately. I've been watching it on Demand, so I don't get the episodes that fast--I really wanna change that. I am on season 2 right now and I've watched the first 4 eps so far.

My favorite characters are Jeff and Patrick. They get themselves in the funniest situations.

I also love Jane. I dunno if you guys have issues with new fans drawing paralells with Friends...but its so hard not to think of her as Phoebe, lol

Not sure what else to say...I just love this show. ^_^

Here's a link to some Coupling icons I've made CLICK HERE

The Ancient Bristlecone pine forest in the Inyo National forest of eastern California is home to some of the world's oldest trees. Until recently, it had the oldest known tree in the world when an older tree was discovered in remote Sweden. These trees are not giants like the Sequoias, but having lived on earth for more than four thousand years, they are very, very special.





( More... )

Does anyone have big and/or hi-res promo pics? All I can find are the Amazon DVD covers from the site.

Airports are strange places. Strangely boring that is.


 


Read yet another tale of my imbecility.

An exhilarating match last night. Both deserved to win, but allegiances reign supreme. :-)

Meanwhile, I am still sleepy after watching the match till 2 in the morning (IST).


Picture: Wimbledon.org

When driving past the eastern Sierra-Nevada on the beautiful highway 395, we came across a grassland at the base of a mountain. "Wildlife viewing area" a board said and when we pulled over and looked towards the mountain, the beautiful sight an elk herd greeted us. There must have been hundreds in that herd, roaming the fenced grassland, shielded from the busy highway. The setting resembled that of the vast herbivore herds roaming the grasslands of East Africa...





( More elk photographs... )

General Sherman, the giant Sequoia, is often said to be the largest tree in the world. It is not the tallest, or widest or the heaviest though and perhaps not even the largest by some other definitions. The tallest living tree is supposed to be a coastal redwood named hypernion. The Aspen grove in Utah, called Pando, has had a root system that's been alive for 80,000 years and is collectively five times heavier than General Sherman. The largest diameter belongs to a tree in Mexico. And the largest circumference for a tree belongs to a a Boabab in South Africa - the Sunland Boabab - which has a pub inside that seats fifty. So, General Sherman is the largest single-trunk tree by volume that still lives. And it lives in the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park in California with a bunch of other giants. Regardless of the classifications, the giant trees are all impressive and we are lucky to have them living with us.

Walking in the home of these giants, looking up towards the sky can get rather dizzy. At first, the feeling is as if we were magically transformed into a world of fantasy which only exists in a fairytale. An amazing place.



( The Giant forest )

An idea, I have been nurturing since a long long time, ever since I started my KDE life back in late 2005 is going to come true coming weekend. I always read that on the dot and lists that a hackathon has been organised somewhere in Norway or Germany or somewhere else where KDE developers/artists/contributors would meet and do some good KDE work to produce stuff like Plasma or Oxygen or Akonadi or KOffice and some other really wonderful stuff. I always wanted a KDE hackathon here in India.

And yes!!! we are going to have our own KDE Hackathon - "KDE.IN Monsoon Hackathon". It will be held in Bengaluru ( Bangalore ) on 11-13th of July 2008. FOSS.IN is sponsoring the event and will be held at Geodesic's Bangalore office. I bounced this idea off Atul Chitnis, the FOSS.IN Lead and Geodesic's Sr. V.P. and he whole heartedly accepted it from the day 1 and helped me incubate the idea into reality. Since some of us - including me - are not from Bangalore, travel sponsorship, venue sponsorship, internet facility is all being sponsored by either FOSS.IN and/or Geodesic. Coolness! Thanks guys!

Now the important part - the participants of the hackathon. Atleast 3 KDE contributors along with 3 KDE GSoCers from India would be coming together for this wonderful event. Sharan Rao, Akarsh Simha ( SoC ), Gopala Krishna A ( SoC ), Shashank Singh ( SoC ), Tejas Dinkar, Kushal Das (?) and me. Idea is that the SoCers would hack on their SoC projects ( unless they want to hack on something else ) while the rest of the gang would hack on their favorite KDE project. So for example - Sharan might be hacking on Kexi/Umbrello, while Tejas would be hacking on Kopete/Bonjour plugin and so on. They guys are all excited even, since it would be their first hackathon as well, I think.

"There is no connection between my dick and my brain!"

brilliance <3

*rewatch fun*

Here are photos from the four international trips I've done so far this year. Three to the shopper's haven HK and one to wonderful California.

• http://flickr.com/photos/teemus/tags/hk-jan-2008
• http://flickr.com/photos/teemus/tags/hk-mar-2008
• http://flickr.com/photos/teemus/tags/usa-may-2008
• http://flickr.com/photos/teemus/tags/hk-jun-2008

Its raining here like crazy since last few days though today was day off or something since it rained only "cats and dogs" today. Its nothing unusual for people living in this part of the country. We have seen this in 2005. I like many others have were in the middle of it back then in 2005. I know that my good friend Anurag just managed to escape drowning that day ( check the link and see the pics that Anurag took with his cell phone ). He took shelter at one good Samaritan's place with some others. We didn't know each other back then. I used to stay in Kandivali as a paying guest, some 15 minutes walk from my previous work place. 3 of my colleagues stayed over at my place that day since it was impossible to go back home. They even tried to go back home and managed to survive the rains and came back from Borivali station. Next day when the rains stopped ( for some definition of stopping ), me and my friends went back home. It took me some 9 hours to reach Panvel instead of 2.5 hours or such. One of my friends reached the day later since he wasn't allowed to enter his town Kalyan and took shelter in some temple or such. The story didn't end there, I came to Panvel right after the flood was over but the effects remained there to be witnessed. There were many buildings which had mud marks above their ground floor level and just below the first floor balcony lever. Imagine the rise of water level. I remember cleaning atleast 2 of my friends house along with their family. Rooms full of mud, cupboards full of mud, books, wedding gifts all soaked in muddy waters. Some of us volunteered at a relief camp at "Kali Bari" organised by Bharat Sevashram. We didn't have any electricity for next few days. Joined work exactly 1 week down then line Yes, that was back then in 26th of July 2005.

So electricity in Panvel is in a better shape than what it was few months back but still I would like to go back to 1993-2004 or even 1986-2004 ( all my years in Maharashtra ), when there was no such thing as daily power cuts. Occasional failures yes. That is why I think we need the Nuclear Agreement with USA. Because about time we solve such issues and stop relying on Oil for everything. As it is inflation at 11+% - which is at all time high in many many years is not helping at all. Solving the energy issues might help the cause a lot.

But the polical parties are busy doing politics over the whole issue and other issues as well. Some call for nationwide bandh, others just do a "rasta/rail roko andolan" and some others do something else. I know, all this will stop soonish. Its election time in few months anyway - maybe sooner thanks to the Indo/US Nuclear Deal.

Anyway, after such a grim post - expect some good news in a day or two - thanks to friends in Bangalore, Mumbai and Allahabad ;).

Dear Lazyweb,

I have been stuck with a problem for quite sometime now. The new account system for getting Gnome SVN accounts - Mango - behaves a bit oddly at times. The following are the problems that I have seen happening in the past:

#1: There was no option to request an account as a Translator. It got fixed eventually.

#2: A voucher is required for a Translator, when she/he requests for an svn account. The voucher is essentially the Translation Team co-ordinator and to ensure that happens, the person requesting the account has to select the Translation Team from a dropdown menu in the New Accounts page. Sounds easy? Well not exactly, if your team is not present in the dropdown list.

#3: So up next, one has to file a bug against Mango to get the team listed.

#4: The team is not listed on the dropdown menu if the Team's coordinator does not have an account. Pretty valid. But then how does the co-ordinator request an account, if Mango is the way and the language team will not be listed until she/he actually has an account. Chicken-egg....gaah!

#5: And even if the co-ordinator does have an account, things might not be all that rosy. ( Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali-India have valid co-ordinators with existing accounts. In case of Kannada, the account stopped working for Pramod one fine day. Marathi has a somewhat similar situation.)


To be honest, I am completely frustrated. It is understandable, that with limited number of volunteer sysadmins things might run slow. However, the complaints need to be addressed some way or the other. Here in India, most of the language groups are close to each other and the problems come across too starkly.

I don't know if anyone from Gnome actually reads my mails to the mailing list (most linked above). I was really hoping that someone who could help out would read these words and do something about it. It would be much appreciated around here.

regards
Runa

I had fun shooting birds at Rivendell. I got three lifers (first sightings) - Western Tanager, Band-tailed Pigeon and Black-headed Grosbeak!



( Picture heavy. 14 photographs. )

Nikon D700

• ISO 200-6400 (100 - 25600 in pulled/pushed mode)
• 12.1 MP 35mm (FX) CMOS Sensor
• 14 bit RAW
• Magnesium Alloy Body with Weather Seals and Self-cleaning Sensor
• Live View, HDMI Output, Crazy awesome focusing in Live View

How the heck can you be a photography enthusiast, especially a Nikon afficionado, and not drool over this model? Time to start saving up $2999, US, somehow. Oh, and I'm getting the 85mm f/1.8 goodiness this autumn. Can hardly wait to get the feel of the expanded FoV from my existing 35mm f/2 D lens and this new one on the FX sensor. Suddenly, the 18-200mm VR permanently on the D80 becomes a super attractive combo again :-)

I have so many photographs of a variety of birds from Rivendell, but Steller's Jays need their own post. First, they are the most visible inhabitants of the place and second, they put on the best show for photographs.




Steller's Jay

( Feeding time )