Frozen in Cambridge

Winter has come to Cambridge with a vengeance. Too bad as I was really enjoying the mild winter in December. We've gotten some snow and wind, oh the wind. And recently we've had some arctic air come down over Cambridge and drop temperatures in the single digits with wind chills in the negatives. On a recent trip to Indiana I missed the cold weather in Cambridge only to get some freezing rain in Indiana. The pictures are from the next day and yes the entire tree is coated in ice, it might look like water dripping of the tree, but trust me its ice. All of the trees in Columbus IN were coated, making it look like Christmas again.

RSS & Reading Blogs

If you've found that you like to read blogs, except you can't always find the time to go visit all your favorite blogs. Well one answer is to get a feed reader or other blog aggregator that will get the most recent posts from all your favorite blogs and either put them on a single webpage or will email you the latest entries.There are many aggregators out there, I think the most popular is Google Reader and there are some that plugin to your favorite browser such as Sage for FireFox.

However, if you are inside a company firewall and there are internal company blogs you like to read, some of the external readers such as Google Reader or Yahoo may not work. Also if, like me, you spend the majority of your day in Outlook, then finding a reader that plugs-in to Outlook can be useful. I have found, and use, RSS Popper. Which is free and adds another folder in your Inbox to collect the various blog feeds. It also works great with internal blogs and external blogs.

You can get feeds from a blog by subscribing to the blog's RSS / Atom feed. Using RSS Popper to subscribe to a blog's feed is a simple matter of copying the RSS link and pasting it into the correct RSS Popper field and clicking OK. You may have seen Atom on a blog page, it is just another method that a blog author/ blog site can use to syndicate their blogs. Both RSS and Atom are transparent to you the reader and as a reader, you only care about the RSS/Atom link. The feed for this site is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RandomThoughtsFromATrini

So go out and start gathering your favorite feeds into your favorite feed reader.

Poor Grapefruit, Good Callaloo

I'm not sure on the optimum way of removing the peel from a grapefruit, but I'm pretty sure Trini-wife's way is not it. At the end of the process there was more juice in the container than left in the grapefruit! She did make some great callaloo (green stuff) for a dinner party though. The dhalpuri roti (yellow stuff) was purchased from Ali's Roti Shop in Dorchester. Actual Callaloo leaves are hard to come by in Boston, although a local farmer's market has it from time to time. So she substituted spinach instead which does the job just fine. Here's a recipe, you can skip the crab part and add some cubed squash instead.

Err

Err and Ignignokt caused much stress and confusion for some and fun for others in the city of Boston this week. On Wednesday there were bomb reports all over the city that devices which contained components of IEDs were placed on bridges and buildings in the city. I-93, the major interstate thru Boston was shut down for a period along with several bridges, major roads around the city and the subway as bomb squads removed the offending devices.
However, the devices turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of LEDs on a circuit board with some Duracell D batteries. Any why were they placed there? All part of a viral marketing stunt gone wrong, for the Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Turner Broadcasting owned up to the scheme and offered to pay the city's costs. Funny or Serious?

Here's what I found interesting about the whole thing:

• The 'devices' were in place for 2-3 weeks before being found on Wednesday, if they were actual bombs then that doesn't say much for our post 9-11 security.
• They shoot a water cannon at the 'device' to disable it. Umm very high tech.
• Now some folks in other cities where the ad campaign didn't create a huge public scare are selling the devices on ebay for about $600.
• The blogs and other internet sources had it figured out by about noon. Yet the authorities continued their efforts through 5pm. Timeline.
  

While you can't fault the Boston authorities for doing what they did, since they have to take every threat seriously, a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Prosecuting the two guys who were responsible for putting up the signs seems a little overzealous since their intent was not malicious.

Its not like incidents like this have not happened before. The Orson Wells War of the Worlds radio cast in 1938 certainly caused quite a stir. Let's hope future events are as benign as this one.

Birds

After my recent trip to Trinidad, it would appear I have bee bitten by the bird watching bug. While in San Jose I saw this humming bird taking a bath in a water fountain. Not sure what kind it is, but it seemed very interested in the water.

San Francisco

This past week I went out to San Jose and managed to go out to dinner in San Francisco with a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in well over a year! Anyway it was fun catching up with him. Its always fun driving around SF what with all the hills some of them are quite steep. Parking on a hill is a very interesting process. We went out to dinner at Zarzuela, a restaurant that my wife and I visited once upon a time when we were still dating. The food this time around was not as great as I remembered. Not sure if I changed or the place did. Just across from the restaurant was a Swensen's an icecream shop that I was not familiar with. My friend however couldn't wait to go for dessert. Apparently he is a big fan but the one near his house closed and now he has to go without. So we went and he got his favorite flavor, Swiss Orange Chip.
Certainly looks just yummy, however it tastes like Orange and Chocolate, which I guess is the point. I guess I should state , I'm not a fan of fruit and chocolate so this was really really bad. However, my friend thoroughly enjoyed it. And I guess he's not the only one. Someone actually set out to recreate this stuff . To each his own I guess.

Not enough humans?

Recently I was watching PBS, NOVA scienceNOW, on a Friday night I believe. Yeah nerd right? So anyway Neil deGrasse Tyson who hosts the show, and who I think is really great at breaking down the whole astro-physics-space-time-string-theory thing, introduces a story about bacteria. The story is about Bonnie Bassler aka the Bacteria Whisperer. Mrs Bassler has discovered some really cool ways in which bacteria communicate. She says that there are 600 types of bacteria on your teeth each morning! Yuck. (err no honey its not the morning breath, its the billion bacteria). And that the bacteria communicate with each other using some molecular compounds. And that these compounds are used by all types of bacteria. The interesting thing she showed is that in some bio-luminescent bacteria, they don't begin to glow until there are enough of them in place. Too little and they just sit there, but after some magic number of generations have grown and are 'talking', they all begin to glow at the same time. Its this 'talking' that makes you sick. So now she's on a hunt to find ways to limit their capacity to communicate and reduce our dependence on harsh antibiotics. Its a completely fascinating topic; as bacteria go anyway.

So it got me wondering, what if there aren't enough humans in the world 'talking'? What if we're all just waiting around for the human population to get large enough that something clicks and we begin to do our equivalent of 'glowing'. I know we're supposed to be all about reducing the human population growth. But maybe there's more for us out-there, we just need more of us.

I was also wondering if we are covered by so much bacteria, is it possible that we are not affected by them in some imperceptible ways? A recent article in the Economist talks about the recent science on the brain and the questions raised on Free Will. If bacteria make up so much of what we are, and they communicate, is it possible that also affect who we are? If the brain is as easy to manipulate as described in the article and our personality along with it, perhaps we are more creatures of a bacterial mind than we think.

I also recently watched a documentary on one of the DVDs that came with my Ultimate Matrix DVD set. Thanks Trini-wife! Anyway the material got me excited about the Matrix again, they show that there was so much more philosophy about Free Will and other concepts in the Matrix. Much more than I realized.

What do you think about Free Will?

Children of Men

I saw the movie Children of Men this weekend. Trini-wife and I decided on the spur of the moment to go see a movie and after looking at what was available, picked it as it got an 84 from Metacritic. An excellent score for a movie. We didn't know anything about it (deciding to skip reading the reviews). All that mattered (at the time) was that my wife saw Clive Owen was starring in it and so she was sold.

Good thing too, having seen the movie first and then reading the reviews after; I would recommend you not read any of the reviews as they may bias or tell you things about the movie that may ruin it. Needless to say its well worth the high reviews. Clive Owen is funny and believable throughout the movie, Michael Caine steals the show in parts and the cinematography is spectacular! Its probably worth watching for the camera work alone.

Its based on the book of the same name by P.D. James. And there are some parts I wish the movie expanded upon so I'm not sure if this was a failing in the book too. If you liked V for Vendetta then you'll probably like this movie. It also reminds me of 28 Days Later. Ok, that's all I can tell you without going into more detail on the movie.

Go see it, tell me what you think.

Too Many Books

A friend of mine recently gave me a copy of The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby as a Christmas gift. Its a collection of Nick Hornby's essays for the Believer Magazine. In the essays he writes about the books he has read for that month. He also tells you what books he bought and intended to read but didn't.

In reading the reviews and Nick's often funny and sarcastic insights, I found the Spree to be just what I wanted. Something fun, but still informative but not Business Book / Non-Fiction informative. It was liberating to see that my wife and I aren't the only ones who buy books and then let them sit on the book shelves; Unopened and silently mocking us every time we walk by. The intention is always there to read the books, its just that cleaning lint from the dryer always seems to come first. Well at least Nick has an excuse, he does this for a living and can be forgiven for not reading all the books he buys. We are just busy with laundry.

Of course what the Spree gives in redemption, can also lead to downfall. I've gained two more titles to read (and added to my Amazon Wish list) after reading the reviews. They are Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. This looks to be just a downer of a book but still moving. The other is How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen. A look at the lack of reason and enlightenment in today's world. Of course I also signed up for the Believer magazine too, can't wait to add that to the magazine pile in the corner.

Nick also likes Charles Dickens a lot and it made me think about reading the classics. You know other authors like Dickens, such as T.S. Elliott, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and so on. But there's only so much room on the bookshelf and the damn lint won't clean itself you know.

Anyway, do you remember the last book you read? Who the main characters were and what happened to them?... Yes? Well look at you with the big brain... Nick mentions that he doesn't always remember what he read. I guess excusable for a book reviewer, not so much for someone like me, but I must say not all books are worth remembering. And I'm sure there are more of those 'read and forget' people like me out there. Be proud, we have the benefit of being able to read a good book like it was new again.... and again..... and again..... well hopefully its stuck by the 3rd reading.

Now I must get back to my laundry.

P.S. Did you see the title of the latest Harry Potter book is out?

Fauna in Trinidad

Visiting my uncle's couple of acres in 'the country' in Tabaquite I came across this caterpillar. Not sure what kind it is but looks pretty unfriendly with the spikes. It was small though about 2 inches long.



While in Trinidad I was able to visit the Asa Wright Nature Center that is located in the Trinidad Northern range. Here the center is able to show lots and lots of birds to avid bird watchers in their natural habitat. During our visit we saw about 15 different species, which is pretty good considering we got there later in the day when most birds are in the shade. One of the more notable birds was the Bell Bird. It makes a really odd sound much like a bell. The following two videos show it in action.

Happy New Year!

Well its a new year and I went on vacation to Trinidad and Tobago, sort of visit the homeland. It had been two years since my last visit to T&T so I was due. I had a great time and chose not to check email or post to my blog or surf the web for the two weeks. Although I must confess I did check my Fantasy football scores. For those who care, I lost in the championship game in one league and placed 6th in another league. Well there's always next year I guess.

Anyway happy new year! Where did you ring in the new year? I was in Tobago at Pelican Reef with my family. There was a live singer and DJ with an odd mix of songs from U2 to Soca to Reggae to 80s classics. We did the count down thing and then went to bed around 1 AM.


We started off 2007 on Pigeon Point beach. If you go to Trinidad and/or Tobago make sure to spend a day at Pigeon Point, its the best part of the islands. My wife and I now want to end 2007 on a beach somewhere, to make a nice bookend to the year. I've posted some pics from T&T on Flickr.

Its funny how when you haven't seen members of your extended family for a while how they say you've changed. As far as I know I haven't changed much since the last time I saw them. But I got conflicting accounts. One aunt said 'I lost weight', another said 'I gained weight'. A cousin said I look more like my mom now, but an uncle said I looked more like my dad. Still other members said I looked younger while some claimed I looked older. I was even quizzed on my hair style (which hasn't changed in years), 'Was it new?' All of this makes you wonder if its worth the effort to make yourself presentable in public, after all it appears people see what they want to see regardless of what you do (or don't do).

DSL & Verizon

If you wanted to know, my Lamb Biryani showed up about 1 hr and 15 mins after I ordered it. Which I guess wasn't too bad from the www.orderit.ca folks. However the lamb itself was a little chewy, perhaps India Hut was not the best place for biryani.

Anyway, its been a couple of days since my last post. Mainly due to the fact that I was in Canada for a couple days and super busy with work. But before I left on my trip my DSL connection went out and I am still without DSL at home. My DSL modem(s) loose sync after a few minutes.

To fix the situation, Trini-wife called Verizon to get the process started. and it is a process let me tell you. First she spent a couple minutes going thru the automated prompts 'Windows', 'Agent' and 'Connection Problem' like she was talking to an ESL speaker. Finally she got thru to 'Kati' who sounded very much like 'Khyati'. Not that we have anything against out sourcing of the tech support. We just wish the tech support in India was better than in the US. Kati had my wife go thru all the power off modem, computer, recable, reboot, configure IE, recheck cables, before concluding that the problem MUST be that we had Opera and IE installed on the same computer. Never mind they've been working together just fine for the last 2 years. Thanks for calling Verizon.

So I called last night and got thru to 'Matt' who I think was really a Matt. Anyway I explained the situation to him and he had me try some cabling to a different jack and finally ran a diagnostic on his end that showed the DSL link was losing sync. He said that a Verizon guy would be by the next day to take a look at the phone lines in my area and setup a time to visit our home. He did come around noon, took a look at things poked around, thought a wet connection was to blame, rewired it and reset the phone line. The main office would then turn on our phone again later in the day and he would call back. Both Matt and Dave the local Verizon guy had great customer relationship skills AND more importantly sounded like they'd seen this before.

Well Dave never called back, our phone line came back on, but the DSL sync is still out of sync. Called Verizon again and got Sushil, who sounded like a Sushil and was able to determine that the Verizon guy will be back out to see me tonight. 2 hours after talking to Sushil, we get an automated call that says our DSL line was looked at and the problem was resolved. A hopeful check of the DSL light shows that was wishful thinking on Verizon's part.

So here we are without a fast Internet connection (I'm using dial-up.... they still have that). Its amazing how much you take for granted a fast internet connection, the minute its gone you feel cut off and unable to interact with the rest of the world. I'm used to this on vacation, just not when I'm trying to send a document to my boss thats due today. Such are life's little frustrations.

Toronto

Well I'm in Toronto this week and the weather is not at its best. I was out here about a month ago and it was also very rainy and cloudy at that time. This morning I couldn't see the top of the CN Tower, however by the afternoon the top was again visible.
I also tried an order from www.orderit.ca, a Toronto company that delivers food from about 100 restaurants in the Toronto area. They claim an hour turn around. I've got 30 minutes to go until my Lamb Biryani shows up.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

At 846 pages, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susana Clarke is an investment in time and dedication. The book is very highly reviewed at Amazon.com and by newspapers and book reviewers around the world. I picked it trying to take a break from my usual diet of business and non-fiction books. I was hesitant because of the size, I looked at it, put it down, wandered around the book store, came back to it, picked it up, put it down again, wandered around some more, finally my wife said BUY IT already! Its good! So I bought it. This was late Sept 2006.

Yup, it took 3 months to read this tome. At times I would get bored with it, then the pace would pick up and I couldn't put it down and then the pace would slow down again. The book is structured into 3 volumes and traces the rebirth of magic in 19th century England. As first Mr. Norrell brings magic back and then his apprentice Jonathan Strange helps him to further magic in public perception as a worthwhile profession.

The book is a mix of Harry Potter, Lord of Rings and adventure. HP because it puts magic as part of everyday life although visible to all, not everyone is able to practice it. The names and art are Potter-esque too. Lord of the Rings because of the sheer amount of information in the book. There are footnotes that provide additional insight and historical information to the story. Sometimes, I found this did little to add to the value of the reading. And adventure? Well magic is coming back, Norrell and Strange are the new Lewis & Clark though they take different paths to discover the world according to magic, both are explorers in a new land. Along the way friendships, marriages and national politics are tested to the limits.

So would I recommend this book? Eh its ok. Its not great, but the world that the author has created is certainly detailed and complex. At times I felt I would get lost in the prose and not the story. I certainly enjoyed the magic that was used, the relationship between the everyday world, magic and the natural world was believable. Strange and Norrell are supported by a host of other characters, each developed with their own eccentricities and motivations. The story is intriguing and had it been edited down a bit would have been a superb experience.

Snow

Well I posted last about rain, which wasn't as bad as was expected (in Cambridge anyway). But this morning we got our first snow of the season! However it was very short lived, the two pics are 4 hours apart.

Borat

If you haven't seen Borat as yet then you need to go see it. It is one of the funniest movies ever. I couldn't stop laughing the entire time I was in the theater. While I've seen some of Da Ali G show, I hadn't seen Borat before and I was never impressed with Da Ali G show. It came across as slow and boring and I never understood why anyone would go on the show. However, the movie version of Borat is funny in ways that may hit a little to close to home. There is a lot of potential lawsuits out there (valid or not) since the movie has now made close to $100 million. Salon did some research into which charaters in the movie were "in on it". But all the hoopla and ethics around the movie would not exist if the movie bombed at the box office. Go see it and judge for yourself.

Rain

Seems that Boston is supposed to get whats left of that storm that dumped snow in Seattle, Chicago and parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Thankfully we'll only be getting rain as temps are in the 60s. Usually we would have had our first snow fall around Thanksgiving time, however this year we're still waiting. Not that I'm complaining its not very often you get to enjoy a mild winter in Boston.

You do have to wonder though if its at all related to Global Warming or is it Climate Change? It seems that after last year's terrible hurricane season with Katrina we were all bracing for another wild weather season. However it seems that this year has been very quiet, despite predictions by NOAA. In 2006 there were no named hurricanes that made landfall and it seems El Nino is to blame or thank? Of course blaming a mild start to winter on Global Warming while it may make for fun (or dire) predictions on the planet's future, is probably not very accurate.

Thanksgiving + Wedding Planning

Its been a while since I posted, I was away from my computer due to Thanksgiving activities and travel for work. My wife and I went to see her parents and sister in Chicago over the holiday weekend. Despite the usual media storm of travel horrors this time of year our travel was uneventful. The trip was a fun time, but discussions on my sister-in-law's upcoming wedding were a little heavy at times.

Why is it that wedding planning seems to bring out the worst in families be they Hindu, Christian or Muslim? A lot of our friends have gotten married in the past year or two and it seems that there was always conflict when it came to the details of the wedding. And there is plenty of blame to go around, from the bride and the groom, parents of the bride, parents of the groom to aunts, uncles, and friends. Everyone seems to have an opinion on what the event should look like, the menu, the location, the date. Its crazy. Can't we all just get along and have a good time? As a wedding attendee I only ask for two things, 1) Feed me, and ensure its good, nothing ruins a wedding like bad food and 2) Keep it short and relatively on time. No one wants to wait 3 hours sitting on a rented folding chair.

As for Thanksgiving, it gets more and more out of control every year. Must every national holiday be associated with shopping? Now I think capitalism is a good thing. But as a nation we seem to take each holiday as an excuse to star in our own versions of 'Shopping Gone Wild'. Honestly, standing in line at an ungodly hour of 5am to save $20 on some electronic gizmo that's outdated the minute you cross the store's threshold on your way out, seems a tad overboard. Scenes of Black Friday shoppers trampling, punching, shoving and yelling at each other to save a buck seem out of place for a nation at war and while the rest of the world languishes in perpetual poverty. Now we also have Cyber Monday, when everyone goes back to work on Monday after Thanksgiving to shop online. I wonder if corporate IT staffs see a significant increase in traffic on their networks from all of the bargain shopping.

Is it the bargains that drives people to extreme shopping? Is it some sort of shared experience that we all seek and find only in shopping, football or the weather? Is it that there is a story behind the object they seek? "Honey, you won't imagine the hordes of people I had to fight through, to get you the new PS3." Sometimes, telling the story is more interesting to the gift giver than the actual act of giving. Whatever it is, I hope all those shoppers found what their loved ones wanted.

Casino Royale

So I went to see the new James Bond movie over the weekend. The 'blond' bond as he is referred too, Daniel Craig does a good job of rebooting the 007 franchise. The pace of the movie lags in certain places but overall its an excellent movie. Similar to the recent Bourne movies starring Matt Damon. Dame Judi Dench (how does one get anointed a dame I wonder) puts Bond in his place from time to time in an effort to get him to be more stealth than brute. The opening sequence highlights this stealth vs brute method. A Bond opening sequence is always action packed and this time its a frenetic chase featuring the running style called free running. To watch Sebastien Foucan jump from wall to wall, thru objects like he's Super Mario is truly the most interesting 'special effect' in the movie, as its all effort and camera work. If you get a chance you should go see the movie purely for this opening sequence. Though you won't be disappointed if you stick around for the 2.5 hours.

 

Email Posting

So not only is there the option to post normally via
the blogger interface but also via an email client. I
hope this post works.

Gian...