If you want to read about the statistics of the silicon valley and alternate news , away from the traditional mass media , a few engineers have come up with this site where they claim
" "
I like a lot of their statistics and it helps me look at a view different then mass media .
You can read more about it @ http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/index.html

posted at: 01:47 | category: /sfbayarea | permanent link to this entry

Every year during Nov-Dec the Cesar Chavez park in San Jose downtown , the park is decorated with lights and displays from local schools/businesses etc.There is live performances by local artists.
It is a cool place to spend a couple of hours with the kids as they love the lights and the various displays.
There is no entrance fee for this event.
You can read more about it @ http://www.christmasinthepark.com/

posted at: 16:44 | category: /sfbayarea | permanent link to this entry

Recently I needed to rip an audio CD which we had bought.Till now I had been using the lossy format Ogg for ripping CD's but I have now started using the FLAC lossless format for audio for ripping CD's.
I used the free/open source Encoder @ http://www.bonkenc.org/

posted at: 19:53 | category: /general | permanent link to this entry

No it is not Linux or a flavor of Unix.It aims to be an OS , which is binary equivalent to Windows.
I downloaded the live CD iso image and played with a little.
I booted with  it on my laptop but it did not boot.
Then I tried it in VirtualBox and was pretty impressed with how much progress has been made by these developers.
I played with for some time and unfortunately  it is not ready for prime-time as it is alpha software.Some of the main bottlenecks are limited or no network/wireless support at this point.
Also there is no support for USB/SATA.
But in future I will definitely look forward to using this especially in situations where in there are no viable alternatives to some software on Windows .
More details about ReactOS is @ http://www.reactos.org/

posted at: 05:13 | category: /cuttingedge | permanent link to this entry

Montessori,Sunnyvale My son is going to move to Kindergarten next year and so I was looking for some books which are used in Rainbow Montessori official site to buy books  @ http://www.ecampus.com/CourseFront.asp?intCourseID=761313&intSemesterID=42212
Unfortunately , for obvious reasons they don't give out the ISBN number or any other details.
So I compared the images of the books on amazon.com and other sites to find the ISBN number so that parents can have a choice of buying used books or from other vendor if they choose to.
Here are the details.

Book	Author	ISBN-13	Comments
Harcourt Brace Spelling	Thorsten Carlson	ISBN-13: 978-0153136535
California Math- Level 1	Houghton Mifflin	???	Could not find matching cover image.
Primary Phonics: Workbook 1	Makar, Barbara W.	ISBN-13 978-0838803608
Primary Phonics: Workbook 2	Makar, Barbara W.	ISBN-13 978-0838805503
Primary Phonics: Workbook 3	Makar, Barbara W.	ISBN-13 978-0838805619

Disclaimer : I cannot be held responsible for any information or mistakes.This is for informational  purposes only.Please double check with the school before acting on this information.

posted at: 03:18 | category: /rainbow | permanent link to this entry