I am attending an academy conference on open source in Toronto. This has been a great experience listening and talking to some of the coolest kernel developers, hackers on planet, all working for IBM..The highlight has been listening to Tytso..

Long live the penguin…

I will be in Toronto for the next few days..if you are in town lets do lunch or dinner…

My good friend, Nathaniel from the east coast, has done some crazy trips..He did solo, full month trip to New Zealand few years ago; several solo trips to remote parts of Europe and now Antartica…All I can is WOW!

Dude- you are braver and [crazier] than I thought…Thanks for sharing your experience with pictures and helping us vicariously enjoy the penguins [brr] and some amazing shots of South America…

The year of PIG Is here…Happy New Year!

I am spending time in the east bay area these days at a customer…if you happen to be in Oakland/Berkeley or San Fran - drop me a note..may be we can geek out.

In other news - I am boning up on Statistics and Graph Theory. Its been hard concentrating on these new topics and I am realizing now that I should have spent all the time (while I was 15-20) getting a solid math background..I guess, better late than never..

This is some cool sh*t from Yahoo!

I have been busy with school, work and family…some times I feel like I am going nowhere and at other times I feel like I am accomplishing MONUMENTAL tasks..

I was stuck on this one Sudoku problem that needed to be solved in a first order logic language. I struggled with it for over 2 weeks - as I didnt want to use my imperative programming language background to solve this problem in a declarative language. The hard part was due to - lack of dedicated time (I had to start over multiple times as I switched context between work, work and studies) and trying to speak and think in this new language. The insight occured when I went to a Saturday Morning Math Group at UT with Sammy. Dr.Villegas showed how a problem like Tic-Tac-Toe can be reduced to a finite geometry problem. This opened up flood gates and I was able to break the grids and structure and visualize the Sudoku puzzle as a set problem. I was on this path few days ago, but was missing how to break this problem down further..this lecture gave me an insight on how to think differently..Thank you prof..

I also am getting psyched about Statistics and Probability…I have borrowed about 3 good books on this topic and need some solid time to sit and peruse through them. I am amazed how my Bayes and Normal Distribution helps me solve all sorts of problems. Again a lesson in thinking differently..connected to this topic is also the aspect of thinking in N-Dimensions..I thought physicists were nuts when they were thinking in 4 D and beyond…but as I read up on hyperspaces, I am fascinated by how cool it is to visualize a data problem in n-d space.

Lastly, I have been trying to read up on Bioinformatics. I would like to do some research with my sister Krith and this needs some of my basic bio skills sharpened…hence this foray into Molecular Biology texts…

For fun I have been practising guitar and trying to be like Dominic or Pete or Bela…..

…………..summary in pics……..

My 5 year old has a baby sitter whose daughter [5 as well] seemed to be smitten with him. We had his birthday party at a bowling alley in Bastrop today; she made sure she bathed, put perfume on and brushed her hair and demanded to wear the new pink dress to see Jay..She is only 5…

Her mom was telling me a little episode, that happened Jay was at their house-

This girl tries out a new hairband and models in front of the mirror. She asks her mom multiple time if she looks beautiful. Jay shows up and they go for a ride in their mom’s car. As she is sitting next to Jay, she starts to look at Jay and position her new head band…[silence]…then she questions him about her head band…[hmm..]..she questions him multiple times…[yea..]…finally she gives up and asks Jay - “Do I look beautiful in this headband or not?”..[yea..you look beatiful]…to which she looks at her mom and flashes her pearly white smile..

This astounds me…Man-how can a 5 year old girl be so womanly?

on the other hand…my Jay is typically clueless and a dude…