StreetFootball Freestyling

Truly wicked!

Love in SF, past the time of Cholera

Last sunday I came to visit my Life Partner in SF. It has been a great visit so far - we spent all of sunday walking around SF. We started off Union Square and walked thru China Town where we had lunch at the loveliest Chinese restaurant "House of Nankin" - the food was wonderful. A must for anyone visiting China Town. [I'll put up pics in facebook] This is the green tea we had, with roses and other interesting things in it. Definitely get this as well!

We then walked on thru North Beach area which is slash little italy. And walked on to Fisherman's wharf. A nice 5-6 hr walk, but really great. Everyone should do it.

The colors in CA are closer to the brilliance in Australia. Seeing the ocean in the background is like coming home. But the vegetation is interesting - somehow similar but definitely different. There are lots of really tall palm trees which we don't really have anything similar in Aus.

This reminds me of the little fern trees i saw in Banff near Calgary (Canada). The trees near the mountains are pretty small - it seems the trees are awake only 37 days in a year - the rest they sleep. So that's why they don't grow as much. Interesting no? Actually i just tried to find some reference for that 37 days, and I couldn't. But i didn't search very much.

We've also watched two movies: Beowulf in 3D and Love in the Time of Cholera.
I will leave my thoughts on the movies till later post. Too doo loo for now :-)

Red Nappies & Go-Go Boots

Hot damn!!
This is an oldie, but may I say, SUCH a goodie!!

"This one requires a little backstory. In 1972, John Boorman had just directed the critically acclaimed (and thrice Oscar-nominated) Deliverance. Actor Sean Connery has completed his next-to-last James Bond movie, 1971's Diamonds are Forever. The next step, logically, was for these box-office titans to join forces for 1974's Zardoz, a sci-fi flick about warriors who worship a huge flying stone head on a post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 2293. Wha? So, really, why not make America's favorite 007 don go-go boots and cherry-red nappies for the part? —Adrienne Day"

Conga

Last saturday I went to the concert of The Conga Kings at the Lisner Auditorium in GWU. It was my first conga concert and the beat was so addictive! My friend and I couldn't help but stand and dance! meanwhile everyone else was just sitting in their seats, nice and quite listening to the music!

The Conga Kings are an Afro-Cuban 11 piece rumba group with three congueros. Candido Camero was an 85 year old guy and really frail. When he was walking onto the stage, he was using a cane. But then he got behind the congas and he time traveled back maybe 50 years! you can see in the video how playful he got. The other guy Giovanni Hidalgo was also really great - his hands were moving so fast and he played so many different beats. The third guy, Carlos "Patato" Valdes, crowned by Tito Puente as "the greatest conguero alive" unfortunately was sick and someone else played in his stead.

The whole night was actually quite lovely. I went with my friend Juan D. and after concert and dinner, we went out dancing until they threw us out. :-P The funny thing was that once we got to the dancing bar, this group of people just started playing the congas - lets just say that after listening to the "best conga band in th world" we were not that impressed!!

Btw I took this video at the concert.

Spider's Web

I discovered Katie Melua, a Georgian/British singer, yesterday. Today I have been listening to her album Piece by Piece on repeat - it is wonderful. The song above, Spider's Web written by KM herself, is especially lovely. The lyrics are beautiful:

Cause the line between
Wrong and right
Is the width of a thread from a spider's web
The piano keys are black and white
But they sound like a million colours in your mind

The Joss is Back!!

May I simply say Yes! Joss Whedan is creating a new TV show!!! I still have a tiny tiny hope somewhere that Firefly will be back. But probably not.. so beggars can't be choosers. I now look forward to watching Dollhouse.
But why the hell is he staying with Fox??????????

Ignore This

[ignore the following - i am just including this in here because i wanted to write this down somewhere and not lose it!]

Difference between MANET and distributed systems:
- in a MANET, a node performs multiple functions. Therefore trust is no longer based on the node rather trust of the data itself.
- in a distributed network, we use access control.

Voting schemes are vulnerable to the variability of the quorum.