santthosh's blog

I am going to participate in 'March for the Dimes', a walk to raise funds for March for Babies foundation at San Francisco. So whats this got to do with the next Snoop Dogg? There might be actually. (Or alteast read the FAQ at the bottom of the page)

How would you feel, if 20 years from now, you get to see subsequent generations listen and cheer to a physically challenged artist?  The next top tier CEO is a maniac firing people at his will, Wall street gets filled with insane, even more greedy bunches or the Oscar winning movie was directed by a mentally challenged.  Even worse, the young doctor who treats you on your death bed is so.

Ever thought why didn't these happen to us? That is because some one had already thought about it and took action. Its time for us to pay back, by passing this kindness to subsequent generations.

March for the Babies foundation has been doing a great job since 1938 and I was really surprised to find that they have made such a huge contribution to child care including the discovery of polio vaccines. I know you can read all these from their site, so I am not going to drag this further.. Support the foundation, and fund this! You can keep donating until end of next month. I have compiled a list of FAQ :) for you to guide through

I was watching the Moon Mission series yesterday (Discovery I guess) and got curious when they talked about the Lunar Module Computer. Guess what the challenge was?

Develop a system that can control a 13,000 kg spaceship, orbiting at 3,500 kilometres per hour around the moon, land it safely within metres of a specified location and guide it back from the surface to rendezvous with a command ship in lunar orbit. The system has to work the first time, and minimise fuel consumption because the spacecraft only contains enough fuel for one landing attempt.

Do this with a computer that has barely 5,000 primitive integrated circuits, weighs 30 kg and costs over $150,000. In order to store your software, the computer doesn't have a disk drive, only 74 kilobytes of memory that has been literally hard-wired, and all of 4 Kb of something that is sort of like RAM.

Awesome visualtion of the Credit Crisis, Great work Jonathan and Team! As a wise man said "For Greed, all nature is too little".

When my friends Vijaianand (aka Ramba) and Prem planned for the weekend trip to Big Basin Redwood State Park, I misjudged it to be one of the 'regular' park stuff :)

I didn't even bother to read it when Ramba sent out the plans,  as usual I let my Thunderbird filters work on it. Later on Friday (03/20/2009) realized that the trail was freaking 10 miles (16.09 km)! Thought, ha what big deal, have been working on Wii Fit for almost a month and if this not a breeze, should be at least doable.

Considering the length of the trails, we woke up early around 8:00AM (I think that is a record considering Saturday) and reached the park around 12:00PM in Ramba's new Toyota Corolla. There is ample parking space and facilities at the Park HQ.

Weather was pleasant, mild precipitation was predicted for the later part of the day. The plan was to take the 'Skyline to the Sea' trail and reach Berry Creek falls. But for us the trail was closed cause of a fallen tree and we had to take the 'Sunset trail', we were not disappointed as Sunset was nearly 5.5 miles, a bit more than what we thought for.

If you are planning to take the trails, my advise is you buy a map at the Park HQ and get there early. Map will come handy, since there are so many trails, its easy to get carried away.