Attack on Srilankan Cricketers

Yesterday there was an attack on Srilankan cricketers in Pakistan. Supposedly gunmen opened fire and injured bunch of Lankan cricketers. Yeah it is bad and shouldn't have happened. But for people like me who rely on internet news channels, here is what we were greeted with on some of the leading Indian news papers.

It seemed more like a test of intelligence than plain news, I was supposed to deduce that there was an attack on Lankan players and it happened in Pakistan. Instead of brain teasing I took the easy way out and looked up on BBC for a news that made some sense.

I miss the plain old NEWS paper where the headlines don't change every minute or every second but will remain same (pretty much for ever).

Christian the lion

One of my all time favorite videos, this video made internet circles a few months ago. For the cynics it is a true story.

This version has more detail but doesn't give the story properly.

Tree Planting at Patterson Park

Last Saturday, me and a couple of friends volunteered to plant trees at Patterson Park in Austin. The event was organized by a local non profit organization called Tree Folks. The organization does tree planting around Austin and works in association with city of Austin parks and recreation department. We went there to volunteer as part of the Art of Living Austin's community service imitative.

The holes to plant trees had been pre dug using one of the city's big machines. All we had to do was shovel out the mud from the pit, put the tree into the pit and pack soil around the roots. And once tree is planted rake some mulch around the tree. We planted all kinds of trees but I only remember a couple of names like bald cypress, desert willow and live oak. I was fortunate to meet a lady who serves on City of Austin’s forestry board, through her and the rest of the tree folk volunteers; I learnt a few interesting things about trees and planting them.

1. The depth of the pit should not be more than the height of the pot
2. The pit diameter can be 2 to 3 times wider than pot diameter
3. Never make the edges or bottom of the pit too smooth.
4. Never put mulch so that it covers the shoot (leave at least a few inches between mulch and shoot), for it might kill the tree.
5. Pack the mud around the tree as much as possible and never leave air gap in the mud as the roots stop growing once they encounter an air pocket.
6. Bermuda grass is an exotic invasive species and a non native while buffalo grass is native (the lady mentioned a few more but I don't remember).
7. A freshly planted tree needs around 1 inch of water per week for 2 years for it to settle down. After 2 years it will grow/survive on its own.
8. Desert willow as the name suggests needs lot less water to grow than weeping willow.

Some one mentioned an old Chinese proverb,” The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now".

It was an interesting chilly day with temperature in range of 45F-55F and I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and needless to say I was chilled out (literally). On the whole we had fun. I will try post some pictures when I get them from our volunteer lead.

Cactus bloom in our patio

Technically it is still not a complete bloom but it is on the way.

Some useful tools for windows users

At work my environment is mostly windows and I have found some of these tools to make my life a bit easier.

Textpad

It is probably one of the best text editors built, it is agile and very responsive. It almost has all functions of linux editors like gedit or nedit amd it is more versatile and powerful than wordpad I rarely use notepad or wordpad anymore and Textpad is my default text editor.

Hypersnap

For all those who use screen captures for their power points and don't want to use "Print Scrn", here is your answer Hypersnap. You can capture an area of screen, an active window and even edit the captured image. Again,for single use not all that expensive

ExamDiff

A worthwhile tool that does what tkdiff does in linux. Its a free tool and it works great.

WinBatch

This is more like perl and does almost everything perl does but easy to learn and use. It runs slower than perl. I found it very useful to create multiple directories or parsing data from multiple files. I bet it can do way more but that is all I have used it for. The license if a bit more expensive than most others I have listed but I have found it is worth the price.

Barber shops in US (yes, they do exist)

For most of us who have lived in US for long enough time, we are used to super cuts and sport clips and great clips and so on for hair cuts and if you are picky like me once in a while you end up with an unsatisfactory haircut. All this was true till I discovered an independently owned barber shop last month.

It was suggested by a friend of mine and I went there with lots of hesitation. The shop is located in a rundown part of the town and was called Oak Hill Barber Shop, The name Barber shop instead of cuts or clippers got me thinking, Being in US for as long as I have been, I am more used to people calling themselves stylists and the places they work as either clippers or cuts and last I heard of a barber shop was when I was in India.

Inside the shop also, the ambience was more retro and not like the usual chain stylist stores. The chairs seemed to be more than 20 years old but I admit they were really comfortable and very well maintained. Instead of a receptionist and bunch of stylists, there was only 1 person. Turns out she was the owner of the shop and she was the one who was going to cut my hair. She claimed she had more than 20 years experience cutting hair and I have to admit I got one of the best haircuts in a long time.

The cost was similar to that of the chain stores (that was surprising); she doesn't take credit cards though but only cash or check. Needless to say I will go back to her for my future needs. Last but not the least I have the pleasure of supporting a locally owned business.

A beautiful sun rise

I captured these from our apartment patio using the Canon A610, used the manual mode to control the shutter speed.