Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Pictures & Video from Livestrong Challenge 2008

Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) objective is to raise awareness about cancer and uniting people fighting against it. Livestrong Challenge is a 4-city bike/run/walk event to raise money for the same cause.

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Hiller "Vertical Challenge" Helicopter Show

Pictures from the Eighth Annual "Vertical Challenge" Helicopter Show at Hiller Aviation Museum. This was a great show educating public of how helicopters affect our daily lives from traffic and news reports to its unique life saving ability, to the National Defense of our Country.

There was US Marines AH1-W Cobra, Otto The Clown Helicopter, Showcopters R22 and R44 amongst many others. Pictures are worth thousand words and so here are my pictures from the show earlier today:

And of course, there was Red Bull helicopter showing flips. Here is a video of the flips shot earlier in the year:

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Cricket World Cup 2007 - India at Worst and Best

In the cricket world cup, India's defeat by Bangladesh on Friday was a shameful one. The team spirit, top/middle/bottom order, bowlers and the fielders - everybody performed terrible. And on top of that, Bangladesh really played very well. And as I said earlier, may the best team win - Bangladesh was indeed a superior team on that day. I'm happy for them!

Although I was extremely disappointed by India's loss in their debut match but today, against Bermuda, was the other extreme. India scored 415 for 5, a record total in World cups. The top order gave a solid start (205 for 2 in 30 overs) and stormed the Bermudan bowlers by scoring 144 runs in the last 12 overs.

Comparing the statistics of two matches India has played so far:

India's desperation to not only win the second match but win with a huge margin is evident from these statistics. After this win, India is in a better position to get into "Super 8" but they still have to beat Sri Lanka to be sure of that.

Over the weekend, Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer died under mysterious circumstances and their team captain, Inzamam-ul Haq, retired from One Day International cricket after Pakistan's early ouster from the world cup. My condolences to Bob Woolmer and his family. Irrespective of whether India reaches final or not, I always wait for the match with Pakistan, especially in World cup where India has always won. I'll have to miss that exciting moment this time.

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2007 Cricket World Cup

Call it a fever, frenzy or craze but this once-in-4-year event completely changes India and it's people. Cricket is not just a game, it's a religion in India. The 2007 ICC World Cup was inaugurated over the weekend and matches are scheduled from Mar 13 to April 28, 2007. West Indies being the host who better than Sir Garry Sobers to declare the world cup open.

The 16 participating countries (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, England, West Indies, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Scotland, Netherlands, Iceland, Canada, and Bermuda) are divided into 4 groups (Group A, Group B, Group C, and Group D). In each group, each country will play with rest of the countries. A Win is 2 points, a Tie is 1 point and a Loss is 0 point. Two winners from each group will then move to "Super 8" where again each country will play against each other from which 4 semi-finalists are decided. And then finalist and finally the winner.

India won the 1983 World Cup and were runners up in 2003. The complete team profile is a good mix of medium pace bowlers, spinners, strong opening batsman, reliable top & middle order and hitting low orders. May the best team win and I wish, and hope, India is the best team this time Send your wishes to India here. Here are some detailed analysis on Indian Cricket and their prospects in the World Cup:

• Can India lift the World Cup ?

• Underwater video album for Indian Cricket team ahead of ICC World Cup

• Acid Test for Greg Chappell

• Google Maps + YouTube mashup showing each player's detail and a video 

Here (and here and here and here) are some detailed analysis of Indian Cricket Team.

Dish Network and DirecTV offer all the 51 matches for $199.99 in USA. If you subscribe using Dish Network, then you can also watch the games on willow.tv.

51 games, 16 countries, 47 days, 1 winner. Let's see who outwits, outplay and outlast everybody else.

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Survivor Fiji Premieres Tonight

CBS Survivor returns tonight for 13th consecutive season in few minutes. Read some of the interesting twists here, highlights are:

1. When the 19 contestants in ``Survivor: Fiji'' arrive on the island, they will be given the means to build the most elaborate camp in the history of the show. Then they'll find out that they will be split into two tribes, one of which gets to keep that camp and one of which must relocate with only a machete and a pot.
2. The tribe that gets the posh digs may not get to keep them.
3. There also will be changes with the immunity idol-Exile Island aspect of the game. This time, those sent off to Exile Island will find clues to where the idol is located -- back at their camps. That means there are two idols in play, and those looking for them will have to do so with the other survivors looking over their shoulders.

Good luck to the contestants!

Read more details about each one of them here. It's little too early to pick my favorite since I've not read about them yet. But there are 7 Californians out of total 19.

Ah, I'm looking forward to fun Thursday evenings for the next few weeks. My son tries to outwit, outplay and outlast everybody while enjoying the show with me. If you are Survivor addicts, then try taking this quiz.

It's interesting, how important community has become in anything and everything on the web. Even Survivor website has a "community" link at the top Follow the community at:

1. Survivor Fever
2. Survivor Foxes
3. Survivor Web
4. Let me on Survivor - A campaign by Canadians to allow them on Survivor. Currently the show is restricted to US citizens only.

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First skiing over the weekend

After getting postponed for past 3 weeks, we finally made our first skiing trip of the winter season to Boreal over the weekend. And the best part was that my son (4 yrs old) enjoyed his first encounter with the skis at their Kids Club. Riding up in elevators and going down on the slides are two of his favorite games and he could easily connect with ski lift and downhill skiing with them very well. Most of the lifts, Accelerator, Claimjumper, 49er, and Solaris were open. However Cedar Ridge was closed which is the route I've always enjoyed.

If you are a regular Boreal person, it's definitely worth signing up for iRIDE card as that gives you "Buy 2 - Get 1" deal for lift tickets which I've found better than any other discounts available for Boreal.

Check out the flickr stream.

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Survivor Guatemala premieres tonight

Survivor Guatemala premieres tonight at 8pm, CBS Channel 5.

Here is an article where Jeff Probst shared some detail about the surprises on the premiere episode.

Ooooh, I love the back-stabbing, secret devious alliances and last but not the least immunity challenges. It really brings out a human being's basic instincts of survival.

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Survivor Guatemala cast revealed

Survivor Guatemala - The Maya Empire, 11th episode of the show revealed it's cast. Here are Yahoo! and Reality TV World reports. The video archive is available here.

Overall, 8 men (average age ~ 32) and 8 women (average age ~ 31) with a total crew of 16. Even though the average is slightly high but most of the players are in their early 20s. Here is an interesting analysis of the players age. There are only 2 players from California.

Mark Burnett has mentioned yet-to-be-revealed surprises in the first episode, which I hope will keep the game interesting. I would keep an eye on Jamie amongst the men and Lydia amongst the women. The season debuts on Thursday, Sep 15th, 8:00pm PT.

BTW, I like the new web design showing the cast details.

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Thursday 8pm curfew in my home starts on 9/15

And that's because Survivor Guatemala premieres on that day. This will be my 9th consecutive season and I've thoroughly enjoyed the previous ones. Pearl Islands, All Stars and Palau are my favorite ones so far. Rupert is my all time favorite from the entire cast. You can expect to see a few survivor related entries in my blog once the season starts.

I like the buzz that two of the most hard fought but unlucky survivors from Survior Palau, Bobby Jon and Stephanie, are also participating in this season.

I'm ready to outwit, outplay and outlast my family for the season ;-)

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San Jose Grand Prix 2005

Both days of the past weekend were eventful. I spent Saturday with my family at the San Jose Grand Prix and ran a 1/2 marathon on Sunday.

Took the VTA bus #23 which dropped us right at the entrance gate for the Grand Prix. I bought the general admission ticket for me and my wife and kids under 12 were free. It was exciting to see the cars zippping along downtown routes at triple the maximum speed and not getting a ticket :) We saw practice and qualifying runs from noon to about 4:30pm after which the rubber burning smell and deafening sound (estimated at 117 decibels) was getting too much for my son.

There were big TV screens through out the course but the crowd was much more than expected and thus got slightly unmanageable. My two big complaints (and the most common ones) are long waits in the queue to cross the bridge and relatively simple track so there was no excitement to see the racing cars pass each other. But since this was our first grand prix, really enjoyed it. We filled up the feedback survey and, if lucky, may get gold grandstand pass for the 2006 returning event.

Here are some pictures that I captured with my Canon S45. More pictures can be seen here. Adobe, Ernst and Young and several other offices on Almaden boulevard definitely had one of the finest views along the longest stretch of the 1.6 mile track.

I will write another blog later this week about my 1/2 marathon run.

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