The game of the season is here. The week where the tech capital of the country turns into a football frenzy city is around us. It's Proton Manning vs Cam Neutron in the Super bowl, or shall I say nucleus war. So, I decided to go for a jog and capture some of the wonderful work done by NFL and 49ers staff.
Enjoy the game. May the better team win :)
Till next time,
Sagar
Hello! Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. Here's something from my very recent trip to Napa valley. Up north of the valley lies a castle where they brew and store some of the famous wines in the country and I got a chance to check it out. Found in 2007 this Castle is a great monument owned by Dario Sattui. The trip reminded me of the time when I used to play age of empires, when I used to dream of owning a castle. This guy did it for real though. The best part of this castle is the exclusive bar located near the dungeons of the castle where I tasted some neat wine and chocolate.
Till next time,
Sagar
Here's a quick look back to my New York city trip from last year..
NYSE
Manhattan Skyline
Empire State Building
Till next time,
Sagar
Hey everyone, hope you had a fantastic weekend. I got a chance to hangout with my camera after a while and ended up clicking away. If I were to ask you where's home? What would your answer be? Home is where you truely belong, right? Where people around you believe in what you believe, fight for what you fight for. I travelled to a lot of places in the world, but nothing connects to me like San Francisco does. I must admit travelling is different from living, but a brief period of time spent is good enough to give an estimate about the place and the people usually. It's funny how you look for answers everywhere sometimes, without realizing it's right next to you. In my case it was 30 miles away for a few years, until I decided to do something about it. NINE-FOUR-ONE-OH-SEVEN, the five digits that represent me and the people who're similar to me. We are the progressive thinkers, the early adopters, the artists who help changing the world to be a better place! In my next post I promise you an exciting adventure.
Sagar
Hello and welcome to my blog after a while. I just wrapped up my trip to one of the best cities in the world, Vancouver. My journey started a week ago, and I had no clue what I was getting into when I packed my bags and took the flight. If you are thinking of mixing two of the top cities of the U.S, San Francisco and LA and create a hybrid city, the end product would be Vancouver. It's got the city life, it's got the beverly hills life, it's got Whistler (2 hrs drive), it's got everything. They got a good soccer team too! If you're a nature lover/outdoor freak, Whistler is the place to go. I went on a crazy cable car between two peaks at 6000 ft in Whistler and the nature around just blew me away. Vancouver city just surprised me with the amount of greenery it had. Also the amount of planning that went into the city to make sure it doesn't get windy is just brilliant. We're moving towards an era where carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere is reaching alarming levels. To have cities like Vancouver promoting greenery everywhere is something inspiring. My first task when I head back to San Francisco is to plant a tree in my condo. Go GREEN!
Sagar
I'm excited to present to you the "Hello World picture" from my first ever full frame, the one and only Nikon D800E. I was out for a fun photoshoot over the weekend with my buddy Jay and his gorgeous little beauty, the Ducati 848! Don't know about biking, but he has a pretty good modeling future ahead of him.
Until next time,
Sagar
What if you were to wake up one day and realize you have nothing to do? What would you do? I had that golden opportunity pretty recently and ended up having the time of my life. I visited LA and New York city over couple of weeks. While I was in New York city, I created a crazy compilation of my time there. I also ended up meeting great people and experienced life in a big city while I lived in Manhattan. The city's got its personality that keeps you interested in it all the time. I walked on two hour sleep and one meal days not because I wanted to, but I completely forgot about everything else while I was there.
Till next time,
Sagar
Today I'm going to take you on a journey of rock music, the old school "Rock and roll". I got a chance to visit the Vintage room of the Guitar center in Hollywood. The specialty of this room cannot be put into words, but I'm going to give it a shot. There's a main stage with a background wall full of vintage guitars. Vintage guitars are guitars that are atleast 25 years older, dating back to the history of AC/DCs, Zepplins, Skynyrds, Hendrix, etc . There's a stairway that leads to upstairs from where if you take a peek down towards the main stage area, it looks like its raining only though the water drops to be replaced by guitars on the wall. From the warmth of the aged wood on the walls to the beautifully painted murals, the Vintage Room takes you on a nostalgic journey into the past, placing these beautiful vintage instruments right at your fingertips. It is the uniqueness of the Vintage room that made it feature in the famous tv shows, specially the "Guitar center sessions" on AXS TV. The first time I came across this room was at a Guitar Center session of one of my favorite bands Sum 41 on the TV. The phrase "rocking and rolling" originally described the movement of a ship on the ocean, and the music kind of gets you the feel and hence known as "rock and roll" which is synonymous with the term "Rock" now a days. My first love for rock music started with AC/DC when I was in undergrad. The name kind of grabbed my curiosity as I was an electronics nerd back in the day but the music shook me over and left an impression of rock music on my soul.
\m/\m/,
Sagar
Hello and welcome to Sagar Mukala's blog after a year long hiatus. I decided to digress from my lens for a while and explore a lot of other things in the past year. The excitement when I picked up my lens after a year still remained the same and my eye for things was still intact too. What did happen in this past year? The technology became much better, we move onto iPhone 6, things became much faster, and what about people? People are losing the human values? Everywhere I go, I love watching people. A friend these days is someone who you watch their status on a social networking website. A conversation does not happen between two people anymore but it happens via text messaging. Don't get me wrong, technology made a lot of great things happen. People across different continents can communicate, exchange ideas, but there's something else happening too! All great things come at a cost. I'm beginning to wonder if we are losing human values by hanging out on google plus instead of hanging out on a couch. With out human values everything you do, there will be a disconnect. Why do you think startups with co founders who are at the same location succeed more often than co founders living in different continents? Why do you think long distance relationships don't work out most of the time? It all boils down to the human values. So my curiosity towards human values took me to the hippie hub of San Francisco last weekend, where I met a lot of interesting people. These so called hippies live by simple set of rules. Their main rule is to do what makes them happy and not give a damn what the world thinks. Although that's a tricky thing because most people now a days do not know what makes them happy. When I ask people, "What makes you happy?", I get responses like "Oh a Ferrari", "Oh a million dollars". Essentially none of the material things can keep you happy unless you understand the purpose why you are put on this planet.
Till next time,
Sagar
Five years ago, if I were to ask myself: Would I drive a 1000 miles alone and hike just to click a picture, I’d probably laugh saying I must be crazy or mad, but today I just did the exact same thing that I’d probably consider a joke five years ago. Photography changed my perspective towards life indeed. It is important sometimes to go out on a trip by yourself, setting aside time from your busy life (that apparently you managed to make it busy). You might be surprised how much you learn about yourself and come away with things you like/don’t like. This fun expedition helped understand a lot of things, more over answered some of the critical things I had in mind about life. I enjoyed every tiny bit of the trip. More importantly I learned the difference between “LIKE” and “LOVE”. For example it’s very easy for someone to like a Football club like Barcelona. They keep winning trophies everyday. If you love a club, you pretty much support it even if it’s not doing well. Ask a Liverpool/Arsenal Football Club supporter what love is? He/She can explain love better. I met lot of people in my life, whom if I ask “Are you happy?” (Eventually after doing every possible dog work to get to the position they are currently at), They either stutter or try to escape by not answering the question or probably not even have thought of that question as they are so busy in their so called “LIFE”. Why does this happen to us? Well if you think of it, there might be a zillion different ways of doing a particular thing. We all have a choice to do it in our own way. The problem lies in the way we choose to do it. Most people end up doing things that are considered dogma, just because they know that things will finally work out one fine day and they’ll be living happily ever after. But assuming things work out as planned, are they happy for real? I doubt it. The most important thing to take away from this is FOLLOW YOUR HEART, somewhere deep down it knows what you want and what makes you happy. Like I always say, "You gotta do, wachu gotta do". Another important thing that works for me is I quit often. Infact I keep quitting a lot of things after experimenting with them, the moment I realize I don’t like. It’s important to be particular about this, because life is a gift and you don’t want to spend even a single minute wasting it doing things that you do not like or being someone you are not. The faster you quit the better. Eventually you’ll be happy in the long run. Anyways I’ve talked too much philosophy for the day. Let me put my photographer’s cap on. The Grand Canyon could be easily called one of the World’s Natural wonders. This I say because you do not need to be a photographer to capture the beauty of this place. Infact, I was quite humbled capturing it. I reached the point at sunrise and was blown away with the magnificence of it. I’m quite thankful for the nature, the guy who invented a camera and my Mom and Dad for this thanksgiving. This picture is a gift to my family this thanksgiving!
Peace,
Sagar
Today I'm going to take you on a fun ride what I call as a "Digital Ride". Whether you are a computer person or not, you will enjoy it. Today, I got a chance to visit one of the two places in the world that has a "Babbage Difference Engine", the second place being the "London Science Museum" that has the first Babbage difference engine made in 1991. What is a Babbage difference engine? Why do we even care about it? Why do we need to know how the heck computers came into existence? These are some of the questions that will become clear by the end of this article. Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is considered to be the "Father of the Computer". In Babbage's time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called 'computers', meaning "one who computes", much as a conductor is "one who conducts". He saw this to be error prone and being frustrated with the wrong numeric tables obtained from the log books, he wanted to create something that elimiates human errors. This led to the discovery of a "Difference Engine". He had theoritical designs of the engine, however he did not have enough funding in his life time to create one. He died in 1871 without seeing the difference engine. Recently the "Babbage difference engine" was built to prove his theories were right. Below is the picture of a babbage difference engine.
Why do we need to care about computers? Computers have become an integral part of our lives. One cannot imagine a life without a smart phone today. Pretty much every mundane task including cooking in a microwave to complicated things like landing on the moon requires heavy dependancy on computing. Don't you guys think it is cool to know about the story behind how computers were invented?
In 1890s the US census data collection system had a major task of collecting census. It took about 7.5 years to process the entire information collected which is infact more than an election period during that time. To solve this issue a great guy named Herman Hollerith came up with a system that used punched cards which was called as the Hollerith Tabulating Machine. This marked the beginning of a fantastic era. Hollerith's company later merged with two other companies to form what is called IBM now.
In 1960s IBM came up with a "main frame" that revolutionized computer architecture. If there was a temple for computers, this main frame can be found there. It was called "IBM 360" and was the god of computers. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific. However the IBM 360 was not too good for the lower end applications, nor at the higher end that involved intense calculations.
Several big names worked on this project, including Tomasulo, Gene Amdahl who later left IBM and founded Amdahl Corporation as IBM din't agree with Amdahl's law (which imposed an upper limit on parallel computing). Amdahl got acquired by Fujitsu in the late 90s. In the 1960s back in Wisconsin, several nerds headed by Seymour Cray made a main frame called CDC 6600 developed at CDC which worked better than IBM 360. It was the first "Super Computer". However IBM used dark methods to make sure CDC was kept out of business. Later in the 70s Cray quit CDC and founded Cray Computer Corporation which developed the Cray -I, Cray -II, Cray -III which were by far the fastest super computers of his time.
The growing trend of computers implied that there was a need for software to run on the machines. "Software" being the code that a programmer writes which later be translated into machine language (understandable by the machine) by either the assembler (converts assembly language to machine language) or compiler (converts high level language to machine language). In 1970s Xerox alto came up with a very cool Graphical User Interface (GUI) which looks exactly like Windows or Mac OS these days. Poor guys din't know how to market their idea and invited late Steve from the fruit company to discuss about buying stocks from the newly emerging fruit company. Smart chap Steve having looked at the GUI ran across to his campus and created two new projects that focussed on implementing a similar interface. One of those successful projects was "Macintosh".
Meanwhile another smart guy named Bill along with his buddy Allen wrote code and sold OS to IBM, which then failed to recognise the importance of an OS during that time. While Steve was busy concentrating on aesthetics and friendliness of the GUI, Bill and Allen worked on making the OS powerful and robust. Meanwhile another guy named Larry started his company selling database software for the main frames. The wars in the silicon valley continue even today. But it is important to know "KNOWLEDGE IS TO BE SHARED". We cannot consider to be progressing if creativity is being killed. Most big players in the market these days acquire the smaller companies and kill them. This is wrong. If we are to grow as a community, we need to support creativity. Recent fight between the FRUIT company and the DISPLAY company is a shame to the computing world (considering what late Steve did to Xerox). Even the phone designs that the FRUIT company uses are not their own. "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER", There is no meaning to KNOWLEDGE if we kill somebody to make sure the KNOWLEDGE we have is the best.
Till next click,
Sagar
This weekend I decided to drive down south to the city of Angels. I just had a fun-tastic weekend with my buddies Rish and Saby. Saturdays come by every week, but this Saturday left a lasting impression on me. The reason being the show "Centered in the Universe" at the Griffith Observatory. Art and Science are things that intrigued me since childhood. But being the Astronomy freak that I am; I was blown away by this particular presentation. This is a show not to be missed if you are in LA. I finally succeeded in watching the entire show in my fourth visit to the observatry, due to various funny reasons that I ended up missing the show on previous occasions. LA has a swagger about it, that kind of draws lot of crowd. It is famous for all the dark reasons; money, drugs, etc but there are a few places that can inspire a common man. One such place is the Beverley Hills. It can motivate people to challenge their current state and compete at a much higher level to push themselves. Living in Beverley Hills is a dream for almost anybody, but if you want to get there you have to prove that you belong there. Right, I'll keep you guys thinking about some interesting questions from the presentation until my next post. Ever wondered WHO WE ARE? WHY WE ARE PUT ON THIS PLANET?
With love,
Sagar
We all fight for something or the other in our lives. What makes this fighter different from the rest? The significant point is he fights for peace. He was trained not to fight. It's important for a fighter to know what's worth fighting for. Does that mean we should not be fighting? No. We need to make a decision based on what's at stake.
A wrong attitude of looking at a fight is fighting to win. Winning is a process that falls into place when you get all the ingredients right. Essentially its a matter of getting the priorties right. We need to focus on playing a good game rather than the end goal. If we give our best and play a good game we don't need to care about the result. On that note I'll leave you folks pondering with a question; "WHAT DO YOU FIGHT FOR?"
Until next click,
Sagar
Was out with my gear today. This time I experimented with beauty. Woman is what strikes our mind when we think about beauty. That is so not true! So what exactly is beauty? Beauty is something that a photographer show's the world through his/her lens. So it's a subjective definition when it comes to pictures and beauty. The soccer season is well off into the interlull, the US open is heading towards an awesome finish and the 49ers NFL season begins today. Hell Yeah!
Till next click,
Sagar
The finale was mind blowing. I got a chance to take a ride through the Hogwarts. There was a quidditch game going on where I followed Harry and I passed the chamber of secrets where I had a mini fight with the Basilisk. The simulation and the design engineers did a mindblowing job at the ride. I felt as if I was riding on a Firebolt. I met Professor Dumbledore on my ride too. He guided me with his wisdom to help me get out of danger. Then, I went to a place where Dementors haunted and some how managed to get out of there and finally the battle with Lord Voldemort. All in all it was one of the best rides of my life. And what more could I ask for as gunners defeated Liverpool in an away game last weekend. I just had a fantastic Labor day weekend meeting my good ol' friends Sravan, Siddhu, Ajay and Abhinav and visited the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Florida. Hope you guys had a blast too!
Till next click,
Sagar
It was a beautiful Saturday morning as the Premier League kicked off with Arsenal getting off to a decent start to the season. Just as the game finished, I called up Prad to put an end to the run of our lazy weekends. We decided to drive to the Crater Lake located in Oregon. It was a long drive but we were excited. I was more excited not because of the destination, but because I was going to meet my undergrad buddies Sameer and KC after a few years. After driving for about eight hours and stopping over at Shasta for the night, we reached one of the heavenly places on the planet.
The view was just breathtaking! If you think the lake formed out of a meteoric collision, you are right. Nopes I'm kidding. It was formed from Mount Mazama, a volcanic mountain part of the Cascade mountain range. The volcano's collapsed caldera holds the lake. It is the deepest lake in the United States. The reason behind its clear water is it was formed solely by falling rain and snow with no inflow and outflow from outside. This place is a tribute to nature's beauty. I couldn't resist to click as soon as I saw this wonder.
With loads of love,
Sagar
San Francisco (SF) is one of the top tourist places in the world. It attracts people with various ambitions all around the world. The silicon valley down south of San Francisco has the headquarters of top Computer and Electornics industries. SF is famous for its art and culture too. I came here as an electrical engineer to design processors and fell in love with photography during my stay here. This video is a tribute to the beautiful city.
Mount Shasta city is a beautiful city located in the northern part of California. Just like its name "Shasta" meaning pure; the experience of being at this peak gives you the feeling of purity. One significant part about this mountain is that it is not connected by any other mountain nearby. It is the second tallest mountain in the cascades and is a part of the cascade volcanic arc. You will meet a wide variety of people who visit this place. People who love camping, trekking, skiing, water sports, photography are some of the common type of people you would most probably run into. The Klamath river to the north and the McCloud falls to the south of Shasta are a must visit.
I got to the location at sunset and observed the tender sun rays touching the peak. The peak is completely covered with snow in winters. Something that inspired me to click this picture is the peak itself. It is a symbol of people who don't give up and are not afraid to fight and stand up to their dreams. The very fact that the mountain is not connected to any other mountains nearby makes it unique. I'm sure I will go back to this place again very soon.
With loads of love,
Sagar
