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Trip to Michigan

Over the memorial day weekend, I and some of my friends from IIT along with their better half’s and parents, went on a trip to Lake Charlevoix in Michigan. The weather and company was great and it turned into a perfect weekend. Here are some pictures..

Place we stayed at. Frost Castle. Would highly recommend staying at this place if you travel to this region. The owner, Al Frost, is friendly and has done a great job with building the whole log cabin by himself. BTW, I don’t know if I would call this monster a log cabin :). It has 7 bedrooms and 4 baths.

How many engineers does it take to put up a volleyball net?

Winners of the Volleyball match..

Clear skies and water during a hiking trip

Getting ready for BBQ

Some Rafting..

Hare Krishna.. Hare Ram.. In front of the campfire..

Jet Skiing..

If you really have a lot of time on hand..here’s the link to all the pictures..

June 1, 2008 by Fun Travel Uncategorized 0

My first rugby game..

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure to watch my first rugby game. I always thought that rugby was a rough game, but after watching it in person, I realized that there is more to it then brute strength. There is a lot of team work and coordination involved. And you do need to be TOUGH to be able to play rugby :). Click here for some pictures from the game.

Rocking in Rugby

May 6, 2008 by Rantings Sports Uncategorized 0

Europe : First trip : Thoughts

I recently got the chance to visit Barcelona, Spain for a business trip. Being my first real trip (I have had a lot transit layovers), I was really excited about the trip. Did it live up to my expectations? Yes and No.

  • Architecture : One word.. beautiful!!!
  • Food : Two words.. healthy and small portions.
  • People : Friendly
  • Public Transportation : Clean, Efficient, Affordable
  • Technology : I personally thought that the technology in US was more advanced.

And yes, Europeans wear suites to a football game :). But then, I guess, I shouldn’t be generalizing after just visiting one city in Europe.

If you get a chance to visit, Barcelona, I would highly recommend visiting the Barri Gotic (old part of the city with Gothic architecture) and Sagrada Familia  (unfinished cathedral by Guadi). And don’t get intimidated about taking the public transportation. It is easy to figure out and the people are very friendly.

And do ensure that you have a ton of money :). With the exchange rate at today’s rate, it is not cheap to visit Europe :)..

Here are some pictures from the trip. For a complete list, click here.

The Hotel, I stayed at

Hotel Hesperia Presidente

Subway station in Barcelona

Door knob on an old building

Graffiti (it seemed to be everywhere and apparently is considered art here)

Column (with Christopher Columbus at the top)

Street Musician

Ecofriendly taxis 🙂

The Cathedral

Paella (the real deal)

April 24, 2008 by Food Fun Travel Uncategorized 0

Overheard : Comment about degrees

Last Saturday, I attended a charity event at the VanderCook College of Music, a music college associated with my Alma matter, IIT. It was a fun evening with live music and a silent Chinese auction. But the best part was that I was seated next to a very old and very funny professor from IIT. Dr.McKee is probably in his 80s, but is one of the most active persons I have seen. He had this infectious booming laughter, that would crack every one up. This picture with him, should say it all

Here’s what he said about degrees

B.S = Bull Shit

M.S = More of the Same

PhD = Pile high and Deep!!!  🙂

April 14, 2008 by Fun OverHeard Uncategorized 1

Mark Twain quote..

A friend of mine send me this inspirational quote by Mark Twain

Dance like nobody’s watching;

love like you’ve never been hurt.

Sing like nobody’s listening;

live like it’s heaven on earth

— Mark Twain

April 8, 2008 by OverHeard Uncategorized 1

Google : Earth Day

Screenshot of the Google homepage showing solidarity with the Earth Hour effort. To quote from the Earth Hour website

“On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year. ”

This year, a lot more people signed up and it was a global event.  The stats are yet to be calculated, but I am proud that Chicago played a big part in this :). I did my part by turning down the heat :).

April 4, 2008 by Rantings Uncategorized 1

A case of reverse engineering

As I noted in my last post, I recently ran the Shamrock shuffle 8K. The official pictures for most of the races in US are taken by Marathonfoto. You can go to their website after the race, put in your Bib no and get a preview of the photos that can then be ordered from them. In previous years, I was happy with just taking the thumbnail of the picture and sharing it with my friends. Looks like the Marathonfoto folks decided to “beef” up their security this year and put a annoying “Proof” across the picture. When you log into the site, it shows a list of all the pictures they took of you.. the list looks like this

Clicking on any of the thumbnails brings up a popup looks like

Here’s what I did to get rid of the “Proof” text

  • Checked the page source of the popup and figured that it was a flash application. Clever way of obfuscating the link to the source image..
  • Knowing that the flash application would use generic HTTP connections in the background, I fired up “WireShark“, a traffic capture and analyzer tool, and clicked on the thumbnail again to fire up the popup.
  • An analysis of the traffic showed that the flash app was calling out a particular URL to get the image. Here’s a screenshot of the analysis by Wireshark.

  • Fire up a browser window and directly access the image with the URL from the traffic capture to get it without the “Proof” text :).. The original image looks like this.

April 2, 2008 by Technology Uncategorized Web 17