Disclaimer
Below given instructions are what I used to copyright my images on my Apple MacBook Pro running OS X v10.5.x and these may very well work for you. However, please note that you are using these instructions at your very own risk and this website, sgowtham.net, is not responsible for any/all damage caused to your [...]

March 29, 2008 - a warm, yet pleasant Saturday afternoon - I was driving back from my first visit to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area when I saw the signs to mineral museum - not one, but two!! I should have carried The Picking Table (Journal of The Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society) that Dr. [...]

MAC Address for a camera? I echo your questioning and feelings. And what follows below is my explanation for its necessity, advantages as well as disadvantages.
Take for example a normal, advanced amateur photographer or even pro-photographers - it’s not uncommon for them to have more than one camera as part of their arsenal. One [...]

As I mentioned in my previous entry, my camera gear has been catching dust most of the time - barring couple indoor occasions. The process of settling down and setting up the apartment - as I mentioned in the same post - had kept me indoors and more importantly, kept me away from the Weekend [...]

It was nearly 15 years ago that one of my high school teachers, during a casual conversation, explained/defined what marriage is - on a lighter note: It’s an examination where the guy looses his bachelor’s degree and the girl gets her master’s degree. And this past weekend, two of my friends started taking that examination… [...]

It was a mid Summer early afternoon - 07.07.07 to be precise - that I was out in the Silver Mountains area searching for a much sought after (by myself) Sturgeon Falls/Gorge. The parking area and trail head were very well marked but the trail itself disappeared after about 300 feet into the woods. Fortunately, [...]

As mentioned in the previous write up along similar lines, most of us take photographs and many of us post them in this vast, nearly infinite internet. Inherent to this process is a desire to put our name on the pictures - either to protect them from plagiarism or to feed our ego or whatever [...]

Most of us take photographs and many of us post them in this vast, nearly infinite internet. Inherent to this process is a desire to put our name on the pictures - either to protect them from plagiarism or to feed our ego or whatever other reason. There are many software and multiple ways to [...]

Like I thought in my previous non-technical posting, second part of Summer was indeed quite hectic. We didn’t get enough (any) rains and our UP fell under Extreme Drought label - making it nearly worthless to even attempt searching for any more waterfalls. With Labor Day marking the official end of Summer, following are a [...]

It has been almost five (yeah five long) weeks since I lost (almost) all motivation to keep writing these entries but break from writing gave me plenty of time to learn new things, read (what others write), weekend travel (mostly local), play (mostly softball but some [American] football as well) hangout with friends and shoot [...]

Accomplishing the real reason for visiting NIC/CBB at Jülich meant that I have a full Saturday to roam around and see/do things that have been on my wishlist. Thanks to all the walking I got to do in town as well as between train station and the research center has added pleasure of walking to [...]

As I mentioned in the previous post, I headed towards Cologne (Köln) with most of the fellow workshop participants. Much of the traffic signs as well as other things along the way were kindly explained by Siegfried - which made a 50 km journey quite interesting

Towards Cologne…

Cathedral - each of these towers is [...]

The Journey
For those of you who have been quite regular at reading these posts, my trip to Germany is kinda old news. Unlike my previous attempt, weather gods in UP (Michigan’s Upper Peninsular) were more than kind and none of the flights had any technical difficulty (FYI - technical difficulty does not necessarily/always mean technological [...]

Ever since my first visit to the famed Porcupine Mountains last Summer, it has been amusing me and fascinating me during subsequent trips - be it the colorful drive with Dr. Orlando, or portrait trip with few buddies before winter made its grand appearance. My last attempt, to see this region when some snow still [...]

It was in March 2005; while walking back from Day #1 of APS Meeting I told my advisor that I had declined a $70 ticket for a Lakers-Sonics game at Staples Center. He wasn’t too happy about my decision and since then, I had been planning on making amends for it…. My fanatic affiliation to [...]

I don’t recall too many years (of the five I have stayed here) that actually had Spring-like weather during Spring break! But, weather gods have been unusually kind this time around and granted near +50 F (yes, +ve sign is a hint that we go on the -ve side too) temperatures as the break started. [...]

Part 1: Houghton, MI –> Minneapolis, MN
Part 1: Houghton, MI –> Marquette, MI
Well, some of you might have known about this for a while - either heard from me directly or read in my recent blog entry. Anyways, I got the VISA last Sunday (which, in itself, was rather surprising), got all the required paper [...]

Though I had some intention of seeing this city at least once in my life (yeah, I had never attempted to go there since my arrival in 2002) but never had any intention nor plans to see it in winter… or so I thought. Things shaped up in such a way that I needed some [...]

No, this not a massacre of some kind - but just thought it would catch your attention. Since my purchase in mid June 2006, I have shot 20,000+ (yeah, twenty thousand) pictures with my Nikon D70s - shooting DAPCEP IT workshop & Bridge Festival in Houghton Graduate & Church League Softball in Summer 06, shoot-at-sight [...]

There is a typgraphical error (rather intentional) in the title. If you guessed Hunger was wrongly typed as Hungar, you are absolutely wrong. Read on to find out.
When you wake up early on a Saturday morning, without the aid of any additional device (such as an alarm clock and/or some on calling,…), you know [...]

I am not so sure if you read my previous entry. If you did, you know where I have been. If you did not, please be notified that I have been lost in compilation… Colloquially speaking, I did not see any light anywhere in the tunnel and instead of resorting to some bar (and alcohol), [...]

It was couple nights ago that Monday Night Football turned out quite uninteresting and my attempts to get a certain program compiled were moving in an undesirable direction - it was just around the same time that Tim and Kyle suggested that we go out to shoot some star trails. Though Kyle stayed back in [...]

Warning
OK, before I go on to write anything about my experience on this day, I am obligated to warn you that the much (or almost all of the material) contained pertains to National Football League (a.k.a. American Football, Pile-Up Game, or whatever else you may know it as…) and that you may not appreciate the [...]

Kalyan had mentioned that Mr. President (Dr. Abdul Kalam, India) was visiting B R Hills and he (Kalyan) would interact with him (Mr. President) explaining certain things. From his (Kalyan’s) recent blog entry, I do understand that Mr. President, amongst quite many pictures shown to him during the photo exhibition at B R Hills, had [...]

Didn’t I promise to tell you about some exotic adventure in my previous entry? Hopefully, my narration/description will live upto your expectations - if not, take a tour of these places and you can feel it yourself. BTW, I am looking for a way to generate a map of the route that was followed in [...]

Like I mentioned in the previous entry, /me has been in Spokane (Washington State) to attend a workshop. I will try to keep this entry pretty short but fill them up with photographs, so that you get a better picture of what happened:
Accommodation was perfect - ambience of Montvale Hotel, apart from pretty good [...]

Much of about 36 hours after arriving in US were used, effectively to a certain extent, to get done quite a few things: a short research meeting, working on some SMEAGOL related issues, meeting Dave Tobias for GSC website related work, short stops at MTU Telecom office & Victoria’s Kitchen, a hair cut, Changgong Zhou’s [...]

Our trip to BiLigiri Rangana Hills helped improve my health to a significant extent. But staying in Bangalore and roaming around in some awesomely polluted parts promptly did its part and the cough/bad-throat related issues showed no signs of letting go. I was forced to stay at home, much to my mom’s liking - she [...]

We (Kalyan, Phillip Ross and yours truly) set off on a pleasant Sunday morning, amidst not so much traffic, far far away from concrete jungle and towards a more natural forest. I was very very impressed with the quality of Mysore-Bangalore 4-lane highway (last time around, I had slept for much of the journey) and [...]

It had been a few days since /me arrived in Bangalore from the Cochin Conference and I did catch up with few things - meeting some of my friends, visiting BASE (Bangalore Association for Science Education) wherein I not only had the opportunity to talk to BSS, CVV & HRM (Dr. B S Shylaja, Dr. [...]

I did mention in my last week’s entry that our team (in Church as well as Grad leagues) needed to work lot harder (and play lot smarter) to perform better. Being a double-elimination scheme, we lost our second game in the Church league play-offs after a tough fight. Score was 6-7 and it was pretty [...]

Things haven’t been going my way for past week to 10 days - don’t know the reason(s). This post will be sort of mixture of things that went right and things that didn’t. As /me mentioned in the previous post, Detroit Pistons won game #7 against the Cavs. It wasn’t a blow out the way [...]

As planned, we (Vathsa and me) started off towards New York City (NYC from now on) and Rags was kind enough to extract a few minutes (from his busy Saturday work schedule) to take both of us to Newark Penn Station (yes, it’s Newark and there is no typo). It’s a whole different story that [...]

Going by Yahoo! Maps instructions and driving at / around the prescribed speed limit (who cares about +20 anyway?), it should have taken just over 3 hours and I should have reached Rags’ latest by 3 pm. Put food, gas in NJ & evening traffic into this equation and 3 hours become 7 hours. Yeah [...]

This was another long, intially boring but interesting later. As usual, I got up early, did somethings I had been meaning to do for a while (no, nothing special - just laundry) and headed towards the BCC. After a couple of talks, it was about time to feed myself. So, I headed towards Burger King [...]

Another day that started quite early and I had to be at the Mariott Water Front Hotel before 7.30 for a breakfast meeting, organized by CSWP/FIAP (Committee on the Status of Women in Physics / Forum for Industrial and Applied Physics). People, as usual, were friendly and round-table discussions about general topics with Dr. Amy [...]

Having an early morning tutorial session (or anything for that matter, as long as it’s useful) is a good thing - atleast it made me wake up way before my normal rise time. Days Inn taught me, again, that judging a book by cover wasn’t right. From previous stays at similarly named hotels (i.e., Inn), [...]

Last seven days or so have been quite busy and most of the busyness had to do with school/research work. After exchanging few emails and reading few manuals, I finally managed to run Atomistix Tool Kit (v2.0) on our beowulf cluster. It wasn’t easy by any means and I still have some work to do [...]

Last ten days or so have been some what dull but helped me get some things done - mostly in research. Aurora sent her suggestions about the manuscript. Initially I felt they were kind of harsh, but when taken a deeper look and read carefully, all of them were truly justified. I have slowly been [...]

I would love to visit this place (Pictured Rocks, Munising) atleast once a year and what I like more is the fact that I get to see this with different people every time, and I get to know a new place in its neighborhood. Though people are different, their expression when they see gorgeous rock [...]

I got up around 5 am, took everything I wanted to and walked over to the Maswik Lodge. My journey, kind of a package tour, started off in a reluctant mood/mode, but all traces of reluctancy vanished pretty soon, with Rick (Guiding Driver) lightening up everybody and the view from the Desert View. Soon after, [...]

I got up, as planned, pretty early and made it right in time for the Sunrise in South Rim. It wasn’t spectacular or anything like that, but the change in shades of various colors was nevertheless enjoyable. Needless to mention that I took quite a few pictures and soon, around 6.30 am MT, started my [...]

But for Dave waking me up around 5:20 am, I would have to be satisfied by watching canyons in my dream or probably on TV! We started around 5:35 am and I was the first one to check-in. It was good to see an operational coffee/snacks shop (a satellite center of Shipping Shop). NWA agents [...]

I woke up around 5.30 am and packed up all my stuff - fortunately I did not miss any exits and I was in National Car return by 9 am. Filing a damage report and returning the car did not take as long as I had imagined. I reached LAX via National Shuttle by 9.40 [...]

I got up around 5.30 am and after leaving Dr. Yap, Dr. Ranjit (from Wilshire Grand) and Dr. Jena (from Ramada Inn) in the airport around 6.45 am, I came back and drove to Malibu - driving along Pacific Coast Highway was a memorable experience and so was the time I spent in one of [...]

Like almost every day in this week, I got up early and was in LACC by 7.45 am. I updated my diary while waiting for Dr. Ranjit’s call. He did call around 8.15 am - I walked back to Quality Inn, picked Dr. Ranjit and Dr. Senapati from Wilshire Grand and drove them to Beverly [...]

I got out of sleep around 4 am, and was in Wilshire Grand around 4.45 am to take Dr. P to the ariport. Fortunately, I did not miss any exits and we were in LAX within 20 minutes or so. I was in LACC around 7.30 am and for some strange reason, did not attend [...]

I woke up around 5.30 am and was in LACC by 7.30 am, had StarBucks coffee, updated my diary before going on to attend some talks (Dr. Perger at 12 pm, Dr. Jena’s group afterwards, and couple of talks on education between 1 and 2 pm). I had the same food (veg. panini) and prepared [...]

I got up around 5.30 am and went to Wilshire Grand to pick up Dr. P at 7 am - I met Venkat (and his friends) in Quality Inn, while having breakfast. We all walked upto LACC and I met Anil - after discussing usual things with him for a while, we went to attend [...]

I got up around 5.30 am, went to Wilshire Grand to pick Haiying up and brought her back to Quality Inn. I then dropped both of them, along with two other Indonesians, at the convention center and drove back to hotel. It turned out to be a good thing that I went to check the [...]

I got up early, around 7 am (after a bit of restless sleep early in the morning) and as was decided yesterday, after having breakfast and taking the lunch box, headed off to DC with Nagesh - he dropped me off to the bus station and I got into route # 950. Seeing a ‘big’ [...]

After a very sound sleep, I got up around 7.15 am and just when I was getting ready, NSM brought me coffee - it felt a little too awkward for couple of reasons - one, I am not used to somebody bringing in coffee for me and second, she it too elderly a person to [...]

Journey started around 6.30 am and first place that we stopped was at the ‘corner lake’ - I was even able to capture the passing clouds and moon with my camera. Next stop close to Marquette provided a great view of Sunrise. We stopped at several ‘regular’ places and took lot of pictures. Breakfast in [...]

I got up around 9.30 am and called the National Car about returning the car. As there was no difference in the charge between returning the car in the morning or evening, I decided to go around some more. I first went to then drove to Eagle Harbor, stopping at several places to take pictures. [...]

Getting up at 5.45 am without the help of an alarm ? I don’t remember doing this in a long long time. I took some very nice pictures of the Sunrise and after placing the required amount (Sherman’s Park Fee) in an envelope, I started out. After eating some Onion Rings in the Burger King, [...]

I got up, after not-sufficient sleep, around 6.20 am and my plan of leaving around 5 am had gone for a toss. My journey started around 7 am and after a comfortable length of driving, I reached Munising around 9.30 am. After refuelling the car and taking a bit more time to memorize the driving [...]