Hi, I am Pankaj Kumar. I work in the enterprise software space as a Principal Technology Consultant at SAP America of Palo Alto, CA. I use this weblog to share my thoughts about my professional life as a SAP professional.Bay area at its best. Thanks to Bjorn Goerke…
Bay area at its best. Thanks to Bjorn Goerke for quoting this by Steinbeck which is so apt ( http://bgoerke.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/ive-never-seen-her-more-lovely/ )
When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco “the City”. Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City, and so does everyone else who has ever associated with it. A strange and exclusive word is “city”. Besides San Francisco, only small sections of London and Rome stay in the mind as the City. New Yorkers say they go to town. Paris has no title but Paris. Mexico City is the Capital.
San Francisco put on a show for me. I saw her across the bay, from the great road that bypasses Sausalito and enters the Golden Gate Bridge. The afternoon sun painted her white and gold rising on her hills like a noble city in a happy dream. A city on hills has it over flatland places. New York makes its own hills with craning buildings, but this gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky was a stunning thing, a painted thing like a picture of a medieval Italian city which can never have existed.
I stopped in a parking place to look at her and the necklace bridge over the entrance from the sea that led to her. Over the green higher hills to the south, the evening fog rolled like herds of sheep coming to cote in the golden city. I’ve never seen her more lovely. When I was a child and we were going to the City, I couldn’t sleep for several nights before, out of bursting excitement. She leaves a mark.
FROM John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962
imported from Google+The World We Explore- Sir Ken Robinson Zeitgeist…
imported from Google+Sony is doing some nice things with their…
Sony is doing some nice things with their NEX series. A friend has been rocking 5N for a while and it shoots some nice pics. Saw the pre-review of 5R and it seems even better. All this while Canon and Nikon the so called leaders in DSLRs are fumbling with their micro four third strategy.
imported from Google+Day 2 of #MakerCamp was kindda meh. Making…
Day 2 of #MakerCamp was kindda meh. Making Animated GIFs https://plus.google.com/109780686446922422512/posts/bbNhaUR2jER
MAKE – Google+ – Day 2 of #MakerCamp – Animated .gifs with +Jared Ficklin
…
Day 2 of #MakerCamp – Animated .gifs with +Jared Ficklin
Share your questions and ideas in the comments!
imported from Google+You Didn’t Build That Could the Internet…
You Didn’t Build That
Could the Internet have been created by private industry? Without government’s help as funder and convenor? I don’t think so. Here’s why.
When the ARPANET was created, each of the research laboratories around the country had different equipment. That meant we had to figure out how to connect machines that were manufactured by different companies. The first four computers on the ARPANET were the Xerox Data Systems Sigma 7 at UCLA, the Scientific Data Systems (later acquired by Xerox Data Systems) SDS 940 at SRI International, the IBM 360/75 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Digital Equipment PDP-10 at the University of Utah. In order to connect these computers, there had to be some sort of common standard that was not controlled by any single company. This applied to every level of the system, from the hardware interface to the IMP to the basic protocols that moved messages from one computer to another, to the higher level applications such as email and, later, the world wide web. The open architecture of the Internet, with defined interfaces and open standards that were all freely available, initially made it possible for any person and any company to participate. This was a fundamental principle of the early work. This was also a hallmark of the government research effort, and would not have come about if the Internet had been created by industry
Where Did the Internet Really Come From? | TechPresident
Steve Crocker is chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In the late 1960s, he was a UCLA graduate student who helped create the ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet. Duri…
On Reconciling Atheism and Meaning in the…
On Reconciling Atheism and Meaning in the Universe
"Romantic reductionist" neuroscientist Christof Koch discusses the search for meaning in the world of science, and the philosophical influence of working with Francis Crick.
With the new look where it shows the images…
With the new look where it shows the images in background, g+ looks more like graffiti but in a good way
imported from Google+This has to be best web based adaption of…
This has to be best web based adaption of Ramayana (Indonesian version) Watch it to be amazed. It is too much fun to see the epic unfold using google's various services. Jatayu posting an SOS update before dying was great.
Welcome to the English language version of Ramayana. Don't have a password? We will send it to you… Do you speak Indonesian?
imported from Google+Mystery of green circles
Often when I am travelling I see these giant green circles on the ground. They look beautiful and is clear are man made. But what is going on. I have seen them all over the US, on the west coast, while flying to east or south you can see them.
Finally the mystery was solved when I was watching “America Revealed – Food Machine” by PBS. These are agriculture fields or food factories 
irriagated by something called central pivot irrigation system. Here is a difintion from wikipedia
Central pivot irrigation is a form of overhead (sprinkler) irrigation consisting of several segments of pipe (usually galvanized steel or aluminum) joined together and supported by trusses, mounted on wheeled towers with sprinklers positioned along its length. The machine moves in a circular pattern and is fed with water from the pivot point at the center of the circle.
If you have an hour to spare the PBS documentary is a great watch. You will be amazed at the scale, efficiency, diversity of this giant food producing system. Some of the scenes are quite haunting like all cows getting lined up for getting processed as beef or the host of the show looking in the eyes of a cow and saying is this the same animal or something man made etc. Description of the episode from PBS
Over the past century, an American industrial revolution has given rise to the biggest, most productive food machine the world has ever known.
In this episode, host Yul Kwon explores how this machine feeds nearly 300 million Americans every day. He discovers engineering marvels we’ve created by putting nature to work and takes a look at the costs of our insatiable appetite on our health and environment.
For the first time in human history, less than 2% of the population can feed the other 98%. Yul embarks on a trip that begins with a pizza delivery route in New York City then goes across country to California’s Central Valley, where nearly 50% of America’s fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown and skydives into the heartland for an aerial look of our farmlands.
He meets the men and women who keep us fed 365 days a year—everyone from industrial to urban farmers, crop dusting pilots to long distance bee truckers, modern day cowboys to the pizza deliveryman.
Watch Food Machine on PBS. See more from America Revealed.