photos [+] random walks

random walks_02
Originally uploaded by [+] nomadiclens

uploaded some new photos to my Flickr page. enjoy.

My Monk

This is an article on the nevindpress.com on my childhood partner in crime during our days in elementary school - we were best friends. Recently he retired from professional "monkdom" and began his "Joyshop" tours. I spoke to him last year, after almost a decade of no conversations (we kept in touch via emails from time to time) and I must say seems to have found what he is really good at. Someday, I'll have to attend his "Joyshop" too.

The happiest day of your life

HE draws the attention of the participants with a haunting sound produced by a thick metal cup.The stick that strikes the rim of the cup is taken round and round letting the sound to continue and taper off. Nithya Shanti is the master in white, teaching people how to make today the happiest day of their life at what he calls the Hadayoli Joyshop. Blending spirituality, emotional wellbeing and physical fitness, Nithya Shanti brings in his Buddhist tradition from his six-year life as a forest monk. An MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, he opted out of corporate life and is now sharing his experience of “is-dom,” He has just two words to help take people to enlightenment and that is “Be Loving.” Whatever our thoughts, words and actions, the Universe responds with an “And so it is.” This makes our thoughts a reality. His workshop focuses on how to create a loving and joyous reality around us. When we live consciously, we begin to balance the physical, energy, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and social dimensions of life. We learn to live in harmony with the natural principles of the Universe. This gives us the strength, clarity and energy to realise the purpose of our life, he says. Physically it means to create a sense of lightness, physical freshness and alertness, flexibility and stamina, energetically to have abundant energy and enjoy a high level of activity, emotionally to be expressive and open, intellectually to provide clarity and depth of thinking, spiritually to have a strong sense of values based on love and compassion for oneself and others and socially to be financially independent, with a healthy relationship with family and community. He teaches the practice of a five-minute miracle that helps the individual to focus positive energy toward any specific outcome with relationships or situations. He draws four sublime attitudes called the Brahma Viharas which are also mentioned by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra: Metta (Maitri) – loving friendliness to all, Karuna – compassion to all, Mudita – joy in another’s accomplishments and Upekka (Upeksha) – equanimity in accepting both loss and gain, praise and blame, success and failure with detachment. (www.lovingsilence.org swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com

Estilo Latino

Our friends' blog as they journey through South America. Stories and photos makes me want hop on a plane instantly. http://www.offexploring.com/estilolatino/

Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First | Threat Level from Wired.com

Comcast deserved this. They absolutely suck! Nonetheless, I'm sure these kids have a lot of trouble coming there way. It was a reckless, but bold move.

Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First | Threat Level from Wired.com

{stealth}

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

This is history in the making. For the first time in a long time, we are seeing the real political process take place in our country. What an exciting election year!

View "Yes We Can" video by will.i.am.

GreenPower: Environmentally Responsible Storage

For several years, I have continued to struggle with the fact that I work in an industry which failed to address broader social concerns beyond data storage capacity (I work in the HDD industry). A couple of years back, I switched to WD (another HDD manufacturer) -- and yesterday, I saw that our company announced the release of a new hard disk drive with more capacity (of course! A whopping 2TB, in fact), but this one is different as it claims to reduce power consumption by almost 38%. While it may not change the world, it is refreshing to feel a part of some effort to help a broader cause -- a rare feeling while working in this highly-competitive, high technology, commodity manufacturing, corporate environment. You can read more about the WD GreenPower Hard Drives on PC World Blog or on the WD website.

Dilemma: A new wave of industry or TV on my iPhone?

Another bay area CIGS-based solar start-up company got $79m in funding recently. The near future looks quite interesting in the Bay Area with companies like Nanosolar, Miasole, Solyndra & Solaicx (not CIGS based) among others compete to carve out their piece of the new emerging industry.

While it is great to see small start-ups emerge in the field with the help of venture capitalists, it would be great to see increased investment and subsidy from the government to catalyze the growth of The New Alternative Energy Industry (not just solar). It wouldn't be so bad after all to see large-scale engineering & manufacturing jobs re-emerging in the United States.

Read the article on Solyndra on CNET.

Dotcoms and Financial Services are great for some, but doesn't help much with opportunities for the majority of the population - the shrinking middle class and poor.

A new wave of industry collaboration between the public and the private sector is what I'd like to see. I love Technology and it would be gratifying to watch it applied to a broader scope benefiting the entire society (their is a lot of opportunity here) and reach beyond serving primarily the prodigal lifestyle of the MTV Generation and the Yuppie Dilettante. Again, technology advances in consumer products have been great in recent years, but we might want to put our TV shows on our "Camera-PDA-MP3-Video-YouTube Enabled-Mad Ringtone-Widescreen" fancy phones on pause for a bit and look at a bigger picture.

There is a lot of opportunity for advances in societal application of new technologies out there.

First Impressions from Bogota

A dear friend of mine is in Bogota, Colombia for the summer as part of her graduate program. She posted a brief glimpse into her first days here.

AKIVA Music

Just found a music video of an old friend of mine on his way to "rock-star" stardom. Check out his video featured on myspace.com. You can also check him out on www.akivamusic.com.

RED HERRING Top 100 Private Companies

For all the technology lovers, this is a fun list of companies to browse through to see what's going on in the new technology frontiers. RED HERRING Spring Top 100 Private Companies

You've Gotta Love Google!

Google recently started an experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone. To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. Google Voice Local Search is awesome. Beats paying $1.40 for my Verizon 411. For those know me personally, are well that I'm notorious for easily getting lost while driving places. Now with Google Voice Local service and my Garmin GPS, all that's history! You've got to love google's free gifts to the world.

New photos added to flickr

see more at on Flickr

Big Blue and Nanotechnology

Interesting read: IBM applies self-assembling nanotech to chip manufacturing

Visual Shopping

Just got back from playing tennis with a guy who works in the peninsula at a startup named Like.com. Turns out the company allows users to shop via a new kind of visual search engine (called Riya). The search is personalized based on metadata as well as an actual vector-based image matching of an item (picture of an item, obviously) you like. Then, you click on that item (or you can even select a certain portion of the item you like), it finds all that look similar, and links to you to online shop to purchase the item. It's always quite interesting to see how the 'dotcoms' continue to manage to innovate on such simple concepts -- fashion magazines should love this!

Sofia & Gabriela

A couple of new pics of our cats, Sofia & Gabriela. They just turned ONE couple of weeks back.

Nouvelle Vague at The Fillmore

Saw Nouvelle Vague at The Fillmore last night. They do a lot of late 70s-early 80s cover songs, a lot of bossa nova style renditions of many new wave classics. Great show. It's always refreshing to see shows that are not over produced. Check them out on their website or on myspace.

Quintessential Companion for All Artists

Saw this comic strip in the paper the other day. Quintessential Companion for All Artists. I could definitely use this Super Hero as an amateur photographer myself. In the meantime, I have decided to better my "super hero" skills and enroll in a framing & matting class every Tuesday at the Piedmont Adult School. Classes start next week and I'm quite excited. Also, I have been working on a new website to share my photographs. Here is the new link -- nomadiclens. So when you have time please visit, browse, share and leave me some comments/feedback. I am also thinking of merchandising some of these photographs (maybe postcard set or posters or t-shirts), so if anyone is interested in something like this, feel free to email nomadiclens@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Going Green with the former leader of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev's global initiative for solving the world's most pressing environmental challenges.

"We need a new system of values - a system that recognizes the organic unity between humankind and nature and promotes the ethic of global responsibility."

- President Gorbachev

http://www.globalgreen.org/index.html

what a beautiful concept...

synesthesia means "joined sensation" (Greek, syn = together + aisthesis = perception). It refers to an involuntary physical experience in which the stimulation of one sense modality reliably causes an additional perception in a different sense or senses. For example, a synesthete might describe the color, shape, and flavor of someone's voice, or seeing the color red, a synesthete might detect the "scent" of red as well.