SAST Wingees

This and That

It has been a long time since I contributed anything to this blog, and New Year is as a good a time as any. Here it goes –

• Fond farewell to Shane Warne and Glen McGrath. Both retiring at the top of their game and more importantly on their own terms.
• Things that I have been forced to look up on the internet or learn based on my daughter’s constant barrage of questions –
  • Difference between a moth and butterfly
  • Is Penguin a bird or mammal
  • How many mammals lay eggs?
  • What is a starfish made of?

Of course, for almost all of them Wikipedia is the source of answer. Came across this interesting site while searching for origins of the word “tutu”. This site also as interesting information about the word.

• My DISH network receiver is broken and I have been waiting for a new one to arrive for the past 10 days. This has forced me to read more books and spend more “quality” time with my daughter.
• Just finished reading Moneyball which has been generously referred more than once in “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense”. Moneyball is about how the Oakland Athletics baseball team is able to succeed as a small budget/small market team against the bigger budget teams. Very interesting read, and though it is about a baseball team, it is more about data – importance of collecting the right set of data and coming up with the right set of formulas to analyze them to make scientifically sound judgments. It is also about how not to get caught with historical perspectives just because that is the way things were always done or seems like it should be done.
• Talking about collecting data and putting them to good use, watched Kinsey recently. Dr. Kinsey in order to understand human sexual behavior, started collecting data in unorthodox ways, and this was around 1947, a time when any talk about sex was taboo.
• Other movies I watched recently –
  • Groomsmen – Movie about 30 something’s getting together for one of their buddy’s marriage. Proves that a decent movie could be made for 3 million dollars. Watch the bonus feature with commentary by Ed Burns were he describes the optimizations used to control the budget of the movie
  • Monster House – A good kid’s movie with great CGI. However, unlike traditional CG movies that primarily has animal(s) as the central character, this one has computer generated humans playing that role. Day is not far away when actors will not be needed to make movies L
  • Pirates of the Carribean – Dead Man’s Chest – Not as good as Part One, but still “savvy” enough only due to Johnny Depp.
• After a lot of research and time on the internet (which only leaves you more confused), bought my first DSLR – Olympus E-500 that comes with 2 zuiko lenses. Very excited about this purchase and who knows – I may even post a few photographs.

Happy 2007!!