Random nerdy news

- Anousheh Ansari called the Googleplex from space. She has a cool blog. (more here)
- White paper on how computers waste power, technologies that Google built, and how we are working with the industry to make this an open standard. 100 million computers running for 8 hours a day waste about $5B of electricity over 3 years!!

Six F words

A few years ago, a wise man was giving me some career advice. He gave me a list of six F words: fun, family, fame, fortune, freedom, and force. In life, one can only have two of them. For example, college professors (except for ones trying to get tenured at top universities) take family and freedom. Artist takes fun and freedom. Politicians take fame and force. People who do startups take fortune and fame at a very high risk and maybe some fun until the money starts to run out.

I think it's a good way to frame things. Once you know what you want, it's easy to pick a career or a lifestyle. But if you're not honest, life will seem like a square room with a rectangular rug. It will never feel right.

Another good advice is to do something at the intersection of what you enjoy, what you're good at, and what's useful in the world. Otherwise, you will hate your work, suck at it, or not find a job. People who want to be artists always struggle with this. The world needs very few of them. So most of them struggle with the last two.

Walking Tree in the Amazon Forest

We saw a lot of amazing thing in the Amazon. But the walking tree was one of my favorite. It moves about 10cm per year in search of a better spot. Its roots don't really go inside the ground. And you can see which direction it's moving if you look at the roots: the roots on one side are dying while it's growing new roots on the other side. There was another related tree called the balancing tree. This tree doesn't move, but it can change its angle. I love seeing what evolution does.

Welcome to Random Travellers

The number of comments on my blog went through the roof today. Finally, someone told me that my blog is profiled and linked from http://www.blogger.com. So welcome to all random people looking at my blog today. Here is a political correct joke for all of you: Why is six scared of seven? Because seven, eight, nine.

Funny movie: Little Miss Sunshine

I really enjoyed watching Little Miss Sunshine. It was nicely done, and I think everyone will find it funny.

Parrots in the amazon

Parrots in the amazon feeding off a clay lick.

Video From Amazon

This is taken from the Tambopota region of amazon in peru in Lake Sandoval.

Video From Amazon Basin in Peru

The sounds here are amazing!

Machu Pichu

Video of Machu Pichu in Peru