Weathering disasters Just read: Flamingos In The Men’s Room: How Zoos And Aquariums Handle Hurricanes When you’re building a zoo disaster plan, there’s one thing to keep in mind: Murphy’s law. Anything that could go wrong, will. Just ask the flock of flamingos that weathered Hurricane Andrew in a public restroom at Zoo Miami in 1992. Srikanth Perinkulam
Nik turns 10 and we decided to spend the day outdoors. Head to Cunningham falls for a hike instead of Shenandoah. The falls by itself wasn’t any impressive. Took less than 30 minutes to reach the tiny cascade standing all of probably 80ft. Was expecting Maryland’s highest falls to be much higher than this! Looped back to the parking lot on a slightly longer trail. Miss shey totally killed it! This 2 year old hiked the whole stretch with absolutely no complaints! ...
Seward Johnson’s - Return visit A quick weekend trip to Chicago to meet Neeraj and Kanu. Took this opportunity to explore Chicago a bit. Chicago downtown felt like an eclectic mix of Boston and NYC. Spent some time walking around the city on Saturday covering the regular spots leading up to Navy pier and back. Totally mesmerized by the greenish-blue waters of Lake Michigan! Headed over to Native foods cafe (finally!) for dinner. Elizabeth joins us and later we decide to head to Hopewell Brewing company. Grab some drinks and dive into some interesting board games with live music in the background. Played a slew of bananagram rounds and decide to head back to the hotel. ...
#tufte #R #visualisation Srikanth Perinkulam Bookmark: Tufte in R The idea behind Tufte in R is to use R - the most powerful open-source statistical programming language - to replicate excellent visualisation practices developed by Edward Tufte. It’s not a novel approach - there are plenty of excellent R functions and related packages wrote by people who have much more expertise in programming than myself. I simply collect those resources in one place in an accessible and replicable format, adding a few bits of my own coding discoveries. ...
If there’s one thing you were to listen to today, let it be this! August 25, 2012. Apparently that’s when they estimate the voyager crossed the final frontier and entered interstellar space. Cruising at about 35,000 miles/hour it’s the ONLY man made object to enter these realms…All this with technology that’s 45 years old! Podcast: Where the Sun Don’t Shine https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast17voyagerupdate.mp3 Today we take a quick look up at a hole in the sky and follow an old story as it travels beyond the reach of the sun. We hear from some moon-peeping listeners and then, on the 40th anniversary of their launch, we check in with the Voyager space probes. We revisit the story of the romantic time capsules that were placed onboard, and a question we asked five years ago: where exactly is Voyager 1? ...
So what? Now what? Podcast: Rethinking School For most of modern history, humans have placed smaller humans in institutions called schools. But what parts of this model still work? And what must change? Srikanth Perinkulam
Torn between the Baldface trail and the Ferry crossing beach State Park, we decided to head to the latter. Proximity to water made it an easy decision. A short 2 hour drive from home and we reached the state park around 09:00am. The trails turned out to be much shorter than anticipated. Covered the whole state park in about an hour. Pretty well maintained. Humid conditions were a great recipe for the bugs though! Having covered the trails we head out to the beach. Pretty calm with just the morning walkers. ...
Came across this ‘freshly’ made trail in Skyline Park yesterday. I’ve been to this small park quite a few times but never quite spotted this ’extension’. Should get back here sometime soon to explore further! Yet another find off the blue that makes me love Boston all the more! Srikanth Perinkulam
Adding Night of the Grizzlies to my reading list! Just read: The Deadly Grizzly Bear Attacks That Changed the National Park Service Forever Glacier National Park’s busiest season came to an abrupt halt in the summer of 1967. In a matter of hours, two grizzly bears had acted as they never had before in the park’s 57-year history. Several miles apart, each bear had mauled a young woman on the same day, in the dark, early hours of August 13. ...
Joe’s past midway now!! An absolute thrill following him on this epic journey. https://instagram.com/p/BXn_YcZlU4-/ Srikanth Perinkulam
Moved on to Dandasana, Paschimottanasana A and B, and Purvottanasana :clap: . And looks like I no longer need to do the standing sequence twice! Though I still haven’t got Uttitha Hastha Padangusthasana (the only part in the standing sequence that I dread every single time I do it!) quite right, I’m happy to move on to other asanas while working on this one over time. Srikanth Perinkulam
Let’s talk spill-overs and biological malware! Just read: Scientists Hack a Computer Using DNA In what appears to be the first successful hack of a software program using DNA, researchers say malware they incorporated into a genetic molecule allowed them to take control of a computer used to analyze it. Srikanth Perinkulam
Liked: An Indian soldier explains what Pakistani Soldiers think about Indian Army Indian army and Pakistan army have fought several wars with a proxy war going in Kashmir since 1990. We can think whatever we want to, but we actually don’t know how soldiers behave when they get to interact with each other. Srikanth Perinkulam
It’s reality when we agree on our Hallucinations! Ha! Podcast: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience – and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. Srikanth Perinkulam
Procured our third bike and our first ever mountain bike this weekend. Should be a brilliant add-on to my GMC road bike and Miss Me’s hybrid rovr. A cousin was heading back to India and we’d mentioned we’d love to purchase it from him if he was interested in selling it. Late yesterday evening I rode from Shrewsbury to Southborough. Google maps got me through some very interesting roads for about 15 miles. Roads I wouldn’t have thought of taking had I hit the much shorter and more straight forward route. ...
It felt like we climbed up a beast deep in slumber and got down much before it even realized anything. All that I had visualized about this supposedly treacherous hike was flipped all over. Most likely due to the weather, which was was way too perfect! It actually made it feel much easier than the Franconia Ridge trail hike we did last weekend! Reached the trailhead and started the hike promptly at 07:00am on Saturday. Hiked up the Ammonoosuc ravine trail that slowly winds up by the Ammonoosuc river. ...
We’re building tools that will push us not to trust ANYTHING we see at levels much worse than where we already stand. Visual media will possibly get heavily diluted(polluted) and then possibly written media will gain more prevelance? Bookmark: Breaking News Today, two new technological tricks that together could invade our most deeply held beliefs and rewrite the rules of credibility. Also, we release something terrible into the world. Srikanth Perinkulam ...
#Mt. Jefferson #Mt Washington loop via Jewel trail, Great gulf trail, Crawford path, lake of the clouds AMC Hut, Amoonosuc Ravine trail Bookmark: Mount Jefferson & Mount Washington day hike This day hike started at the parking area for the Mount Washington Cog Railroad off of Base Station Road in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The parking area is located right at the end of the road about 6 miles east from US Route 302. ...
Liked: Not giving up on IndieWeb I know this only an ego trip, but I’d like to get back to having comments enabled on my website. That part is actually quite easy. There is a good Comments plugin for Grav that I have tested locally and it does a nice job. Srikanth Perinkulam
The search for the Alabama sturgeon. Reminded me of the incredible documentary on How wolves can alter the course of a river. Podcast: Science of Survival Ep. 19: A Very Scary Fish Story The swamps of Alabama are one of the most biodiverse places on earth. They’ve been called America’s Amazon for the remarkable number of species of fish, turtles, mussels, and other aquatic creatures. Srikanth Perinkulam
Sometime around midnight we reach a bridge with one side of its’ railing non-existent. I sprint ahead and heave a sigh of relief when I notice the ‘Old Bridle trail’[OBT] signboard high up on a tree. This confirms this is ’the’ bridge that we’ve been looking out for, for the past few hours and that the trail head should be a few hundred feet away. Meena suggests Jyothsna and I shoot ahead while she and Sanjana would follow behind slowly. With just one headlamp we make our way as fast as possible to the Lafayette camping ground parking lot. As we turn round the corner, we hear a concerned and loud ‘PS, PS?’ cry. I’m relieved to hear Praveen’s voice and as soon he checks all four of us are safe he drops the bomb-shell. Having reached the trail head around 6pm and not hearing from us since then, he apparently had called in a search and rescue operation for us about 30 minutes back. My excitement on ‘finishing’ the hike is short lived as I think to myself - ‘This is not over yet…’. The last 20 hours have been draining, mentally more than physically. What should have been a decent eight hour hike has gone way beyond my initial estimation. Over the rest of Sunday, as we let everything sink in, Meena and I continue to hash out what possibly could have led up to this and what we should do to avoid this from recurring in future hikes. ...
Took the day off last Friday and hit the coast after the regular early morning Ashtanga class. Last years rain-check for the whale watching got us pretty lucky. Sighted around 6 to 7 whales at Stellwagen bank, 31 miles off the coast from Gloucester. A couple of them got up close (and not so personal) to the boat. These Humpbacks were pretty sober. Not much breaching, but they did flaunt their flukes! First in-person sighting and I’m psyched. Water has always fascinated me and with the Scuba diving a few years back, I’ve learnt to appreciate the depths a lot more. ...
Liked: Seriously Simple Podcasting: Including all Episodes in the Podcast RSS Feed Seriously Simple Podcasting is a great Wordpress plugin for hosting your own podcast. However, the number of episodes it includes in the RSS feed is tied to the number of items you include in all your other RSS feeds as well. Srikanth Perinkulam
7 years of togetherness. Thanks for everything you do every single moment. You complete us, Miss Me! [x] Coffee date at Esspresso Cafe in Jamaica Plain. Decent stuff but no vegan options. Probably will not go back here again. [x] Volunteered at the VT100, an altogether different experience [x] Suresh paced someone for the first time and did a 14miler, So proud! [x] Helped fix the van’s flat tire. Coincidence? [x] Fabulous drive back home. Fog, Mist, Sunrise, mountains, clear roads and music…Should have stopped and got a few pictures.. [x] Missed the Ashtanga practice by 8 minutes - Was already zapped though [x] Coffee @ Cafe Flora - Pinball machine by some artistic wood tables - Will be back here sometime soon. [x] Breakfast at Veggie Galaxy with Suresh. LOVE these relaxed morning eat-outs. [x] Ayurveda training [x] Appa’s FB post fires up some heavy commenting! ...
Photo taken at: West Windsor, Vermont In races of all kinds, there’s always a push to finish strong. Most runners conserve that little energy to turbo boost at the last quarter mile. While it’s exhilarating to watch that strong finish, I’ve always been enamored by those who trudge in slowly, with almost no display of gratification as they cross the line. Today as I stood behind the finish line watching runners slowly trickle in, one particular runner swept the ground away from beneath my feet. The clock froze at 03:04am as he limped across the line. Pale face, headlamp off and no support crew. All he did was turn around, looked at the finish line for that bleak second, stopped his watch and plopped on the ground. I could sense he was frozen in time and so was I. Wonder what was grinding in his mind. Was he happy he finished the run? Was he in pain? Did he know he’d finished? Was he just soaking it all in? Or was he contemplating what to do next? Why was he all alone there? I heavily resisted the urge to go speak to him and let him savor the moment. Some questions are better left unanswered. ...