Blog - Mahesh.net

Last week, there was a lot of buzz in the major news outlets about the disappearance of James Kim - an editor at the popular CNET.com - and his family in Oregon. I was tracking the news much before it appeared on CNN.com because it was being talked about in all the tech blogs much before it became mainstream news. The family of four got lost in the snow in Oregon and got stranded in the middle of nowhere. They stayed put for almost eight days in their car, before James decided to venture out and try to find help. Sadly, it was not a happy ending for the family. Rescue teams found the James' wifes and kids near the car, but by the time they got to him, he had already died, apparently of exhaustion and possibly hypothermia.

This brought back memories of the time, when we got lost in the snow in New Hampshire. About 10 of us were hiking up to Mt. Washington in the White Mountains area. It was some time in October 2001 and there was a lot of snow on the trail. The trail was really treacherous, very icy and slippery. We started a little late in the day and by the time we reached the top, it was already getting dark. As we slowly made our way down it become completely dark and we had just the moon-light guiding us. The trail markings were no longer visible and got lost in the mountains. We realized we were not on the trail anymore, because we were treading on snow which was very soft and things didn't look familiar. Not one of us had a cellphone then. It was decided to continue on the path we were on, because we were atleast headed down the mountain. At some point we were talking through what felt like a stream. We literally started walking down on the stream, because it had to do down. At some point we saw the lake, which was near the parking lot and we just started jumping and rolling down the mountain slopes till we reached the base.

Luckily for us, we ended up on the road very close to the parking lot. Some of us shouted partly in joy and partly in relief on touching the hard road. But the 45 mins that we were lost on the slopes it was very scary. Hardly anybody else knew where we were, we had no food or water supplies and no way to get in touch with anybody to call for help. Its an experience, I will never forget... Anybody from that trip, remember your experience?

Its Raksha Bandhan. A day to celebrate the wonderful relationship between brothers and sisters. Every year my sis Vidu - the blue-eyed baby of our family - makes it a point to send me and my brother in Colorado Rakhis all the way from India. And it always comes with a beautiful card. No matter what. Last year she was in Pune, but she did not forget. This year, she is all alone in Delhi and still did not forget. This one is for you..

Vidu, Rags,
I am lucky to have two sisters like you. Wish you a Very Happy Raksha Bandhan.

The Golden Gate bridge is one of the most impressive (and photographed) structures here in the Bay Area. Anytime we have guests, we invariably end up making a trip to see it. Everytime I have been there its always been bright and sunny. Until the trip we made this past weekend. This time it was covered in heavy fog, which I have been told is more typical. It was really amazing to see so much fog flowing over the bridge. See this picture that I took from Sausalito.

And here is a picture that I took from the same vantage point on a clear day.

Today is June 21st. If anybody has realized that in the Northern hemisphere, today is going to be the longest day of the year - the Summer solstice. For me growing up in India, it didn't mean much. But here in the US, its the offical start of summer. And I've been looking forward to summer this year especially after a unusually long and wet winter.

Just completed a little redesign of the gallery section. Earlier, viewing a image caused reloading of the whole page and a whole lot of bandwidth was going in the surrounding elements. Well browsers do cache a lot of the images, but overall not very efficient and slow. So I re-tooled the gallery scripts to use Lightbox2 to display the images. Now the images are overlaid on top of the existing page and only the image is sent from the server. The best part is the cool overlay effects and ability to go navigate the gallery using the mouse of the keyboard (Next - n, Prev - p, Close -x).

Check it out here.. I have put the new scripts in a new location still I am sure I am not breaking anything else. The link on the nav bar still points to the old gallery pages.

View the new gallery

Next, I want to re-write the site, but keep the same look-and-feel. The current HTML code is pretty messy and I see too many nested tables being used. Since the time I built this site, I have learnt a lot more about CSS, positioning using DIVs and W3C standards. I want to try and use these and build an easier to maintain site.

If you are wondering who "Hemulal Yadav" is and why am I writing about him, its because he is the reason behind my first contribution to Wikipedia - the vast online free encyclopedia. After Google, Wikipedia is my next big resource for information on anything under the sun. And now it includes a teeny-weeny contribution from me.

Read more...

Edward Tufte is a renowned information visualization expert and has written several books and articles on information design and presentation. An overly simplified way of putting it - How to create effective presentations. Anyways he has written books on using Powerpoint effectively and I came across this article on his website where he talks about how the slides used in the presentation that Boeing engineers made to high-level NASA officials about the dangers to the shuttle Columbia from damage to the tiles during its launch.

Tufte's conclusion is that Powerpoint (and its clones) are probably not the best tool for highly technical presentations. A very interesting article for both people creating presentations and for people viewing these presentations.

On Saturday, I injured my left thumb while playing cricket and my left hand is in a protective brace. For me, the use of the left hand is very important, because I drive a stick-shift car. The right-hand is required to operate the shift and the left hand for the steering. Now, I have to basically do both steer & gear with just my right hand, while I use the left to just stabilize the steering. Its a bit of a pain, but in some way I have experience driving like this.

Back in August 2001, I injured the same finger, again while playing cricket. Back then, it was pretty severe. The bone in my finger had shattered so badly, that I had to go in for surgery and have the bone put back in place with two metal pins. My hand was in a very restrictive brace and right around then, I bought my first car - a 1989 Ford Escort Pony. It was also a stick and I had never really driven a stick before. So I had to learn to drive it with my left hand in a cast and some help from NK.

Looking back, I felt a little sad letting go of it, but December of 2002 was very brutal on it. On Christmas Eve, it was hit by an angry wife who was trying to destroy her husband's car. Some days later after a severe snow storm, a huge chunk of ice fell on the roof and partially collapsed it. By the end, I had to rip out both the front and back bumpers and drove it around for two month with the roof almost touching my head. It will always be the first car I bought.

Anyways back to today. Two more weeks and I will be able to get rid of the brace and be able to drive normally.

Ever since I got back from India in June, I've a big motivation to get to work early. And the reason is fresh breakfast at work. See this blog post about our breakfast cafe.

My biggest surprises: people consume 1-1/2 gallons of kombucha tea - a little-known fermented drink - every day; and against all logic, some people ask for an omelet that's half egg whites, half regular eggs. What can I say? We aim to please.

My usual - A smoothie made from OJ, bananas, pineapples (mangoes whenever its available) alongwith an egg-white scramble with onions, tomatoes and some jalapeneos. Every once in a while, I grab a tall cup of Peet's coffee and buttered toast.

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