Here's a shot of one of my amano shrimps inspecting the lawn.
A close up of my water sprite. One of the easiest plants to grow - yet can be really nice!
A full view!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
My planted aquarium
Here are a few pictures from my 46G planted aquarium. These are from a few months ago. I have to admit that the HC has since all died because I slacked on replacing the CO2 when it ran out :(
Here's a shot of one of my amano shrimps inspecting the lawn.
A close up of my water sprite. One of the easiest plants to grow - yet can be really nice!
A full view!
Here's a shot of one of my amano shrimps inspecting the lawn.
A close up of my water sprite. One of the easiest plants to grow - yet can be really nice!
A full view!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
NADA 2010 Discus show
I was able to make a visit to the North American Discus Association's "NADA 2010 Discus show". It is being held (end's tomorrow 06/13/2010 with an auction ) in Dallas at the Embassy Suites DFW Airport South. The show was free for visitors!
The hotel's atrium area is quite nice, with a very large Koi pond right in the middle. I regret now that I didn't take any pictures of that! (I will try to take some tomorrow if I go for the auction).
Anyway here are some picture of the fish! These were all very big - larger than the palm of an average guy's palm and some were much bigger!
Here's a striated beauty!
Melon variety
Another solid type with a darker color
This one was really pretty, but a bit shy
Nice color!
Natural - this is closer to what you will see in the wild (Amazon river)
Another natural color
Red spotted green - I think! (experts please comment) - one of my favorite strains
Red snake skin - feeling a bit shy
Another snake skin
Another striated
What a work of art! - sorry about the quality of the image.
Check out the question mark on this guy's gill!
Another shot of the question mark
My fav!
Red Panda
Natural close-up
Natural
And here are some pictures of the Koi pond in the hotel! - I know you guys want to see it even if you won't admit it ;)
The auction today was very nice - very good turn out. The room was full and there was some active bidding. But the deals were still great. A bunch of Hans' adult discus from the show was auctioned off. They all went for between $100 and $175 - really a steal! These were all really good fish! There were also other smaller discus in groups of 4-5. They went for anywhere between about $65 and $120.. Wish I had space for some discus :(
The hotel's atrium area is quite nice, with a very large Koi pond right in the middle. I regret now that I didn't take any pictures of that! (I will try to take some tomorrow if I go for the auction).
Anyway here are some picture of the fish! These were all very big - larger than the palm of an average guy's palm and some were much bigger!
Here's a striated beauty!
Melon variety
Another solid type with a darker color
This one was really pretty, but a bit shy
Nice color!
Natural - this is closer to what you will see in the wild (Amazon river)
Another natural color
Red spotted green - I think! (experts please comment) - one of my favorite strains
Red snake skin - feeling a bit shy
Another snake skin
Another striated
What a work of art! - sorry about the quality of the image.
Check out the question mark on this guy's gill!
Another shot of the question mark
My fav!
Red Panda
Natural close-up
Natural
And here are some pictures of the Koi pond in the hotel! - I know you guys want to see it even if you won't admit it ;)
The auction today was very nice - very good turn out. The room was full and there was some active bidding. But the deals were still great. A bunch of Hans' adult discus from the show was auctioned off. They all went for between $100 and $175 - really a steal! These were all really good fish! There were also other smaller discus in groups of 4-5. They went for anywhere between about $65 and $120.. Wish I had space for some discus :(
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The Music Hall at Fair Park Dallas
Recently went to watch Norah Jones at the Music hall at fairpark.. I had searched online for some information on the seating chart and everywhere I found the same basic seating chart that can be found on the music hall's website - http://www.liveatthemusichall.com. The problem with this one is that it is pretty useless as it is not very clear.. I ended up buying tickets for 58 dollars each in section GG.
Well, at the concert, what I found is that any seat on the balcony and you are basically too far away from the concert.. You will need binoculars to see a performer's face or expressions.. Also the seats are horrible (at least in the balcony). The seats don't recline at all. I am only 5'8" and the leg space was very cramped for me. The seat back has almost no cushioning. Also the person infront of me (who was not particularly tall) blocked my view.. I had to constantly look around her head.. This was not just my seat. We were able to move to another seat later on and it was the same story.
So my advice is, balcony is no good.. If that is all that is available, then you might want to re-consider going for the show. Unless, you get teh first row on a section. The balcony has 3 sections.. If you look at the seating chart above, the lowest balcony sections are A through I, the one above it are AA through LL and the highest ones are MM through UU.. The row and and seat numbers are also shown on the chart above, but it is not clear.. Basically for the lowest section, the rows are A through F and the seat numbering is shown clearly on the chart as a "1" with an arrow showing where "1" starts and which way to count.. Similarly for the second section, the rows are G through L, with seat numbers as shown. For the highest section rows are M through U. So if you can get on the first row of each section, then this might be okay (since you will have enough leg space and nobody will be blocking your view).. So these "first rows" are row A in the lowest section, row G in the second section or row M in the highest section..
The main hall (ground level) might be okay in terms of seating but I have no idea.. I will update this blog after I go to a show when I have tickets to the ground level..
Now the plus point for the dallas music hall (and this is a huge one)..
I loved, the acoustics of this hall.. So the concert itself was excellent! I think it is hard to beat the acoustics of this hall.. So because of this even though the seating was uncomfortable, the concert was thoroughly enjoyable..
Well, at the concert, what I found is that any seat on the balcony and you are basically too far away from the concert.. You will need binoculars to see a performer's face or expressions.. Also the seats are horrible (at least in the balcony). The seats don't recline at all. I am only 5'8" and the leg space was very cramped for me. The seat back has almost no cushioning. Also the person infront of me (who was not particularly tall) blocked my view.. I had to constantly look around her head.. This was not just my seat. We were able to move to another seat later on and it was the same story.
So my advice is, balcony is no good.. If that is all that is available, then you might want to re-consider going for the show. Unless, you get teh first row on a section. The balcony has 3 sections.. If you look at the seating chart above, the lowest balcony sections are A through I, the one above it are AA through LL and the highest ones are MM through UU.. The row and and seat numbers are also shown on the chart above, but it is not clear.. Basically for the lowest section, the rows are A through F and the seat numbering is shown clearly on the chart as a "1" with an arrow showing where "1" starts and which way to count.. Similarly for the second section, the rows are G through L, with seat numbers as shown. For the highest section rows are M through U. So if you can get on the first row of each section, then this might be okay (since you will have enough leg space and nobody will be blocking your view).. So these "first rows" are row A in the lowest section, row G in the second section or row M in the highest section..
The main hall (ground level) might be okay in terms of seating but I have no idea.. I will update this blog after I go to a show when I have tickets to the ground level..
Now the plus point for the dallas music hall (and this is a huge one)..
I loved, the acoustics of this hall.. So the concert itself was excellent! I think it is hard to beat the acoustics of this hall.. So because of this even though the seating was uncomfortable, the concert was thoroughly enjoyable..
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The China threat - actually a good thing?
The biggest concern in the common man's mind about China's ascend is that more and more American jobs seem to be going to China and India. Why? The most popular answer to this (and one I think is mostly accurate) is that China and India have cheap labor. A lot of manufacturing jobs have moved to China due to their cheap manual labor. This was also aided by excellent infrastructure development by the Chinese government. On the other hand a large portion of the so called intellectual labor, such as software design work, is moving to India, due to their large pool of cheap educated labor.
So is this it? China & India takes over the world and the "rich becomes poor and the poor becomes rich" scenario plays out?
Hardly!
The eternal optimist in me thinks this is just another chapter in humanity's great march forward.
So what, you ask, is going to happen next that makes it all okay for the world's industrialized "high labor cost" nations.. I am taking America as an example in the following argument, but it applies to most industrialized rich nations.
Everyone knows the problems with the big fat American enterprises that defined the industrial revolution of the 20th century. The big auto companies, airlines and big manufacturing companies in general are all suffering from the big bloat of expensive labor that is propped up by the labor unions. It seems clear that these companies won't survive the status quo. I am not saying labor unions are evil or that the American work force is wrong in wanting more for their work. Hardly! Everyone wants to do well for themselves and they are going to protect their interests.. That is the beauty of capitalism and it all sort of balances out. Individual companies might succeed or fail based on how these imbalances as they arise are handled but a capitalist economy as a whole always marches on..
So what happens to these big bloated companies? Well, they will all die away! (mostly).. But wait, isn't that what I just said was not going to happen? No, my argument was that the nations and the people will be okay not the bloated enterprises themselves..
As American companies with large labor forces struggle to stay competitive other smaller nimble companies with a lot more automation should take their place. If you start with the premise that there is no particular advantage to people from any one region over people from another region, then there is nothing inherently more advantageous to China that is making them "inevitably" successful (as it might feel now-a-days). They are just exploiting a situation where American business grew big and fat with large labor forces and retirement commitments to a point where they cannot effectively compete in the world market place. So I think the next wave of successful businesses in America will take the next step and come up with operating models that are extremely short on labor and long on automation. If you think about it, this is really what happened during the industrial revolution - manual labor gave way to machine based labor - and now it's time to take it to the next level. Necessity is the mother of invention. So when things were good, nobody thought about taking automation to the next level. But now as this becomes a necessity for American companies to stay competitive in global market place, it is certainly bound to happen.
How about software and other so called intellectual labor? Well, I work in the IT field. I did IC design for about 10 years and now manage a group of IC designers. But my experience is that a large percentage of the work that many of my colleagues and I do on a day to day basis is repetitive drudgery. Automating the drudgery in intellectual professions so that the real labor need is significantly reduced would be the next step here.
Once this happens, all of a sudden, you will see that the world's nations are again on equal footing (China, India, etc. lose their "cheap labor" advantage). Land is not significantly cheaper in either of these countries (at least useful land). Natural resources are another story - countries rich in natural resource will always have an advantage and I think America is luckily one of them.
Now I am not saying China and India all of a sudden will go back to being poor. China and India did not become successful solely because of cheap labor.. Cheap labor was always there.. That didn't make them successful. It is an embrace of capitalism (even a partial embrace) that made them competitive all of a sudden.
So the way I see it the embrace of capitalism by some nations in Asia is making them prosperous. This is certainly causing a brief imbalance in the overall world of capitalism due to the entry of two large nations. But this will indeed be a temporary imbalance and the overall capitalist world will find its new balance and enter a new era of prosperity.
What do you think? Comments are welcome!
So is this it? China & India takes over the world and the "rich becomes poor and the poor becomes rich" scenario plays out?
Hardly!
The eternal optimist in me thinks this is just another chapter in humanity's great march forward.
So what, you ask, is going to happen next that makes it all okay for the world's industrialized "high labor cost" nations.. I am taking America as an example in the following argument, but it applies to most industrialized rich nations.
Everyone knows the problems with the big fat American enterprises that defined the industrial revolution of the 20th century. The big auto companies, airlines and big manufacturing companies in general are all suffering from the big bloat of expensive labor that is propped up by the labor unions. It seems clear that these companies won't survive the status quo. I am not saying labor unions are evil or that the American work force is wrong in wanting more for their work. Hardly! Everyone wants to do well for themselves and they are going to protect their interests.. That is the beauty of capitalism and it all sort of balances out. Individual companies might succeed or fail based on how these imbalances as they arise are handled but a capitalist economy as a whole always marches on..
So what happens to these big bloated companies? Well, they will all die away! (mostly).. But wait, isn't that what I just said was not going to happen? No, my argument was that the nations and the people will be okay not the bloated enterprises themselves..
As American companies with large labor forces struggle to stay competitive other smaller nimble companies with a lot more automation should take their place. If you start with the premise that there is no particular advantage to people from any one region over people from another region, then there is nothing inherently more advantageous to China that is making them "inevitably" successful (as it might feel now-a-days). They are just exploiting a situation where American business grew big and fat with large labor forces and retirement commitments to a point where they cannot effectively compete in the world market place. So I think the next wave of successful businesses in America will take the next step and come up with operating models that are extremely short on labor and long on automation. If you think about it, this is really what happened during the industrial revolution - manual labor gave way to machine based labor - and now it's time to take it to the next level. Necessity is the mother of invention. So when things were good, nobody thought about taking automation to the next level. But now as this becomes a necessity for American companies to stay competitive in global market place, it is certainly bound to happen.
How about software and other so called intellectual labor? Well, I work in the IT field. I did IC design for about 10 years and now manage a group of IC designers. But my experience is that a large percentage of the work that many of my colleagues and I do on a day to day basis is repetitive drudgery. Automating the drudgery in intellectual professions so that the real labor need is significantly reduced would be the next step here.
Once this happens, all of a sudden, you will see that the world's nations are again on equal footing (China, India, etc. lose their "cheap labor" advantage). Land is not significantly cheaper in either of these countries (at least useful land). Natural resources are another story - countries rich in natural resource will always have an advantage and I think America is luckily one of them.
Now I am not saying China and India all of a sudden will go back to being poor. China and India did not become successful solely because of cheap labor.. Cheap labor was always there.. That didn't make them successful. It is an embrace of capitalism (even a partial embrace) that made them competitive all of a sudden.
So the way I see it the embrace of capitalism by some nations in Asia is making them prosperous. This is certainly causing a brief imbalance in the overall world of capitalism due to the entry of two large nations. But this will indeed be a temporary imbalance and the overall capitalist world will find its new balance and enter a new era of prosperity.
What do you think? Comments are welcome!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Useless "golden facial proportions" study
Here is the latest useless study that came out just the other day... Apparently US and Canadian researchers have figured out the optimum proportions for a woman's face! According to an article published in news.yahoo.com the researchers asked students to compare color photographs of the same woman's face, in which the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth, and horizontal distance between the eyes, had been doctored using Photoshop (a computer program that is widely used for re-touching photographs). They found that the students chose faces with specific proportions - I will spare you the details of the exact proportions (you can see it in the link above). But here is the kicker - the specific proportions that the students preferred also turns out to be the proportions of an average human face!
So let's recap: These super intelligent scientists took an average face and distorted it a number of ways using a computer software and asked students to pick whether they like the average unaltered face or the distorted faces. I assume this is sort of like looking at a regular mirror, vs. a convex or a concave mirror. And lo and behold, hold your breath!, what a discovery! - the students chose the normal face! They did not like the distorted face!
When their research was applied on some of the famous people, here are the results as mentioned in the above article: "Angelina Jolie's face does not have golden length and width ratios". "Elizabeth Hurley gets the golden ratio for length but is different from the width golden ratio by one percent". "But Canadian country pop musician Shania Twain has "both the length and width ratios."
Wait a minute.. So doesn't this totally debunk the inference they are making from their amazing discovery? If you were to ask most people to list these three women in the order of attractiveness, I am going to go out on a limb and say that a large percentage would list them in the following order..
1) Angelina Jolie
2) Elizabeth Hurley
3) Shania Twain (Probably a very distant third).
Yet if you go by the perfect ratios, the order would have to be
1) Shania Twain
2) Elizabeth Hurley
3) Angelina Jolie
Which is the exact opposite order!
Okay, another thing.. If the average person already has the perfect proportions, then shouldn't the average person be the most beautiful? On the other hand doesn't it follow that if the super-pretty has proportions that differ from the perfect proportions (since the super pretty is not average), then maybe a slight variation from the perfect proportions is the best? What do you think? Send in your thoughts!
P.S. Please take the poll that I have set up on the right side of this blog. That is not an ad.
So let's recap: These super intelligent scientists took an average face and distorted it a number of ways using a computer software and asked students to pick whether they like the average unaltered face or the distorted faces. I assume this is sort of like looking at a regular mirror, vs. a convex or a concave mirror. And lo and behold, hold your breath!, what a discovery! - the students chose the normal face! They did not like the distorted face!
When their research was applied on some of the famous people, here are the results as mentioned in the above article: "Angelina Jolie's face does not have golden length and width ratios". "Elizabeth Hurley gets the golden ratio for length but is different from the width golden ratio by one percent". "But Canadian country pop musician Shania Twain has "both the length and width ratios."
Wait a minute.. So doesn't this totally debunk the inference they are making from their amazing discovery? If you were to ask most people to list these three women in the order of attractiveness, I am going to go out on a limb and say that a large percentage would list them in the following order..
1) Angelina Jolie
2) Elizabeth Hurley
3) Shania Twain (Probably a very distant third).
Yet if you go by the perfect ratios, the order would have to be
1) Shania Twain
2) Elizabeth Hurley
3) Angelina Jolie
Which is the exact opposite order!
Okay, another thing.. If the average person already has the perfect proportions, then shouldn't the average person be the most beautiful? On the other hand doesn't it follow that if the super-pretty has proportions that differ from the perfect proportions (since the super pretty is not average), then maybe a slight variation from the perfect proportions is the best? What do you think? Send in your thoughts!
P.S. Please take the poll that I have set up on the right side of this blog. That is not an ad.
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