LatLong is 3!

Latlong - my blog - has completed two years and has stepped in to it's third year of existence. This month marks LatLong's second birthday. I'd like to thank all of you who keep visiting this poor-old page of mine!! No kidding! thank YOOOOU! No, seriously! Having a blog is no big deal, but maintaining it and keeping the users interested is heck of a difficult job. But thanks to YOU, I keep my spirits high enough to constantly post something to this board.

Ever since I rebuilt this blog in April 2005, I have had about 119 posts. That's about:

• 60 posts a year,
  
• 5 posts a month, and
  
• 0.7 posts a week.

That's almost like one post every week. Not bad, huh! These posts, as you know, included news, raves, rants, photos, videos, and all kinds of what-nots of my life. I initially started this as a journal to report news from my side, and anything exciting happening in GIS and Comp Sci world. And further, thanks to my now well-known half-Russian life, I have been posting stuff related to Russia/Soviet/Slavic cultures.

Most of my readers are my friends (like you), and I figured blogging is THE best way to put my news across to all those who care about what's going on with me. This sure was a "great success" ( in Borat's accent). Reason? Lots of time I hear from people, "Yea, I read/saw that on your blog" when I respond to their "what's up".

So, fellas, keep reading my blog. Go ahead. Soak it up. Have fun. Keep reading and keep coming back for more. I deliberately decided NOT to put any advertising or anything distracting on my blog, so that I can bring "100% me" exclusively to you! : - ) And I promise I will keep posting to this blog every time I have anything remotely exciting happening in my life!

Happy Birthday, LatLong! I love you! (in a very non-creepy way).

Maryland Day 2007

This past Saturday, we had the annual Maryland Day, here in College Park. (Click on this link for more info on Maryland Day). This year's Maryland Day theme was international cultures. I volunteered as a member of my Cricket Club to show and explain the game of Cricket to those who are interested in it. Well, it turned out to be awesome.

Also on Saturday, there was the Cricket World Cup final game. The university was gracious enough to screen it on the big screen in the Hoff Theater in the student union. (And a big thanks fo the university of screening the entire World Cup on big screens across the campus!)

Quite a fun day it was! Here's a link to photos on my Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2138771&l=a4999&id=5734033

OutSourced: The Space Version

India recently successfully reassered it's "Space Power" status by launching and placing a commercial satellite in the orbit (news link). India has an established space program, with some of the best-in-business hi-res remote sensing, weather, telecom, educational, and - I would hope spy - satellites. For a long period of time, India's Space agency - Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) - has launched India's own satellites very successfully and efficiently. ISRO's rockets have also, in fact, carried satellites for other nations up in to the space earlier, but it was a not-for-profit endeavor.

Last week, India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carried an Italian astronomical Satellite, with clinical accuray and picture perfect launch. All that comes with the well known "India advantage" - great service at a fraction of cost! India already is very well known in the western world as THE destination for outsourcing of business processes for cost cutting, increased efficiency, and high performance. Just ask Dell, they'll tell you. Or, IBM. Or, Google. Or, Microsoft. Or, Accenture. Well, you get the idea.

Now that India's ready to do commercial satellite launches and is ready to compete against the US by offering cost-effective satellite launch options, there are many jokes here in the US about "outsourcing" space science to India, just as it happened with IT. One such joke - from Slashdot's discussion page - caught my attention, and here I produce it:

International Space Station: "Houston, we have a problem."

New Delhi: "Hello, please spell your name and give me your complete customer ID."

Go India!

San Fran Photos

A Few Photos. From San Francisco. Click to Enlarge. Enjoy.

For all the photos, check these on my Facebook

• San Fran - Album 1
  
• More San Fran - Album 2
  

San Francisco - Days 4, 5, 6 and 7

Forenote: I guess my plan to blog everyday during my stay in San Francisco was a bad one! My laptop died and I could not access any Internet for about 4 days. I took this opportunity to NOT access any Internet and stay away from it. Considering I check my email about 100 times a day, I decided to keep my Internet access to an absolute minimum, and just check the absolutely essential work email and NOTHING ELSE. So, for four days, I accessed the Internet exactly for two times, for about 5 minutes on each day. Quite a feat, huh?!

Now, back to San Francisco...

The conference was just awesome (very expectedly). I absolutely enjoyed attending a number of interesting research presentations. Every evening, there were get-togethers with friends, or university parties. Overall, it was week filled with intellectual conversations, good fun, great parties, awesome time with some old friends. Of course, there are loads of pictures. I will upload them either to Flickr or Facebook tomorrow.

I *just* returned home to College Park, and this is the first thing I'm doing - checking my email and blogging. May be it IS true ... Old habits die hard!!

San Francisco - Day 3

Day 3 - more presentations, more touristy stuff around San Francisco! Apart from the usual downtown, we checked off the Chinatown and the Fisherman's Wharf from our list. (PS: I have seen all these places during my first trip two years ago - but it is still fun to visit these places with friends!)






Enjoy some of the pictures from today:

San Francisco - Day 2

Phew! A long day again! I'm really really really tired, and I will keep this blog entry very short. Sort of.

My day began by meeting some good friends and having breakfast. I had my talk (link is here) this afternoon. It went awesome, and as always, my talk was the most "entertaining" of all the 5 presentations in my session : - ) Later, I attended a "Russian Immigration Trends to USA" session that one of my friends was presenting. I found myself slightly out of place, but oh well, it is all fine! I met my University of Maryland colleagues for the evening, and enjoyed the official conference reception with good food/drinks. We all hung out late, just until now, and I'm back in my hotel room now. That was about it! I have a whole bunch of interesting session for tomorrow! So, it should be a fun day again.

LIVE from San Francisco : Day 1

This post comes LIVE from my artsy hotel room in San Francisco! I'm here for the AAG conference - the annual meeting for geographers and geographic information scientists all over the world. Well, what can I say - I flew in from cold, windy, and rainy Washington in to warm, sunny, and beautiful San Francisco. So, it is just an awesome feeling! My hotel is right in the middle of downtown - a block away from the Union Square.

The day so far has been great - except that it seems incredibly long. First off, I stayed up all last night to get a 3 AM cab to the airport to catch my 6 AM flight. Then, I traveled for about 7 hours and by the time I got to San Francisco, it was just 10:30 AM (there's a 3-hour time difference between Washington DC and SF). So, the day seems stretched awfully long. But oh well, I'm in California, and I don't have any complaints about getting extra time to see the town.

This is my third time here in SF and my past trips have been very short (those Google interviews, remember?!!). This time I'm in here for a week - for an awesome conference, and lots of free time in the evenings!! As for today, I walked around the super fabulous downtown SF streets, took pictures, and finally settled in my hotel room and taking it easy. I will try to keep a daily report of what I did here in SF. Let us see how much time I get every day to blog.

Videos from Slavic Fest

I finally uploaded the videos I shot during the Slavic Fest and uploaded them to YouTube. Turns out there's a lot of people who uploaded their videos - mostly of Ruslana. I have some video from a Russian folk art (dance/music) called "Барыня" (Baryna ). The videos are of not such a great quality - I shot them with my photo camera! In either case, enjoy!

Ruslana Lyzhychko from Ukraine singing her super smash hit

Barynya (Барыня)

"Барыня, барыня, сударыня-барыня ... Барыня ты моя, сударыня ты моя" : - )

Slavic Fest 2007

[Update: Here are a bunch of pictures from my Facebook album: Click here ]

Last Saturday, there was the first annual Slavic Fest 2007 in Washington DC. All Slavic countries were showcasing their country's arts, culture, song, music, dance, etc. However, Ukraine was the most dominant, followed by Russia. The Ukrainians even brought their star performer - Ruslana (her website), the winner of Eurovision contest!! I didn't know there were these many Ukrainians in DC! Overall, it was a great day full of fun, lots of Russian/Ukrainian arts, folk songs, dance, and of course, extremely tasty food!

The story coming up soon. Until then, enjoy these pictures...

"See you in Ukraine"

The guy at the Ukrainian table almost convinced me to visit Ukraine in Summer!! I told him that I came very close to visiting Ukraine a couple of years ago. He said I should still visit Ukraine and he assured me that I'll love it! Look at the cool brochure he gave me. : - )











Yup! that's Ruslana - the winner of Eurovision Contest from Ukraine.

Ruslana Lyzhychko was the star performer of the evening. She performed a bunch of Ukrainian songs and an English song. A Ukrainian band called MEPI (pronounced "Meri") opened for her.


















Beautiful decorated Easter Eggs like this one were on display. Eggs of all sizes were beautifully painted over with intricate designs. Just amazingly aesthetically pleasing stuff.

















Ukrainian Ethnic costumes, artifacts, cutlery, and other artsy stuff was on display and sale.













There are a lot more VERY interesting pictures. View them on my Facebook album (link is provided at the beginning of this blog).