Monthly ArchiveMarch 2011
pictures &travel ranjeet on 29 Mar 2011
Breckenridge, Colorado — August 2010
Last August, I went to Colorado for the NREL‘s 20th Silicon Workshop. This is a really nice conference series concentrating on crystalline silicon photovoltaics (as opposed to thin-film silicon, CIGS, Cd-Te, and solar thermal). It’s a nice mix of industry and academia (mostly industry), and the sessions touched upon the current problems facing the industry as well as a look into the future of the technology. It also happened to be in Breckenridge, a ski resort town. Of course, it was August, so there was no snow on the ground, but it was still a picturesque area. I was intrigued because Breckenridge sits at about 9,000 ft in elevation, which is already close to the highest I’ve been (on land). So, this trip not only offered a chance to learn about silicon photovoltaics (awesome), I could do a little bit of hiking on the nearby mountains and hit a personal best for hiking altitude.
Anyways, here are some pictures of the trip. I didn’t take very many; it was raining most of the time and I didn’t get to really explore so much.
Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Photos & descriptions after the jump.
music ranjeet on 21 Mar 2011
Trying Something New
Recently I was introduced to Grooveshark, which is an interesting service that reminds me a lot of the Napster of old. Basically, it seems a lot like what Spotify is supposed to be, except this actually exists in the U.S. Free music streaming of songs, and it seems that the way that it gets songs is that people upload music to their server. If you use the website for streaming, everything is free, and you can make playlists, list songs as favorites, build a “library”, etc. if you make a login. These playlists can then be accessed from any computer. Then there’s the premium service, where you pay extra and you can get it on your mobile phone or actually download tracks to your mobile device. It tries to push the social aspect, so people can follow each other, and see what others are playing and liking. It’s pretty good, but its not without its flaws. I see Grooveshark’s greatest strength as its greatest weakness. It’s pure chaos. People can upload most anything (I noticed that there is no Smashing Pumpkins stuff, so apparently some labels or groups are not approved), and the songs are searchable due to their id3 tags. This means that Radiohead, RADIOHEAD, and Radio*Head would all be considered different tags, and people could upload many duplicate songs with slightly different (or wrong) titles and have it all be on the server. It can be difficult to listen to full albums; this is much better suited for finding individual songs. The chaos does mean that there’s a lot of stuff on there, particularly live stuff. I’ve noticed lots of bootlegs.
They also allow embedding of songs, so I’ll give it a shot here, and post music every once in a while. If I listen to an album and there’s only one good song on it, I might put it here. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with this song “Happy 81″ from Modern Skirts, from the album Gramahawk. It’s a little on the hipster rappy side, but it’s still catchy.
hiking &pictures &video ranjeet on 06 Mar 2011
Mt. Tam – Matt Davis/Steep Ravine Trail, May 2010
This one has been sitting in my Flickr account for a while, and I’ve just been too lazy to put it out. But I have enough other stuff that I want to post up that it’s time to man up and start posting.
Back last May, I visited Mount Tamalpais State Park, great wilderness area just north of San Francisco in Marin County. I’ve hiked in MTSP three or four times total, and each time has been fantastic. There is a nice mix of landscapes and wildlife that I just find really pleasant and relaxing.
My itinerary for this day was the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine – Dipsea trail route, a highly recommended one from a number of hiking guides. The trail starts out high, descending through a beautiful ravine centered around a creek (still flowing pretty well, as it was still May). The trail crosses the water multiple times, so there were a number of bridges. The trail emerges from the trees into a great view of Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon. The trail descends to sea level, and passes through the downtown of Stinson Beach, before heading back into the hills. After completing this ~ 7.5 mile hike, I took some scenic pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin County Side.
Picture set on Flickr, here
Slideshow below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.