Fall & the Russell-Brasstown National Scenic Byway

During mid November, we took a drive through the Russell-Brasstown National Scenic Byway. This is recommended as one of the best fall color viewing routes in GA. The drive was about 150 miles up and down. The first drive of any distance that I took the Rav4 on. the time was co-incident with
the peaking of fall colors and it was worth it.

Other than the vibrant colors all along the way, the drive itself was mostly through sparsely populated woody areas which were very low in traffic. It was very relaxing and seeing only farms and mountain log cabins far apart you can almost forget that the thick of civilization is only an hour or so away.

We also noticed a number of backpackers hiking along the road through the woods. All of them were alone and they almost seem like some sort of nomads. The other noteworthy thing was bikers. Man, there were some high end bikes traveling along that route. It probably is the preferred way of enjoying the scenery. The whether being what it was, it must have been really pleasant riding on a bike.

We drove all the way to Helen, which is supposed to be an old German city, they maintain most of the old shops and such to maintain the looks of the city. Unfortunately I didn't find much photo worthy at Helen.

This is also the first trip I took with the new navigation unit. It seems to be doing it's job pretty well. I'm still getting accustomed to it so I took a couple of wrong turns, but I'm sure it's more my inexperience listening to voice directions coming from a little box rather than a flaw with the unit's software.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Ever since May, I've been looking for a movie that all three of us can watch. There were a number of movies I personally would have watched but they were not stuff that I could watch with Chapa and my daughter.

Malathie has been gaga over the Chipmuks TV spot ever since it came out and I have to admit I found it cute as well. Way back (when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) I was a fan of the original cartoon series, I still distinctly remember the story lines of some episodes.

Well it was not academy award stuff, that is for sure. But for simple enjoyment with your 5 year old kid, it's pretty much as good as it gets. I think I enjoyed seeing Malathie's reactions more than I enjoyed the movie myself. The CG were pretty cool though, the furry details have come out perfect! Pretty soon we'd not be able to tell the difference between a CG animal and a real one.

NAS 200

I was considering acquiring a secondary storage device to keep a "live" copy of all my photos, e-books etc. for some time now. My first option was an external hard drive, but the need to switch it between machines and physically plug and un-plug the thing didn't seem very attractive. So I decided to swallow the extra cost and invest in a NAS. The device that really caught my attention was the NSLU2 by Linksys, it's a great little gadget for reasons you can see better on Wikipedia here. The reason that put me off was the number of boxes & physical connections that would have meant adding to my current set up (ie. NSLU2, External drive, 2 power supplies, USB cabling..) all my network gadgets are currently residing in a shelf on the TV rack and drawing their power from a single surge suppressor so I needed a neater solution. Uditha was the one who suggested the NAS200 and i decided on it after a lot of pondering and reading through some reviews (reviews on the 200 are scarce as of now) which were pretty unambiguous in stating that the NAS200 was quite slow compared to the other NAS offerings. The deciding factor as usual was the budget, setting my sights on a faster device would have meant upping the investment by about 50% at least.

The NAS200 has internal space for two 3.5" SATA drives, 2 USB ports for further expansion and a 10/100 Ethernet connection. It also supports SMB & FTP and includes hardware support for RAID.

Both the NAS as well as the 500GB Seagate drive despite the fact I ordered them from different places, arrived on Wednesday. Installation was really easy, I didn't expect the drive installation to be totally tool-free but it was. Just popped out the top drive cover and slid in the SATA drive. Plugging in the power supply consumed the last remaining outlet at the TV. Any more additions to the network or entertainment will mean a new surge protector. The rest was easy as powering on and accessing the admin utility on the browser. I assigned a static ip and asked it to go ahead and format the drive, which it did in under 2 minutes! that's quite cool for 500GB I think.

The web-based admin utility is pretty intuitive and the few basic functions are arranged logically so no user should have trouble getting around the features.

There is a small utility that you can install on the PC which allows you to map a network drive to the NAS200 via an interface which lists all the shares published on the NAS.

I also set up a virtual server on my router which now forwards all incoming internet FTP traffic to the NAS200. Now I (or anyone else who has privileges :) can access the drive's contents over the internet.

I loaded the drive with all my photos which have been distributed over a string of CDs and DVDs, the transfer took nearly 1.5 hours for 8+GB of data since I uploaded it over the air. I should have plugged in to the router for that.. By now I have uploaded my documents as well as the e-books which has taken slightly over 15 GB in total. The console says I have 450 GB left and I guess that should be good for a while, even though I have not yet loaded any of the work related stuff that I plan to.

I can agree with the reviews and it is not a very speedy solution, but since I don't plan on using it for sustained multi-gigabyte transfers I'm not very concerned. Even though it's not connected to the NAS's architecture, what I am concerned about is recovery of all this storage. What if the drive gives up the ghost ? What I'd love to do is get another 500GB drive and put this puppy on RAID 1. I'd sleep a lot better then!

Lisey and Robert Ludlum

I've finished a few books during the past few weeks and it's been quite a mixed bag. Stephen King, Robert Ludlum and the ole' backup Clive the good Cussler.

I highly doubt that despite the (general) reading enjoyment there would be any point in reviewing one of Cussler's work. No reflection on his talents and anyone would agree that CC has a unique place in contemporary American literature, but.. let's say that a Dirk Pitt or Curt Austin novel is like a fast melting candy as opposed to classic adventure novels like Alistair McLean's work which is more comparable to a .. goblet of good port :)

I read "The Ambler Warning" by Robert Ludlum and bravely proceeded to reading the "The Paris Option". The first book of Ludlum's I read was the "The Matarese countdown" and I was quite impressed by it. But at the end of 2 1/4 more books, I have worn out my affinity with his work. Out of the two, the first one was better but again, the plot is not very developed and has holes the size of barn doors. I believe that a solidly believable plot is the cornerstone of a good espionage novel, mainly because we're supposed to be dealing with a population of highly intelligent operatives and counter operatives (ie. the "Intelligence" community :) So it's pretty hard to swallow that a 2 year long plan by a villain mastermind comes to a crashing end incriminating him and his chief accomplice since he gets caught on video admitting his involvement :O

The second Ludlum became one of the (rare) breed of books that I start reading and never finish. 1/3 of the way into the book it's waiting in my book rack (spine is looking crooked at me as I type) pending return to the library.

Stephen King's "Lisey's Story" makes a first for me, the first that I started reading in hardback and ended in e-book that is. I had borrowed the book some time ago and had to return it un-read to the library and was also unable to renew it since it belonged to the floating collection. Lisey is the widow of a successful American writer Scott Landon, who has had a couple of real secrets behind his success. The first is a brutal childhood mainly thanks to his gene pool which comes with a hidden bonanza, Insanity! This leads to Scott and his Brother leading a very un-natural and tortured childhood with their loco dad. We do come to realize that being loco however does not stop a father from loving his children.. in his own way.

The second secret is the more intriguing plot device, we all have heard about the "wellspring of creativity" that writers go to "draw" their inspiration. Well, Scott's is more literal than symbolic. There really is a place that he can go to, an otherworldly place which he calls "Booo-ya-moon" which is both a frighteningly beautiful and exceedingly terrifying place. Lisey ends up re-discovering suppressed memories about this world to both escape a homicidal lunatic and to finally lay the ghost of Scott to rest.

Even though the read is enjoyable, the plot line is too parallel to the one in "Rose Madder" only difference between the two alternate worlds in the books is that Rose's world is based on Greek mythology and Boo-ya-moon is a psychedelic contemporary alternate reality (Acid high anyone?)

Breaking a silent spell..

It's been a month and a day since my last post and I've not made a conscious effort to blog again. Somehow I've ended up in this lazy routine where I spend 99% of my free time with a book. I hardly booted up the machine at home, after seeing Mahasen and Yasas's comments I thought it was time to put an end to the silent spell.

Summer has officially ended and Fall has come to Georgia. It seems more like winter to me since we had a couple of pretty cool days just as the summer ended. The average temperature drop would have been like 40 degrees!! We had 100+ summer days and this week beginning it was at 54 degrees.

While I was silent the world as usual went on it's merry way and there has been a couple of interesting developments in the digital photography arena. I'm referring to the release of the Canon 40D and even more the upcoming release of the Nikon 300D. The Canon has been shipping for some time now, I think Amazon were the first to stock it. Seems like we can safely expect the stability and the performance of the 30D augmented by a few enhancements. The Nikon on the other hand is a wholly new piece of equipment. It's insanely feature rich (54 point AF, 900+K screen!!, HD output!!) It's enough to make a grown man cry :) It should hit the streets around Nov 07'. The not-so-good news is that the body alone is going to cost $1,800+. Now if I can just locate that long lost millionaire uncle of mine ..

One more noteworthy update is the release of Opera 9.5 alpha. I've been using this for the last week and am quite impressed by the performance and features. They have totally re-written the rendering engine and the results are pretty amazing. I've been using Firefox ever since they released it and am currently using version 2. Opera easily beats this in speed, the few bugs I've noted on the Alpha are not too hard to live with and I'm sure they'd iron them out with the beta. Only thing I'm going to really miss is the Customize Google add on..

I've been working on one more small project, but guess I will put it in its own post.

First of the Fall

Captured this group of leaves today which are showing the first signs of changing color for the Fall. The low sunlight of a hot summer day was making the leaves glow and the little branches acquired a nimbus of their own. Even though it was the evening, I had to dial in -1.3 exposure compensation to achieve the effect I wanted.

Shell

These little dudes are all over the pine trees around the house. Believe it or not these are the abandoned shells of skin that they've shed. They seem to have taken a pretty tight grip on the pine bark before leaving their old homes.

Blaze and Time’s Eye

Finished Time’s eye by Arthur C Clarke and and Blaze by Stephen King. Yeah I was reading both of them together and finished both within the last two days.

Time’s Eye was a total disappointment. I should have known better than to take it out in the first place since this is also one of Clarke’s collaborative works. I actually made a resolution not to read any of Clarke’s collaborative work after the bad experience with the Rama series. I think what’s happening is that Clarke is just lending his name to this recent work to boost book sales. This particular book has the name Stephan Baxter attached to it and I think the writing is all his.

Time’s Eye is based on a preposterous premises where the Earth is carved up into a jigsaw puzzle of different time lines from the pre-historic to 2037. The science part of SF stops there, the rest is a confused jumble of history and characteristics of historical personae through the author’s eye. These range from a quirky tilt-head glance of Alexander the great to the body odour of Gehghis Khan. And then it ends without any explanation at all why this happened. The synopsis on the jacket is totally misleading, it hints at a plot of a depth which the mergre imagination of the author is clearly not up to concocting.

Blaze is the latest by Stephen King and by the looks of it the last of the Bachman books. It’s a nicely written story centering on a kidnapping. The kidnapper is a victim of circumstances more than anything else. From the time that his father threw him down the stairs three times in a row, life has dealt a raw deal to Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. aka Blaze. He ends up being a dimwitted oaf that other criminals make a tool of, but the kidnapping makes the reader realize that under all that scar tissue Blaze harbors a sensitive soul. A soul maybe ripped in two by the damage his brain suffered but a sensitive one nevertheless. The story ends in the inevitable death of Blaze and doesn’t contain any of the twists and mind boggling surprises that King usually sets out for his readers. It’s a nice story but not an unconventional one as what we’ve come to expect from the master of horror fiction.

Our new car

After nearly 3 months of Avis rentals, I've finally bought the car. As you can see it's a Toyota Rav4. Specifically it's a 2l 4-door 4WD model with a few options thrown in. I've always been partial to SUVs and even more partial to Toyotas, so the best combination that fits the bill for the moment is this.

Thanks Uditha.. I counted on Uditha's help yet again and not only did he come with us to inspect the vehicle and give his advice, he also ended up driving it home for me since I did not have insurance. I'm constantly reminded of how lucky I am to have Uditha living close by. . I just realized that our friendship extends back nearly 20 years now.. Well buddy, here's to another 20! you rock!!

Arranging insurance was pretty easy, just a couple of clicks and a phone call later I had my insurance. Of course the costs are pretty high compared with the SL rates, one reason being me not having driving history here.

I've been driving the RAV4 for only a couple of days now, but I think I've made the right decision. It's a joy to drive and the acceleration is quite good for the small 2l power plant. Also the utility and the configurability of the rear passenger and cargo areas is quite amazing.

One thing I'm still not sure is the fuel economy on this. Since it's AWD, the economy is supposedly less than the 2WD model. Hope it wont be too much of a difference. Talking about fuel economy, I returned the Corolla and when I was pumping the tank full I found out that it had done nearly 26MPG on city running. Pretty cool!

Potter Fever

Well, JK Rowling has done it again! beat her own record for book sales and pre-orders. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the highest selling book ever and the highest sold within the first 24 hours after release.

Yours truly had the dubious honor of being in the queue for the 7'th book as well! I was at the Wal-Mart late on Friday 20'th and when I found out that the book was going to be released that night at 00:01 I joined the queue. I was about number 100 in a queue of about 300 people.

Not a great picture I know, just the best my cheap Nokia could do. Anyway, what I wanted to share most is my views on the HP series and JKs phenomenal success. In my eyes it's probably the best piece of innovative writing I've ever come across. Yeah I mean Innovative as opposed to inventive. To me Harry Potter is a marvelous combination of elements from one of the great epics of our time and a lesser known children's book written some time ago.

The first one is none other than Tolkein's Lord of The Rings. My all time favorite fantasy and a cult classic. The second is a lesser known book called "Groosham Grange" by UK writer Anthony Horowitz. I do not want to delve into details of the elements that JK seems to have drawn from each book. But the parallel's between LOTR and the Harry Potter books from the mirror of Galadariel which was introduded to us in "Harry Potter and the Philosoper's Stone" as the Mirror of Erised down to Wormtail's closing act in the 7'th book which is so reminiscent of Gollum's closing act in LOTR are evident to someone who has read LOTR more than once. (OK, I admit, I've read LOTR about a dozen times now)

JK Rowling's fresh and vibrant language with her perfect sense of humor and witticism made the entire series the most read book in the world and her the most commercially successful writer of our time.

One more question is worth trying to answer, why was the plot line so attractive to our generation of kids and adults alike? It was is essence a silly premise, without the faintest grounding in reality.. I mean magic, come on!! That's David Copperfield stuff, nothing to write stories about.

I believe the answer lies in the overly complicated, technocratic lifestyles of the 21'st century society. We may all love our iPods and our bluetooth equipped cars and our micro miniaturized PDAs and even our household Fridges which talks to Wal-Mart to order fresh eggs, but deep down I think humans are actually overwhelmed by the complexities of the society we have built. And we crave simplicity. The world that JK brought to life gives us a glimpse of how much simpler life can be, and right in the midst of the 21'st century. Spells, incantations and wands are the ultimate quick fix. And all the underlying complexity is veiled from human senses. It's just the act of waving the wand and saying the magic words.

After the rains..

We had constant drizzling and even some genuine thunderstorms for the last couple of weeks. When the sun started shining again, a whole lot of different mushrooms have started blooming around the pine trees.

Chapa captured this nice shot of one in our front yard. I personally think it's one of her better shots, the composition and the color combinations are quite pleasing.

Saying bye to the HHR

Today I went to renew my rental contract with Avis and get it extended for another month. Sure hope this will be my last month on a rental car!

Anyway, I had grown quite fond of the little HHR by now. I've had it for over 2 months and it had served me very well. Even though initially I was a little sarcastic of it's retro looks, I found it the perfect little vehicle for my needs.

So I was a little saddened when I found out I'd have to return it and take out a different car with the new contract. Apparently the plates on the HHR are up for renewal (something that those of us in SL do not have to live with) and the Avis lady didn't want me to get copped due to an expired plate.

After a little deliberation and actually going out and checking it out, I opted for a Corolla over a Ford Escape SUV. SUV lover that i ever am, the Escape was a little old and clunky for my taste. And familiarizing myself with the Corolla will be an advantage since I will be using Hussain's Corolla for the road test on the 15'th. (thanks to Husain's generosity :)

Anyway, I am going to miss the little blue HHR. A great car for a lot of things. Here's to you CHEVY!!