My last post on this blog was just at the beginning of Fall semester last year. I have learnt and thought about so many things since then, that there is no dearth of topics that I can write and express my opinion on. Infact, I wanted to write about Windows Vista from a long time, I have read so many articles about Vista (mostly talking about its shortcomings), so I wanted to give my 2 cents on Vista. A few weeks back I did write a couple of paragraphs but alas it never made it to this blog. Well, some day!!
I went to SFO last weekend and attended a grad cohort workshop organized by CRA-W. It was pretty nice, the whole experience, I mean, not only the workshop but visiting and roaming around in SFO. I went to Fisherman's Wharf and really enjoyed my ride on the cable car starting at Powell Street in the downtown. Apart from the fun, one of the important take-away's for me was that inter-disciplinary research in Computer Science is on an all-time high. I met so many people doing research related to Bioinformatics, the hot topic these days in CS research.
Coming back from SFO to snow in Minneapolis was, needless to say, quite a shock:) but cold seems to be receding now. Temperatures are not sub-zero (degree C) any more. Feels quite good to just go in one sweater outside and not 'n' layers which were unavoidable a few days back. I remember how I got frozen in an attempt to take the picture of frozen Mississippi (see the pic below).
I am digressing here again, but I have been subscribing to Time Magazine for some weeks now and I like reading it, its like what India Today was in India. I like reading analysis of news, opinions of different people and then compare and contrast it with my views, its fun! Although, sometimes I feel lost when articles discuss US politics; I do not posses enough information at this point on how the US political system works. And infact now I am a bit out of touch even with Indian politics. But notwithstanding such articles, I enjoy the rest of the magazine.
Today, while reading I found a small article about photo editing and the writer had referred this site called picnik.com. I went to this site, which is still in Beta and found it to be extremely useful and light-weight as compared to all the image-editing software that I have tried to use till now. I found them too complicated for little things I want to try on the pictures. But this site is simple and beautiful, some of the nice features include:
1. No signup required
2. Fairly easy to navigate
3. Connects to the webcam to take fresh pictures
4. Can take images uploaded on some website for editing
......
And lastly, before I end the post, I'd like to mention that if you keep a schedule and have not yet started using Google Calendar, give it a shot, its fun!!
And oh yeah, World Cup is coming!! :)
