Diwali with handmade Diyas

This year we celebrated Diwali with hand made "Diya"s. Rupali made them in her pottery class and we painted them together at home with acrylic colors. The results are pretty damn good. Happy Diwali!!

Italy - Rome | Naples | Turin | Venice | Florence

Hot paninis for breakfast, pizzas for lunch and pasta for dinner, tiramisu and flans for the dessert and lots of Gelatos to fill in the time between meals! All this for 18 days and you still manage to lose weight - call it the magic of Italy. Though the cities are small, every church has a story and every intersection has a place in history. Miles are trodden with map in one hand and dripping Gelatos in other before you realize its night and your dogs are barking. Here are some moments we managed to capture without dripping too much Gelatos on my SLR.

Italy Rome Venice Vatican Florence Siena

I Was There! - Obama Inauguration 2009

Hurray! We made it.

After 5 and half hours of eternal wait in security line we finally made it to the Inauguration Day parade just in time. We saw President Obama and Vice-President Biden in person.


President Obama Approaching our location


President Obama Waving to the crowd


Vice-President Biden Waving


Ironically our entry point, where we waited to get through the security, was on the 10th street - right betwen the Ford's Theater (where Lincoln was shot) and a house where he died.



And there were some people with genuine agenda..

I have one of those signs.

and here is something from the rest of the parade. Around 70% of the spectators left after seeing President Obama and Vice-President Biden.

Obama Presidential Inauguration 2009

Acadia National Park, Maine

Apparently a normal human eye has a capacity to discern about 10 million shades of different colors and all of those shades are on display at an exhibition named Acadia national park. Especially during the fall… when mountains flaunt their resplendent greenish-orange coats decorated with streaks of vibrant red treetops... read more..

 

View Pictures of Acadia National Park

Beauty lies in the Panoramic eyes... [Some more..]

Some more from panoramic series.

New York : as viewed from New Jersey

New York: as viewed from Water Taxi

New York: as viewed from the 86th floor of the Empire State building

New York

Beauty lies in the Panoramic eyes...

No photoshop technique works better than stitching some average photographs into a panorama:

Great Falls National Park




Arlington Cemetery

Great Falls Virginia Arlington Cemetery

Just to creep you out

Here is something creepy that I missed in my last post. Do not forget to locate this colony of bugs underneath the hand-rest of one the staircases located within Fort Washington (see previous post).

Creepy

What Else to See - Washington DC - Fort Washington

Here is something you can visit if everything else in DC is seen. Fort Washington National Park. Canons are beautiful and so is their visitor center (painted yellow).

Closeup Canons in the main yard.. I guess the original ones from the main upper and lower level batteries.

Entrance platform lifting mechanism


Entrance of an under ground battery station



Upper level batteries where the Canons were located originally

What Else To See Washington DC Fort Washington

Straw theater

Little fun with straws.
Moments in the life of straws.

All images adjusted for contrast and background in gimp.

Family



Conspiracy



Bowling



Cemetary



Leader



Line up

Wedding Invitation

Dear All,
You are cordially invited to our Wedding ceremony on Nov 25th 2007 in India. Please click the invitation below.

thanks
Nitin and Rupali

Amazing Creativity - Qatar Airways Logo

I'm not sure if it is logo designer's amazing talent or I'm seeing things which are not there due to the travel boredom. Take a look at the Qatar Airways logo. It is a Goat (YES IT IS!). But if you you see it from another angle it looks like a bird either sitting on a branch or soaring up or diving down. Pretty cool eh?

Here is the original logo (a goat)



and here are the rotated versions (a bird)




Oh and by the way I'm writing this from Doha Airport, Qatar waiting for 14 hrs flight to Washington DC, so please excuse my over-imagination if any. And Yes- I manipulated these images using online image manipulator.. too much free time on hand.

George Washington Masonic Memorial

Nice memorial in Alexandria by Freemasons.

Here is the main view (click the title link for the aerial view):

George Washington - The first Grand Master:

Glass paintings:

Wall paintings:

King Street View from the top:

And .. of course the can of beer left by one of the workers that built the memorial. It's in the museum:

And yes, even if the notice near the entrance says 'private property', it is open to public and has parking near the memorial.

George Washington Freemasons Masonic Memorial

Just when it reached 123456 miles..

Somewhere in Ohio.... driving on I-70 West ... 17th March 2007 around 5 am early morning .. total miles reached 123456...

Winter Blossom

Speech and Handwriting Recognition .. How I hate thee!

I have come to the conclusion that advances in computer algorithms are working against me. Till date I used to dislike speech and handwriting recognition softwares because the underlying algorithms were in primitive stages and produced erroneous output. But with recent advances they have become much more reliable and are being adopted in mainstream consumer electronics.

Right there .. that is my problem - their adoption in consumer electronics.

My handwriting is not so good (alright... it is worst). "In the world of computers and keyboards who needs good handwriting!" has been my favorite argument since my school days to escape the stencil work and defend my bad handwriting. But the other day I came across Logitech Digital pen and I could see it sucking the air out of my arguments. With considerably flawless handwriting recognition algorithm embedded in it, this pen could very well replace keyboards for the purpose of taking notes in the class or jotting down meeting minutes. What am I supposed to do when everybody shows up with these intelligent pens? I can barely read my own handwriting. My smart phone acts like a retard when I scribble something on its screen. Our beloved keyboards must be saved.

Speech recognition is further screwing me over by taking the keyboard as far away from me as possible. Almost every GPS product now a days comes with interactive voice commands. Most call centers have implemented voice navigation for simple tasks. And about my speaking abilities: Let us just say that if it wasn't for people's ability to lip-read, I would have been ideal candidate for the scientists working on Autism cure.

Damn you algorithms!..

and I was thinking the skynet was a fictional computer network?