Wow its been ages!

Wow its been ages since I last blogged. I find the need to return to this habit as my mind is exploding with things I need to put down in writing! I want to start a series of blogs about Deep Learning, Space Exploration, Theories, dieting...etc.

So stay tuned...

Cooking Healthy

Today I'm cooking red/green peppers and portobello mushrooms stuffed with spinach and cheddar cheese. I spiced them up with basil, ground pepper and added a touch of olive oil. Im not following any recipe because I think I can invent my own tasty healthy food. Lets see if I succeed in keeping this up :)

The mushroom was phenomenal. The red peppers were awesome. I wasn't using fresh spinach so it didn't taste too good. The green peppers were the worst of 'em all.

Twitterific!

Lately I have become addicted to twitter. I didnt see this coming at all...I think it started with following the NASA folk after my trip to see shuttle Atlantis launch. I was also into it during the Egyptian revolution (#Jan25). Yesterday I was on it all day long monitoring the events of the #MubarakTrial. Now I'm in love with it and can't stop checking it (got to keep this down to less than 140 letters) :D. Follow me @tgaaly

Countdown Atlantis!

My blood is in hyper-boiling mode. I'm pretty darn excited about seeing the last space shuttle launch the day after tomorrow. STS-135 blasts off into low earth orbit (LEO) in style. I'll be hopefully watching from Titusville, Fl...from Space View Park...if I make it through the crowds. Im scared of the hordes of people flooding the place. They have already started pouring in....nooooooo!
"Space Junkies show up early for the best show on earth"

Anywayzzz...my tickets booked, car reserved and hotel booked to-be :). Im leaving everything last-minute since there's always a chance of delay due to the mischievous weather. Currently the probability of delay due to isolated thunderstorms, clouds...etc is 60% :S. I hope I don't go there for no reason! The price I have paid is high for this once in a life time event.

Fingers crossed...breath held...and waiting.

Technological Innovations We Got from The Space Program

There's a long list of them - the things that spun off from the NASA Space Program and benefited mankind. For a full list of some of them, check out the following link.

Another list can be found here: link

Camping in the Poconos

Its been years since I last went camping...

This past weekend I took my 10$ second-hand tent, aging second-hand car and a brand new sleeping bag and headed up to the Poconos Mountains. I've been to the Poconos before but under totally different weather conditions. This is me snowboarding down Shawnee Mountain Check-it-out! last winter. This time the Poconos was lush with greenery everywhere!

It's really close to home - just a 1hr 20 minute drive from Somerset, NJ. We got stuck on the I-80 West for about an hour waiting for the police to clear a horrible accident. Someone on a speedbike had crashed and the bike didn't look like a bike anymore...hope their ok.

We were the first of our 9-person group to reach the campsite. The short talk with the receptionist of seeing black bears if your very very lucky set my blood boiling. The thrill was unbelievable. Now I know what that nutcase on "Grizzly Man" was going through :). Shooting ahead in time, I unfortunately didn't see any bears. Black bears are smaller and less aggressive than the grizzly monsters in "Grizzly Man". A more promising vantage point to see the bears was from our raft in the Delaware river the next day. The people at Adventure Sports told us people see them all the time in the corn fields and on the shore drinking from the river. Unfortunately, again I didnt see any.

Anyway, we setup my 10$ tent which I thought was fine but caught lots of criticism from my tent sharer :). It was quite smaller than illustrated on the side of the carrying case. The rest of the group arrived later and I helped them setup their 7-person tent.

After that, we barbecued, lit a campfire, drank tea, setup a hookah, laughed a load and tried to see celestial bodies with my telescope...

The next day we went rafting and canoeing on the high-tide Delaware river. Two of our group got stranded on an island and lost their canoe. The current pushed them into the submerged trees off an island and they were forced to abandon ship. They later recovered it and met us as we were calling for help from a lifeguard's mobile phone :).

Here's some pix:










The temperature dropped a handful into the night.

Definitely an experience worth repeating over and over again. I look forward to going in the coming weeks...

Celestron Nexstar 6SE

So I recently upgraded my Celestron powerseeker to a Celestron Nexstar 6SE. My heart was pounding and mind twirling as I could imagine the scenes this new telescope would reveal to me.

I took it out this past weekend for a trial in the Poconos Mountains. Unfortunately I only had one clear night and I was surrounded by trees so I was only able to see a bunch of stars and nothing more.

Last week before going camping I did manage to get some shots of the moon on a partial cloudy night.





These are much more detailed than the previous images I took using the powerseeker. Click on them to get a full-sized view.

Last Launch - July 8th

The space shuttle program is ending :(. Shuttle Atlantis will do the honor of blasting off from Cape Canaveral on July 8th. There will be a live tweetup with a number of live video streams covering the event from a number of perspectives. Here's a list of the tweetups so far:

The @NASA sponsored @NASATweetup held at the press site:
@NASATweetup/sts-135-launch

Space View Park Tweetup:
@SVPTweetup

NASA Causeway:
@CausewayTweetup/sts135-causewaytweetup

reference: [ref]



Im seriously thinking of going to Florida to witness the last launch. I hope I can make it. The only thing im scared of is if they postpone the launch (which happens all the time) then I will have flown down there for no reason :S. We'll just have to wait and see.

Labeling Egyptians Negatively

I hate it when people label Egyptians as being lazy, lethargic and unfruitful. It is the current regime that has brought about this through their adverse modus operandi. This has caused the diminishing of people's sense of nationalism and self-worth. Along with lack of proper education, Egyptians have to face troublesome hardship, mindless twisted bureaucracy and humiliation every day just to survive and in the end for what? for pay that is below minimum wage. So how can you over-generalize and label the genes of a nation as being apathetic and unwilling to self-improve? Give Egyptians a country that cares for them by representing them and the traits of a backward people will disappear.

What's worse is blaming the people for the country's backwardness. Who arranges for the education of the people? Who manages and organizes the resources of the nation fairly? Who takes care of the people and sees to it that their rights are represented and defended? Isn't it the government who should do this? Isn't it the government who stands at the top of the pyramid to provide for the Egyptian people? Take away the head of the pyramid and you'll have a mindless chaotic mass of people with no sense of direction. Now place a corrupt head atop the pyramid and no fruit will trickle down to the people at the base of the Egyptian society. The latter pyramid represents the situation in Egypt today or to be precise a few days back before January 25th when the people lifted their heads and spoke.

Whoever thought that we would see tens of thousands of people standing up and demanding change to the current rotting and corrupt regime. I would never have expected such a defiance of dictatorship. Never in my thoughts and dreams. I am proud to have witnessed the immense will of a deprived people rising to challenge the oppression. Last Tuesday marked the beginning.



My only hope is that Egypt stays peaceful during these unstable times and emerges victorious, free and controlled by a government representing the will of the people. God keep our families and friends back home safe. God bless the neighborhood watchers who are defending our homes against the dirtiest of all evil-doers: looters and thugs. There is hope and there is light at the end of the tunnel.