Park and Service

I drive up to the parking lot and hand off my car keys to the valet. I had already filled out a brief form (about the fact that I want the car serviced when I am away, and what the problems are) when I reserved my spot online. I pick up my luggage and head over to the shuttle. The shuttle takes me to the terminal and after a quick security check, and a short wait, I am boarding the plane. Right then, my phone rings. I pick it up to find it is from the parking lot. The mechanic wants to let me know that the distributor is showing wear and may need to be replaced. He gives me a quote and I give him thumbs up. I board the plane and fly off to my destination.

Four days later, I land back home and head over to the parking garage to meet my serviced and washed car!

Doesn't this sound sweet? No more planning for car servicing. No more weekends spent going to the mechanic. No more days spent driving loaner cars.

Since I travel often on work, I park my car in long term garages for days. What this means is that I also have less time to be home, and take care of things. One of them is to take care of my car: get it serviced, washed and maintained.

The last time I parked in my regular covered parking garage, I thought how wonderful it would be, if I could have my car serviced while I was away. The car was anyway going to be sitting around doing nothing. And, I had already driven all the way to the garage. Since this garage is a valet only garage, they also had my keys. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the garage also housed a service station and offered service to anyone who parked there.

Looking forward to a day when this becomes a reality.

JIT grocery shopping

Of late, I have been observing that a lot of people order groceries online and having it delivered. I see a couple of companies doing great business. Don’t know if they are making money or not, but the delivery trucks keep rolling along.

That is what got me thinking about efficiently managing the deliveries. I went back to the days when I was growing up in India. Not everyone had refrigerators in their homes. Farmers markets could be found around the corner on a daily basis. Fruits, vegetables and milk (and other perishables) were sold on the road (home delivery). A cart would come in front of the house with all varieties of seasonal and non-seasonal vegetables, and you would just walk to the cart, pick whatever you wanted, pay for it and buy it. So, buying vegetables, fruits and milk was a daily affair. Milk was delivered (in some cases, milked from the cow) right at your doorstep every morning. Remember those glass milk bottles? When fresh produce is delivered to your doorstep on a daily basis, who would want to store them in a fridge? You can't get any more fresh than that!

Let's apply the same principle here and try to see if it yields us a way to make this planet much more green. Consider this scenario:
Order produce/meat/milk online (on a daily/weekly basis)
Delivery truck drops it off at your door step everyday
Use the produce for the day
Repeat the cycle

Now, there are a few problems with this model. For one, when does the delivery take place? It is going to be inefficient to deliver to every house at the same time. So, there is a lag, and some people may receive their goods in the afternoon. Then, there is the issue of the unused produce. Where do we store it?

There are several ways to solve this problem. Let's take a look at an already present infrastructure for delivery: USPS.

Have you noticed that the USPS truck rolls down every street every week day. There you have it. Deliver supplies along with the mail. The manufacturer supplies produce/supplies to the distribution (aka, local USPS post office). The produce is packaged appropriately for individual delivery. Remember, we are trying to deliver on a daily basis, so, the individual packages are not going to be huge. USPS personnel load these boxes into their trucks along with the mail. Of course, the trucks are going to grow in size and acquire a refrigeration unit. The postal worker delivers the boxes along with the mail to every household.

The next step in the equation is to design the delivery boxes (reusable, of course) so that they can maintain a constant temperature for 3-4 hours. The assumption is that mail will be picked up within this time period and the contents transferred into the house.

What this does is that it removes the necessity of every home having one huge refrigerator inside the house and another smaller one in the garage (like most of us do). This new arrangement will be a paradigm shift in the way we shop, get things delivered and store it. Once we get used to it, the amount of energy consumed by every household would come down, and the supply chain would be streamlined so that manufacturers do not need to add preservatives in our foods.

For now, the closest we can come to getting rid of the refrigerator is to reduce its size considerably. JIT food supply is the mantra here, and it will take some effort on everyone's part to make it happen.

Of course, Amazon Fresh, Safeway and others would love to ship on a daily basis.

Green Home

Ingenious use of space. Check this video on how a Hong Kong architect converted his tiny apartment into multiple living spaces. Of course, this works extremely well if you are the only person living in the apartment, since you can only occupy one space at a time.

Where are the teachers?

I was looking through my daughter's yearbook and I noticed something interesting. The yearbook contained the pictures of all the students in the school along with their name and what they want to be, when they grow up.

I saw a lot of doctors, dentists, rocket scientists, astronauts, firemen, ballerinas, princesses, singers, actors, musicians, etc. What surprised me was that not one student wanted to be a teacher! That struck me as odd, since most kids love their teachers (at least, in their elementary years).

What this means is that there is not a lot of publicity about teachers, and being a teacher. Kids pick up a lot of what they want at home, and in a lot of cases there is parental influence on their decision. Most parents would not want their kid to be a teacher, since teaching is not a coveted position (especially in the United States). Graduate level teaching is another matter. At that point, children would know a lot about the world, and teaching staff in higher education do get paid well and are known and respected a lot more.

There are several reasons why the education system in the US is failing, and this is one of them:
Lack of good teachers.

Why do we lack good teachers? Because, a majority of students do not want to be teachers. School teacher is not a glamorous job. Most parents dread when their kid comes home and says that she wants to be a teacher.

Teaching, as a profession, is not respected, whereas, great teachers are always remembered and respected. If the profession is not respected and sought after, it is hard to attract talented people into it. I am not going to go into the reasons why the system is broken. There has been a lot of debate about this and many smart people have come up with great suggestions.

It is going to take a lot to fix the system and start attracting talented people into this profession and make teaching a coveted position it once was.

Lessons in sports photography

I have always admired sports photography for the stunning action images as well as the emotions they portray. I wanted to first hand experience how easy/difficult it was to capture such images. So, on the first opportunity I had I went to the Marymoor velodrome armed with my camera and lenses. Here is an account of what I learnt, and how to take better sports pictures.

First of all, here is what I took:

- DigiSLR

- 100- 300mm (1:4.5-5.6) zoom lens

- 16- 35mm (1:2.8) wide angle zoom lens

First mistake that you notice is that I didn't pack my tripod! My lenses are not extremely fast, and to top it off, the races were held at night. I realized this as soon as darkness engulfed us, and flood lights turned on.

Lesson #1: Do your homework on the gear you will need.

As a spectator, I had visited the velodrome several times, but had never thought of the different locations and the angles they provide. Armed with a camera, I started noticing all of this when I started shooting, and looking for the angles you see on a sports publication. As I started shooting, and moving around, I discovered that most of the coveted spots were already taken!

Lesson #2: Do your scouting in advance and pick the best location.

When it comes to angles and composition, it pays to know a bit about the sport. How does it start? What happens during the event? How does it end? What do the competitors do: before, during and after the event? Knowing all these lets you pick the right spot, and be there when the action is happening. Strategize in advance.

Lesson #3: Learn about the sport you are shooting.

I shot a lots of pics from different angles, locations, and most of them turned out mediocre (see examples above). About a third of them were blurred. Many of these can be attributed to the equipment I had.

It is always a good idea to experiment and shoot lots of pics and keep good notes on the parameters used.

First of all, you need a fast lens to shoot in low light. Since you need to use fast shutter speed to freeze action (if that is the intent), a fast lens helps immensely. Image stabilization on top of it will add to the sharpness. Setting a higher film speed also helps, but there is threshold (ISO 800?) beyond which the images become grainy.

A long lens adds to the effect by laterally compressing the scene. A wide angle lens lets you capture the bigger picture, including the spectators. Larger apertures are helpful in blurring out the background.

A tripod would help, but a monopod will do better. A monopod will offer a lot of flexibility when the subject keeps moving and changing direction. I would love to take a monopod during my next visit.

Last, but not the least, shoot a variety of pictures. Keep in mind that your subject in a sporting event is not only the sportsperson during the event, but also the sportsperson before and after the event. Your subject could also be the spectators and their reaction. Your subject could be the equipment, the organizers, the concession stands. It could be anything that symbolizes the sport and the spirit of the sport.

Final lesson: Look at the bigger picture.