Random Post

60 years after India attained its independence, I am sitting on my couch watching HBO, eating mom's cooking and musing on the merits of falling asleep on the couch

Dr. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I watched this video last night and was completely blown away. The speaker, Dr. Randy Pausch, was a renowned professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in 2006 and passed away last Friday (July 25th, 2008). He delivered this lecture in September 2007 at CMU as part of the 'Last Lecture' series.

This talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical "final talk," i.e., "what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch)

In this lecture, he talks about the importance of having fun and working towards attaining your childhood dreams. In the process, he delivers a concise but eloquent summary of how to lead your life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwO7EnM0zWM

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

I received a link containing closeup pictures of the I-35W bridge collapse, courtesy of the Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers. Keeping the victims in our thoughts and prayers, we need to ask the question, "How can we prevent similar tragedies in the future ?". The transportation infrastructure in the US faces enormous challenges everyday. Of the 597,340 highway bridges in the US, a significant number, 73,784 (12.35%) are listed as structrually deficient. (Bureau of Transportation Statistics). I hope the powers-in-question pay some serious attention to this issue.

The future of Real Estate searches

I have come across two interesting websites, Trulia and Zillow in the last two weeks. Both websites have taken upon themselves the task of collecting, organizing, presenting and analyzing real estate data in the United States. Both seem to be at the startup phase and the end users will benefit from the competition. Trulia has been started by two MBA grads from Stanford and uses the Google Maps API to spatially display the results of searches. Zillow relies upon MSN Virtual Earth for the same. Both websites maintain blogs as well. I will be blogging about the good and bad of each in my future posts.

Check out the offical blogs at

www.zillowblog.com
www.truliablog.com

Today's hero - Mr. Solar Engineer, Hanuman Ram

In Gudda, a village with very little, residents are literally beaming. Just two years ago, villagers had never seen light after dark, unless it came from the moon. Then, solar light arrived and changed everything.

Read on...

Can this Tour Suck any more ?

Yesterday, I said

"Hopefully, Michael Rasmussen, the current leader would not test positive for anything."

But then :

Tour de France Continues After Michael Rasmussen Is Sent Home Under Cloud of Doping Suspicion

Can this suck any more ?

Tour De France 2007

Two years ago, Tour De France fever was at its peak. Like most others, I had waited expectantly for Lance Armstrong to finish with the maillot jaune. And he did. For the past two years however, the race has been plagued by one doping scandal after another. Even last year, I was cheering for Floyd Landis when he stunned everyone with his amazing breakaway attack on Stage 17. This year is a different story however. After Vino and his team dropped out on Monday, the race more doomed than ever. Hopefully, Michael Rasmussen, the current leader would not test positive for anything.