Thought I'd get all green and enviro-friendly and healthy and all that and so decided that I'd bike as much as I can this summer.. Decided to minimize the driving and so was getting pretty good at pedalling about town and to work etc...
I normally lock my bike to the banister/railing of the stairs leading up to our building. And it's Amherst for crying out loud!! This place is supposed to be crime free!! But on Saturday, some dumfuks stole my bike. And how? They broke off the whole freaking banister so that they could slide the bike lock off of it!!!! Talk about desperately environment friendly thieves!!
A lab as lifesaver? UMass simulator helps drivers see what to look for
BY KRISTIN PALPINI STAFF WRITER
AMHERST - New drivers run a high risk of being involved in fatal automobile crashes, but the usual suspects - alcohol and speeding - aren't typically the cause, according to research at the University of Massachusetts.
New drivers are 11 times more likely than veteran drivers to die in a car crash during their first six months solo behind the wheel because they don't know how to spot potential hazards, said Donald L. Fisher, director of the UMass Human Performance Laboratory.
Checking to see if a car will pull out from behind a large hedge at an intersection, keeping an eye on people who may step into a crosswalk or slowing down before making a turn around a parked 18-wheeler aren't things the typical teenage driver will do, said Fisher.
"They're not trained for this," he explained, "and it's not the driving schools' fault. You can tell someone a hundred times to check before making a turn, but until they realize or see that they have to do it, they won't."
To rectify this skill deficiency, Fisher, along with doctoral student Anuj K. Pradhan and psychology professor Alexander Pollatsek, created a free downloadable computer program, RAPT, for Risk Awareness and Perception Training. It teaches drivers how to anticipate road hazards.
"I strongly believe, and we have the evidence, that young drivers will most definitely benefit from taking this program," said Pradhan, who has been working on RAPT for four years. "Of course, the disclaimer is that this is not a replacement for a driver's ed course or something like that. It is another piece."
Key: anticipating hazards
This inability to consistently anticipate possible road risks does not belong solely to new drivers. Many drivers under 30 and over 60 have less than stellar rates of hazard anticipation, according to UMass research.
For example, Fisher said, a driver looking to take a right turn around a large truck parked at an intersection is likely to slow down and proceed cautiously only 10 percent of the time. People ages 19-29 are likely to proceed with caution 29 percent of the time; for people 60 and older the rate increases to 56 percent.
People reach their optimal safe driving ability at age 50-55, Fisher said.
"This means that parents need to be trained as well as kids," he said.
RAPT, which can be downloaded from the UMass Web site www.ecs.umass.edu/hpl/RAPT.htm, works in three stages to teach a driver how to spot places where unexpected risks could emerge. The program has been picked up by insurance provider State Farm, which is working on a "snazzier" version of the program, said Fisher.
"I focused on making a free teaching tool," said Fisher, who agrees the program's graphics could be more fetching. "State Farm is interested in making it more appealing to newly licensed drivers."
To develop RAPT, Fisher and Pradhan harvested data from hundreds of driver tests conducted in the UMass lab. The Human Perception Lab features a $750,000 driving simulator - a 1995 Saturn sedan that has been refurbished to measure the reactions of drivers on the road. The Saturn is stable (it has no engine) and is set before three theater screens that display prerecorded driving scenarios.
In addition to chronicling the driver's actions behind the wheel, the driver's eye movements are tracked through specially made glasses. The glasses, which look like shop glasses, monitor the motion of a person's pupils with infrared beams and mirrors.
Using scenes from the Valley, the program shows a participant various scenarios where road risks could occur, such as driving through a four-way intersection. The program then asks the participant to click a mouse pointer where she or he would be looking if they were driving.
In the second stage, participants work through an interactive tutorial on how to spot danger zones. In the third stage the participant goes over real-life scenarios and again plots where she or he should be looking for danger.
Fisher said a person's ability to spot potentially dangerous areas increases from accurately identifying 44 percent of trouble spots to identifying 70 percent of them after completing the program.
"This works in the lab, but does it work in the field?" asked Fisher, describing his next stage of RAPT research.
"We'd like to test whether this reduces crashes."
Fisher and Pradhan are now also working on training programs that aim to show the importance of paying consistent attention to the road and how to temper speed in various driving conditions - two other common factors in teen accidents, Fisher said.
"Younger drivers are not necessarily driving fast, but they are not at the correct speed for the condition," said Pradhan. "If it's icy ... they don't really know how to handle that.
"We're a long ways to go on these," said Pradhan of the lab's next two projects. "But we're working on it."
RAPT research was funded by the Massachusetts Highway Department, the National Science Foundation and private companies.
There've been a couple of nice artsy stuff that've been taking place around here lately.. And luckily I've managed to make it to a few of these this semester.
-On October 19th, a whole load of us drove down to the Berkshire School at Sheffield, MA, to watch Dan perform as Pistol, the Earl of Warwick, and the Governor of Harfleuw in the American Shakespeare Center's production of Henry V. 'Twas a very interesting experience as this company's productions follow 'original staging practices', i.e. the plays are staged as they were during Shakespeare's time, with audience interaction, doubling of actors' roles, spartan sets, universal lighting etc.
(The drive to Sheffield, MA during the height of the Fall foliage along the scenic routes was pretty awesome too.)
November: -...saw "Pillowman" at the Curtain Theatre. This dark comedy (???) by Martin McDonagh was disturbing to say the least, but engrossing and we couldn't keep our eyes off the stage, watching it like one would watch a car crash, with a sense of revulsion, dread and voyeurism. Great performances by all the amateur actors!
-...also saw Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado", a production of the Valley Light Opera, and directed by none but my downstairs neighbor Nick Dahlman. It was quite a lavsih affair, with amazing set and costume designs... befitting the classic tale of Nanki-Poo and Pooh-bah and Ko-Ko and Yum Yum. :)
-...The Commonwealth Opera presented Verdi's "Rigoletto" at the Academy of Music in Northampton. The supertitles during the opera definitely helps you understand what's happening... and all the more pleasure out of the performance due to that. The story of Rigoletto and the tragic consequences of revenge and murder.
December: - ... The Bezanson Theatre was the venue for the Fred Anderson/Chad Taylor Duo as a part of the University Magic Triangle Jazz Series. A great performance by tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson and amazing, mind-blowing percussion by Chad Taylor. It was obvious that the 78 yr old saxophonist and the 34-yr old percussionist had a history of jamming together coz they were so in tune with each other's music, so well meshed and in perfect rhythm and harmony. One of the great Jazz performances I've had the privilege of attending.
Hope there'll be more fun artsy stuff before the end of the year.
You may know that my digital camera got stolen from my bags in Heathrow earlier this year.. So I've been camera-less for a while.. and that kinda started bugging me, so I shook the dust off of my old 35mm SLR and bought a roll of film and went exploring.
Here are some of the results...
Shooting with a 35 mm is a very disciplining experience coz you know you have limited shots.. and so that makes you careful about the setup for that time when you actually press that shutter.. A good exercise.... Until I can afford a dSLR!
And I realized that it was busy data logging until the batteries ran out.
Here's an overlay on google earth of the tracks though....
check it out.....
The slope on the right where i first went to.. notice the tracks lead into the forest? No I didn't crash into a tree! I was adjusting my snowboard when the clip came off and it went flying downhill.. a couple of hundred feet.. into the forests. Man, I had to trudge down in all that deep snow to retrieve it. Yucks.
The trails on the left are the blue ones... those were fun!!
But from a GPS point of view, these are awesome. I can't say what the resolution is like but it is pretty good. And 3-D for that matter.
The BGT-11's software Navilink creates .kml files so it's a breeze to use it on Google earth.
Sadly, for the past few years I have been able to hit the slopes only once a season. And I noticed, looking at all the lift tickets on my jacket, that it has always been around this week of the year.. Mid-to-end-march-ish. Weird huh?
Anyway, this year's snowboarding trip took place last Tuesday. We had a major nor'easter over the weekend and we got some snow Monday night too. So we were anticipating good snow conditions. And we were not disappointed!!!! Temperature in the 40's.. great sunshine.. perfect snow conditions. It was by far the best snowboarding I've done.. weatherwise, snow condition wise, and skill-wise!! :P ..
We = JingLan, Isabela, Luis, Jim, Lava, Dan and I.
(took us three tries for this photograph... damn timer!!)
Was a great trip. I tackled the blue slopes and it was great!! No guts for the black diamonds yet though!
Fortunately no "major" mishaps. Dan was nervous due to bad happenings on his previous skiing trips this year. Nothing to do with the skiing. Everything to do with the driving! Read about it here and here. Well, actually something bad almost happened. On the last lift ride before closing, Dan happened see something shiny 30 feet below him in the snow. Oops he thinks.. someone dropped their keys!! And then he realizes that those were HIS car keys!!! Poor guy then had to board down the ugly black diamond mogul slope to retrieve the keys!
But what are the chances that he'd see his own keys down there? he could have dropped it anywhere while boarding.. and then we'd never have been able to find it. And then we'd be stranded coz he was the ride home!! Phew..
After the slopes.. some of us headed into Northampton where we had reservations for an hour's worth of delightful soaking at the East Heaven Hot Tubs. Man, hot tub soaking after skiing.. words fail me. Rejuvenate those muscles and bones and warm yourself up... aaaaaah.. better than coffee!! :P
Heckavasurprise or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 30s
This is a post embarrassingly way way way overdue...
I guess I was just worried that a mere blog post cannot do justice.
I was undecided if I should blog it at all, coz I felt that it is way too special.. So special that it should be recorded by the poet laureate. I kept wrestling with the decision and next thing I know - boom - it's March. And this is s'posed to be about my birthday in December!! Dammit.
So anyway, I have decided that this should be written down for posterity. (Not that I'd forget!!)
And so here goes...
Top 5 memories for the first 30 years of your life: 1. 30th birthday party 2. ... 3. ... 4. ... 5. ...
This is about my birthday. Or more specifically... about my birthday party...
It all started like this:
Dec 13th, 2006 - My birthday:
I pick up the Collegian and am reading through the comics/crossword/sudoku page...
note the date!
when the horoscope catches my eye...
for Sagittarius particularly...
Hmmmm.. heh heh... chuckle chuckle.. Riiight! Well, I'm not a believer in horoscopes obviously, specially the funny ones that are printed in the college rag.
Anyway.. I had decided that for my birthday we'd all go out for dinner to Mi Tierra.. a great Mexican restaurant that is actually a part of a grocery store! It is (or was) the best kept secret in the valley.. the food is to die for!!
So we all went out and dinner it was real fun.. a large number of friends showed up and 'twas a very very good b'day dinner with great food and even greater friends to hang out and say bubbye to the 20's!!
And then, after dinner, the mystery began... I was handed a card - an invitation to an event on Sunday (Dec 17th) at Amherst Coffee.
Wow!! A birthday party, and a surprise one at that.. I was of course pleasantly mystified.. but also, pretty freaked out by the creepily accurate horoscope in the day's newspaper!!!!! freeeaky!
I was also informed that the hint was in the card itself; other than that no one would be giving me any clues.. except for wrong clues, of course! For instance, Raz's clues were: hot lingerie supermodels; fashion show; the bar in amherst coffee; blind date. You can imagine the heights of fecundity that my imagination attained for the next 4-5 days!!
Anyway.. I eagerly (and nervously) waited for Sunday to come around. . . . . . . . Finally it deigned to ... Phew
I got a call from Zeynep saying that I should dress nice and they'd come pick me to go to Amherst Coffee.
Ummm.. dress nice??? .. Well, OK. Jeans and vintage tee is nice right?? :D
And then... Amherst Coffee..
For those of you who do not know, Amherst Coffee is the place where I hang-out/buy-my-coffee/work/study/chill/go-for-free-wireless-internet etc etc.. It's a nice coffee shop.. good coffee, good ambience, good (but pricey) beer, wine and liquor, great jazz with live performances on Thursdays.. you get the idea.
Basically I spend a lot of time there.. which is why my first thought when I got the invite was that my friends had decided to have a big birthday party at Amherst Coffee, and when I entered the place that's exactly what it looked like. 'Coz the place was full of friends (and friends' friends), all dressed to kill... all rarin' to party.
And more and more people kept pouring in by the minute until the place was chock-full of people I knew. Now this was fantastic.. that all these guys had come together, all dressed up, in honor of my birthday! It was great... and intense and man was I freaking uncomfortable. I mean, I loved it, but dude, it's a lot of pressure knowing that all these guys are there for the express purpose of springing a surprise on you. I thought that the get-together at the cafe was the big surprise, but that wasn't the case.. they all knew something that I didn't!!
--Aside-- I mentioned Amherst Coffee plays Jazz right? Well, that night my sneaky friends asked them to play Dylan instead! Isn't that awesome. Talk about the small touches! --End Aside --
Anyway I was downing Single Malts, enjoying the very nice sparkly cocktail party atmosphere, and kicking myself for thinking Jeans + Tee = Dress Nice (Check the pictures out to see what I mean). And of course, the suspense was killing me!!!
So, as an act of mercy I'm sure, Chris called out for everybody's attention.. and went on to announce that it was the hour of gift-giving.. OOOOOH... A gift too!!
And then I was handed an envelope..
inside which was this:
A ticket to a private screening of High Fidelity at the brand new just opened Amherst Cinema. WOW. HOW WONDERFULLY EXCITING IS THAT!!!
I couldn't react. I was actually lost for words. But I finally registered that all of us were gathered to watch High Fidelity at Amherst Cinema next door for my birthday!!
How did this happen?
Well, I guess Zeynep remembered that I had once mentioned that High Fidelity was one of my favouritest movies... and also that I'd remarked on how much fun it'd be to rent a theatre to watch a movie with a group of friends. So she put two and two together... and came up with 22 million and decided to have this surprise birthday thing for me.
Phew.. what an organizational effort. They had to rent the entire theatre.. organize to ship in the film print special from California for this single-screening, pay the necessary royalties and the taxes and everything. Quite amazing. And also to round up this huge number of people to show up and buy tickets and cover the cost of the whole renting, shipping, licensing and god knows what else. WOW. .. to think Nick ornby and John Cusack and Stephen Frears profited directly from my birthday party. oooh.. important!!!!
So everyone trooped to the theatre.. lined up like good patrons of the arts to purchase the tickets to cover the full expenses. :P....
While I was posing with my friends at the door like a visiting dignitary! Or a hollywood person! :P
Alex baked a hundred absolutely wonderful cupcakes, into which they stuck the required candles and all... and had the whole singing happy birthday scene going on. Really, it was quite a party.. And everybody was waiting for me to be overwhelmed by emotion and break down in tears.
HAH..
(I did that in the stall in the restrooms!!)
:D
Check out Amherst Coffee and Amherst Cinema here in this album..
So anyway.. after the cakes and all we all trooped into the theatre.. but before the screening there was just one more surprise!!!
My most favourite basoonist and clarinetist.. with a personalized performance.
Watch it: :) (sorry I had to paste it together from diff clips and diff cameras hence the unsmooth video)
That was just so great. A wonderful musical performance for me. Such wonderful people!!
And then.. good old High Fidelity.. It is a movie quite filled with anguish and agony and pathos isn't it? So much so that I felt obligated to remark that the movie being a favourite of mine in no way meant that it was autobiographical. Now we don't want people thinking I slept with a recording artist do we??
So what can I say??
That I have the greatest group of friends in the world. And the most creative, and for them nothing is impossible. They made this happen. Such a lovely surprise. Such a lovely party. But most of all they succeeded in creating this wonderful memory, not just for me, but for everybody who was there that evening. Including the baristas at Amherst coffee and the popcorn folks at Amherst Cinema. And that is a wonderful feat. Like leaving a legacy. Leaving a legacy of memories in many minds. I'm proud of you all, and I'm proud and honoured to be your friend. :D
Thanks
It's all about the memories..
like Zeynep said -
Unlike many other habitants of the earth we chose not to be born, live and die in the same town and hang out with the same people from birth to death, so sooner or later we will move on and who knows where we will be next. We will be spread around in several continents, hanging out with totally new people. But hopefully tonight, and all other days and nights like these will forever stay with us.
So all my beautiful, amazing, creative, fantastic, full-o-surprises, wonderful.. not to forget oh so chic and beautiful and stylish.. friends.
THANK YOU
Here's the card by the way! :).. Alex's creativity shining through.
i think i have successfully migrated this blog and my gallery onto a 'real' webserver from my homebrewn webserver which was jus a poor ole windows box running Apache and PHP and blahdeblah.
And Blogger seems to be behaving itself right now so maybe I'll still around here and see.. before I actually decide whether to make the move to WordPress.
This is also a test post to see if labels will work.. and to test if it publishes these posts as .php files.. and to see if comments work. So please comment even if it is just junk comments for now! :)
Don's finally managed to convince me to try out the GPS enabled phones for some projects..
I'm going to Washington DC for TRB 2007 on Saturday.
Watched "The Queen" last night and it is brilliant.
Yeah.. I know.. belated post. But still I mean it.. Happy New Year
I'm experiencing some major issues with Blogger.. ever since I upgraded to the new Blogger Beta which is now Blogger Beta
So that is the primary reason I haven't been posting. It's too much of a pain to add a long post.. or one with much media. So becoz of that I've missed out on a couple of important posts. So this here should serve as an IOU for:
-Post about the wonderful (surprise) birthday party -Happy New Year + Party -Zeynep's gone back to Turkey leaving us all bored and bleargh
Anyway.. Let's see how Blogger holds up.. else I might be redoing this whole thing and putting it up on a real host on WordPress or something.
This year, again, Jake and Alenka hosted a wonderful Thanksgiving with their lovely family. They took in all of us far away from home and made us a part of the family. As usual, there was excellent food.. Turkey, Duck and the likes.. excellent company.. and this year we were also treated to a Wheeler Family Thanksgiving Tradition, a little skit based on the story of the guy who cried wolf. :D
This year Dan and Alex brought in this huge jigsaw puzzle, but unlike last year there was no finished picture to refer to.. so unfortunately the jigsaw puzzle was left incomlete this year. :(.. We also watched the documentary about the Mayflower produced by the History Channel, in which Dan had a big role. Follow this link for Dan's interview. :) Here are some pictures from that night. I didn't take all that many photographs. Here are some from Alex's site.
Hartsbrook School Hadley, MA Shakespeare under the stars...
I was fortunate enough to catch the last show.. and it was a brisk, beautiful evening, with a full moon.
My first attempt at catching this play was when Chaitali was visiting, but we were unlucky coz of rain, and so we had to watch it inside. It was still good, but no real sets and the actors looked very restricted inside the small auditorium. Outside was way way better...
Dan Kennedy, our friend from Down Under, is playing Macbeth.. and he did a FINE job of it!!
Rushdie speaks: Heraclitus, or, Character and Destiny
September 21st, 2006 Bowker Auditorium, UMass - Amherst
I meant to write about the talk a long time ago, but I was probably overwhelmed from the barrage of literary references which did succeed in making me feel like an ignoramus, totally worthless and unread! A journey through literature... from Samuel Richardson to Charles Schulz (yes, of 'Peanuts")... from Heraclitus, ("part wise man part fortune cookie") to Popeye - 'I yam what I yam', or 'Character is Destiny'.... Melville (Ishmael as Dylan (Bob) in Pat Garett and Billy the Kid) to Ragtime's Doctorow.. Cervantes, Shakespeare, Joyce, Austen, Nabokoff...
I'm not gonna try. Just recording the moment.
And yes, picked up "Shalimar the Clown". Wanted to get a copy of Midnight's Children too, signed, but they'd sold out! Should have had the foresight to bring along a copy!!
Yesterday we got lucky and found tickets to the last day of "Cats", brought to the Mullins Center by "Broadway In Amherst". We got grand seats, right up in the front and finally got to see Cats. Now I know what the fuss is all about. They are brilliant! I'm not going to go into raptures of description but it sufficeth to say that it was really thrilling and worth every dime (with student discount, hehe)!!
"Macavity" was by far the most enjoyable.. also coz of my vague recollection of the poem from a long long long time ago. I remember my brother memorizing and presenting the poem for an Elocution contest ages ago. :D
As for the cast, I think the most popular of all was Rum Tum Tugger.. and I came across a bit of trivia: "Andrew Lloyd Webber has stated that the part of the Tugger is intended to be a homage to Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. This homage is apparent in the way he moves on stage in the original Gillian Lynne choreography and the costume styling."
Grizabella the glamour cat's rendition of "Memory", before she is selected to "journey to the heavyside layer", was haunting. Betcha most of the audience were humming that tune when driving back home! :)
But I was humming this one...
....
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity. You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square - But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!
He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's. And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair - Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!
And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair - But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: `It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away. You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.
....
I know I still owe you a description of the Kenneth Miller Lecture. ... maybe it'll happen, maybe not.. keep checking back. ;)
April 13th was when we had dinner at Zeynep's and had a great cultural/linguistic experience communicating with her folks in Turkish aided by 2 dictionaries and an electronic translator, which led us to discussing common words/etymology and the Ottomon empire/Ghenghis Khan connections! Anyway, now that I think back, maybe it was that strong Turkish coffee that kept me up..
.. so that next day, Friday, I was operating with no sleep and tons of coffee. And then staying up till 6am at the Nepali New Year momo making party at Lava's.
... And then Kotak and his buddy Sameer came in from New Jersey at 7am and we were off for the white water rafting up on Deerfield River, at Charlemont MA. CrabApple Whitewater Inc. is a small and friendly family run outfit. Thank God for the wetsuits and booties that they thoughfully provided, coz even though the day was nice and sunny and warm, the water was still COLD!! And there were more than one occasion to get drenched by that cold river water! But that was what helped keep me awake and operating even after 60+ hours of no sleep!!
The 25 mile run was pretty smooth with rapids classed from I to III.. the heaviest rapids we hit were the "Zoar Rapids" which were class III; other than that it was pretty smooth sailing. The paddling was tough exercise though.. and the bouts of water fights we had amongst 6 rafts.. flinging HEAVY bucket loads of ice cold water on to other boats... all that work made the lunch they provided at the end of the day very very welcome.
Brunch at Archita's next day and lazing about in the sun (pic below) with "saandiyeko bhogotey". :).. An hour at the Driving Range.. a movie - Scary Movie-4. Wrap up with dinner at Rajeev's and that was the "long" weekend. Pretty eventful I guess for a change. Bless the weather.
(Lava didn't wanna pose for this pic)
This is my update about last weekend.. I still owe y'all a post about the Kenneth Miller lecture I attended last Thursday and on "Night Watch" which I finally watched on Wednesday... all later though. My to-do list is over-flowing for now.
Here are some pictures that I've been meaning to put up for ya'll... Don't have much to write, so these should do for a while, eh?
During Burcu and Cesar's visit... A hike up to Skinner Park in the snow. Brrr..
Snowboarding at Berkshire East - March 25th. As you can see not much snow so all the more painful!!
The Team - Venezuela Bernardo, Turkey Zeynep, Australia Dan, Nepal Lava and Bhutan Anuj
Guess what this is.... all right...... it is an antique "spile" or "spout" used to tap maple syrup from maple trees. It was maple syrup season so we went to the North Hadley Sugarshack, a sugar house where they collected the maple sap and made maple syrup and other goodies out of it.
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