Ancient Drawing Board

 

Lower Calf Creek Trail
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Utah, USA

It was an amazing experience just walking between mineral-streaked cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, beaver ponds and pre-historic rock art sites en route to the 126-foot-high Lower Calf Creek Falls. The total roundtrip distance to the falls is 5-1/2 miles. Though the summer sun was above and my (a little over a year old) son was on the backpack, the hike was pretty enjoyable with very little elevation change. Most of the trail is sandy & that slows the pace, at times !

The most interesting part of the hike were the wall paintings and the Indian granaries (zoom in & zoom out) and of course the jewel of the crown being the lower falls itself.

On an entirely different perspective, we travel so far, hike so long to get a peek into the lives of the Anasazi Indians. These petroglyph on the walls of the canyons does provide the glimpse. But you know what, in most of these trails you see a notice that there are messages that indicate a heavy penalty if you make new makings (or painting) on these canyon walls (of course !!!)

We do have the technology to make new painting on these walls, that could last more the existing ones. If we are not allowed to make new paintings today how would people, 800 – 1000 years from get a glimpse onto ours lives …… right

Wrong !!! As technology grows, live changes and so is the medium. Who knows even the blog(s) like these -yeah the same one u r reading now could serve the purpose of providing the window to our lives, in future. Time’s Person of the year , 2006 clearly indicated the significance of the user generated content (if you already don’t know Times Person of the year 2006 is YOU) .

The count of blogs, as of writing this post, just on WordPress.com alone is 1,562,804 blogs with 53,197 new posts today. Even after dropping off the test blogs and the inactive ones, it is still quiet a number – the point is there is a good amount of user content getting generated every day on the Internet.

What would happen to these valuable user generated content, once the user is no more ?Even if someone decides to manage and maintain a users content after user’s time, On what basis would the user account details be shared with the family or friends ? May be the blog or the site could be graciously closed, but what if the users demise is not expected ? Would these become asserts of the individuate and hence be part of his Will ? How would we differentiate between the valuable and junk out of these content ?

So many things to ponder about ….

 

8 mp + 6x zoom + Image Stabilization = $200 ! WOW

Canon 720 IS – Is it really worth a wait?

I’ll know in a month or so. I moved to Canon S2 IS from Canon S50 three years back. It has been Canon for me that worked from the beginning. The cost of Memory Stick and compatibility has always kept me a little farther from Sony.

I have been looking at the option of moving to an SLR for the last couple of months. Still trying to gather reasons to justify the $$$ involved in the same

Meanwhile I was looking for a camera for my mom. Doing a quick search and reading some reviews zero’ed down on some canon models. That is when Canon 720 IS caught my attention.

Some of the key feature that I was looking for and available in Canon 720 IS were

Features	In Canon 720 IS
Compact	Its compact & Sleek
Point & shoot (with Manual Control)	~20 Shooting Mode(s) , with manual options
Power Zoom	6x (not as great as S2’s 12x , but still better)
> 6 megapixel for small Poster Print	8 megapixel
Cost	List price $250 (Street Price ~ $200)
AA Batteries	Yes. Having AA battery compatibility helps a lot, when ur stuck out of no where (lesson learnt from experience !!!)
Image Stabilization	Yes, Makes a lot of difference , especially with power zoom
Memory Options	MMC, SD and SD HC (High Capacity)
Movie Mode	Fast Frame Rate Movie mode for 60-frame-per-second video with sound
Support for additional lenses	Yes , Just in case

So here I am, awaiting for this sleek power toy ! Here is a detailed review of canon 710 , its predecessor, to get a feel for it! For a complete Spec of Canon 720 IS check this.

Update: This is available for $250 from couple of locations. Amazon.com was running this for $229 for just a couple of days last week. Now its $250 there too. Just today (Sept 23) morning noticed its available from oncecall.com for $229 (inclusive of 3 days Fedex shipping + no Tax). This seems to be the best price as of now. Just now placed an order, might not last long !!!

Update 2: It indeed was worth it. Except for the delay between shots (account to just 2 battries rather than 4 like my IS S2) , its just amazing !!!

 

The Earth is Cooking

Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

This national park sits on 2000° lake of molten lava, an underground pressure cooker of 50 miles long and 30 miles wide. For atleast a few million years, since magma burned a hole under ancient Wyoming’s bedrock, yellow stone periodically disgorged a small ocean of lava in eruptions hundreds of times worse than any volcanic eruptions on earth.

Today, the volcanic action, heats the rocks below the surface, and this in turn creates all manner of spectacle in thousands of steaming hot springs and hundreds of geysers, plus bubbling mud-pots and fumaroles.

At Yellowstone, the earth is cooking - Life, Times Inc

 

Temple Square

Temple Square, Salt Lake City, UT

Temple Square – An amazingly different place , an entirely new world within the downtown of Salt Lake City, UT. One a beautiful evening with a wonderful sunset – Lush gardens, serene pond, water fountains, iron cast statues – the list goes on …

For other shots of the Temple square, check this out (slide show).

I need to plan on a couple of visits, there is so much more around here.

 

Portlandia – A Tribute to Portland

Portlandia Statue, Portland, Oregon, USA

 

She kneels down and from the quietness of copper reaches out.
	We take that stillness into ourselves and somewhere deep in the earth our breath becomes her city.
If she could speak this is what she would say: Follow that breath.
	Home is the journey we make. This is how the world knows where we are.

- Ronald Talney

(as seen on the Portlandia’s plaque)

 

P.S : Incidentally this got published in Schmap Portland Guide (Third Version)

 

Google Maps better than MS Live Maps – Why !

Cause when I try get directions from a US location to somewhere in UK

Google tells me even where to Jump in the Atlantic Ocean, distance to Swim, and the point to get in @ France.

For the same address MS Live tells me that I’m wrong and asks me to verify the address !

Very Funny !!!

 

iPhone has the best user Interface – Think Again

Apple has always given breakthroughs when it comes to user experience and user interface. The same was true when Jobs announced the iPhone couple of months ago. The user interface seemed to have been a revolution in the mobile space.

Think such an innovation , multiplied by 100 x, add to it a coffee table, a bunch of cameras, a projector and a diffuser may be, throw in Microsoft and vista … bingo what do U get …

welcome to Microsoft Surface Computing …. Sounds really interesting. Takes interaction with computes to a whole new level. Looking forward to how soon this would get commercialized and accessible to everyone.

Watch Demo @ On10.netHere is the update from CNET & Popular Mechanics

P.S : Pretty sure there could be lot of patent overlaps with other major players, hope this comes out soon !

 

First Day in Utah

It has been nearly 2 1/2 months and here I am writing about my first day @ Salt Lake City, UT.

Change is good, especially when you initiate it. Or atleast, better , accept and grow along. Change in location from Portland to Salt lake city was quiet exhaustive, with change in location, change in responsibilities and changes in my view of life !

Portland,OR with its year long pleasant (at times cold !) climate was in entire contrast with Utah’s climate. I read somewhere and laughed, but after being here for two months realized how very true it is

If u don’t like the climate , wait for 5 minutes ,

ur in Utah!

The place where I’ve moved – Midvale (probably denotes middle of the valley), is surrounded by snow covered mountains, they are just gorgeous. It is just wonderful to drive around. I were told that, Utah basically being a desert, turns really really hot in summer. Hope it is not too hot this year !

Watch out for my travel blog for travelogues around UT.

 

Better know if ur after the coffee or the cup !

And btb knowing and not applying is actually not knowing at all in the first place.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee.”

“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”

- Anonymous

 

iPod + Phone + Internet = iPhone

Steve’s speech had always been inspiring. If u were not among the lucky few who are currently at Mac World, then you might find this interesting – Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote by Engadget. Wish I could get hold of the video (on demand) during the coming days.

Update : Here is the Keynote (video) from Apple website.

As most of us expected and rumored, the iPhone (I thought iPhone was trademarked by Cisco or rather Linksys) arrives. Some of the interesting things to be noted are

• iPhone runs on OS X
• The device has just one button (Home button)
• Built on Multi-Touch – a new technology being introduced by Apple (This video gets u a feel of what this tech could be)
• Touch based interaction rather than an expected apple click wheel or regular stylus
• Quad Band + Edge + WiFi + Bluetooth
• Only 2 mp Camera (doesn’t Sony have a 3 mp and Nokia a 5 mp camera !)
• Already partnered with major players like Google, Yahoo and Cingular

Though the closed model is successful for a number of reasons, it just makes one wonder on the number of applications that would be available on iPhone. With the power of OS X, it should be capable of creating any type of application on iPhone. But would there be any fun if apple is the only one, who could do it. Would be interesting to see how this market grows.

Update : Found this podcast at PodTech. It is part of the Keynote.

P.S : Did u notice that at the end Jobs, announced the change in name from Apple Computers Inc. to Apple Inc. dropping off computer. Is he not suggesting something here