Stargate SG1, Fluid Modelling, Documentum, New Folks

Stargate SG-1 Well, first of all, my apologies for not posting for a while. I've been too bogged down with work and other stuff to have an active life, online or otherwise. Anyway, I've been indulging myself in some fun by watching some episodes of the series, Stargate SG-1. All that I can say is, it rocks. They've got a really great story-line going, there are some really kickass aliens and some wonderful technology. And unlike Star Trek, they are not utopian. In fact, it's almost as if it is the exact opposite of Star Trek -- a lot more practical and set in the present. I'm a big fan of Star Trek, mind you. However, what I do not like is the use of techno-babble ("Captain, I can adjust the deflector manifolds to fire anti-matter into the warp core that could enable the photon torpedos to attain critical velocity before the dilithium crystals attain thermal equilibrium so that we could use the pattern buffer in the transporter beam to act as toiletpaper replacements"). However, Stargate has an excellent attitude towards techno-babble. Everytime someone tries to say something, Jack (played by Richard Dean Anderson) just cuts them off with something witty, that it's too funny. There is one particular episode where someone tries giving a particularly technical explanation, when McGuyver^W Jack cuts off saying, "Well, that was a waste of a perfectly good explanation". Not to mention the sense of humour - I half expect Jack to take a knife and some chewing gum to create a wormhole of sorts. Star Trek (except Voyager) is awesome because of its strong character portrayal (Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Picard, Data, Riker ad infinitum) in very utopian scenarios while Stargate is awesome because of its strong character portrayal in very real life and practical scenarios that we can relate to. Picard gives awesome (but pompous) speeches, Jack gives a duh! look. Priceless. What I'd really like to see is a Q-meets-Jack or maybe Picard meets Jack kinda episode. Now that would be something, but the pic below is something better.

And yes -- most importantly, Amanda Tapping in incredibly cute. Particularly as an ass-kicking special forces marine with a PhD in astrophysics. Damn! What would I not do for a chick like that. *bawl* New Areas - Fluid Modelling and Documentum So, some news on the Highbrew front. A couple of projects are in the offing. In areas that are a tad out of the ordinary - fluid flow simulation & modelling and Documentum implementation. While both are disparate areas, they would give us the opportunity to explore technologies and areas that are out there and that are profitable. Whether or not we pursue them would be directly proportional to the revenue we can get and the prospects of investment, but inputs are welcome. Ofcourse, for simulation and modelling, we do have the skillset and the manpower - Senthil has been working on this at Stanford, and I worked on some related stuff at LANL this summer. However, that is not true for Documentum -- we do have the necessary skillset for design, but not the specific manpower who can do the implementation. Which would put us in a very precarious position. And more importantly, I'm scheduled to talk to some clients in this regard - soon. Boardroom bartering is not a skill that I'm particularly endowed with nor proud of, but one has to do it at some point of time or the other. I do not think it would be fun - it would probably be as much fun as a court martial or something, minus the gun-toting folks. But I do look forward to it, in a perverse sort of way ;-) New People Actually, that ought to be titled New Person. But anyway, I welcome Raja Giridharan aboard. Raja has joined our Chennai office fulltime, and would be working as a developer. Of sorts. At the moment, he is working on High-Ed (or whatever it would be called), but we hope to expand his profile and grill the poor soul. More to come, in just a while. Same bat channel, same bat time! *kaboom*