What's new?

• The blog has been moved to the new "beta" version of Blogger.
• The template has been changed.
• Some of my personal articles have been removed, since it is no more a personal diary (I would have loved to keep them here but I could not figure out how I could mark the articles as personal..Apparently, this is one of the new features in the beta version)
• Added a counter.
• Addded a graphic signature in the footer.

What are Indians searching for?

I was having a look at Zeitgeist to see what Indians have been searching for..Everything in the list looked quite OK and understandable except one entry..


I found it quite surprising that the second most popular search was diet pills !..?..

Phentermine on Wikipedia.

Babies born on flights

Long ago, someone had told me that babies which are born in flights get to fly on that airlines free for their entire life. Yesterday, I read a similar article about a baby being born on a BA flight and was wondering if this baby would be a high flying baby.

I did some search on Google to see if it is actually true that babies born on flights do get such privileges and figured out that what I was told long time ago was actually not true.. There is no such rule on any airlines, but there have been 2 cases in the past where Thai Airways and Asia Pacific airlines did reward babies born on flights with free tickets for life. Probably, this is where the entire news of free tickets triggered from.

http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/airbaby.htm

Partially colored images

This is something which I had been wanting to learn for quite some time now and when I saw this article on a Blog.. I wasted no time to get more details about it.. WHEW !!..what a relief..

http://flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/72057594104092305/



Got to go get GIMP(?) next.

What does Einstein have to say about me?

All about etiquettes

Anousheh Ansari's Blog

The first woman to buy her own ticket to space.

http://anoushehansari.com

Bushism

They were simply quoting Bush but the way the phrase was structured made it for a perfect double entendre.

Bush's Top 100 funny pictures

John's kind

A few days ago I came across this article, where a girl had put a picture of hers with John Abraham and had mentioned that John was kind to her when she approached him for a pic. What appeared a normal picture became quite interesting after I read what was written on John's T-shirt.

Dor

What I really liked about Nagesh Kukunoor's Dor is the way he has presented a complicated story in an uncomplicated, sensible and a crisp manner. None of the roles have been presented for longer than needed.

The movie starts with the first 30 - 45 mins being spent in setting up the context for the actual story about two women whose worlds are about to collide. Zeenat (Gul Panag) plays a mature kashmiri girl who gets married to Amir Khan who she is in love with, a day before he is headed to Saudi for a new job. The marriage happens without the groom's parents consent who are introduced in the scene when Amir is leaving to Saudi. There is no mention of Zeenat's parents in the movie and from the description of Zeenat's character and her coming across as a person who has matured after overcoming obstacles in life, it looked like she did not have one.

Meera (Ayesha Takia) is a young, naive Rajasthani girl who is married to Shankar and they live in a joint family. Shankar's father (Girish Karnad) wants to get back his haveli, which he has not been able to due to the lack of financial resources, sends his son off to Saudi so that he could send more moolah back home which will help him in getting back the haveli.

Aamir's and Shanker's paths cross in Saudi and they live together as room mates (this part is not shown in the movie) when tragedy strikes. Shanker falls off from the balcony and Amir is held guilty for murdering him. Amir is put behind bars, and is given the death sentence and he will be executed in 2 months.

The news reaches both the families. Meera is shattered and is now only confined to a small room and her black gown, the only outing which she gets to have is with a sweet lil' girl who stays with Shanker's family to the temple. Zeenat is informed by the ministry of external affairs that the only way she can rescue Amir is if Meera agrees to forgive Amir by signing on a form. This is when the actual story begins. Zeenat heads out in search of Meera in Rajasthan where she comes across behrupiya (Shreyas Talpade) who can easily switch roles from a police constable to a IT officer to a jyotishya, who helps Zeenat in her pursuit. Zeenat manages to find Meera's house and decides to go and speak to Shanker's parents about Amir. Shanker's parents do not agree to it and Zeenat is sent out of the house. She decides to get in touch with Meera at the temple which she visits daily and persuade Meera to sign the form. Zeenat and Meera meet regulary for over a month (?) and become really good friends. There is a lot which Meera gets to learn from Zeenat. At times, the girls venture out to have rosogoolas which Meera likes, a movie which Shanker happens to like a lot, camel ride et al. All this while, the behrupiya stays with Zeenat and it is now time for him to get back to work. When the behrupiya is about to leave, Zeenat asks him to call up Amir's parents in Kashmir and inform them that things are fine at her end. Behrupiya gets back to Zeenat the next day to inform her that Amir is to be executed in 2 days and Zeenat is to head back to Jaipur the next day with the signed form from Meera.

In the meantime, Nagesh Kukunoor also steps in on the screen as a rich industrialist who is setting up an industry in the same place as that of Rajasthan and who is currently put up at the haveli which Shanker's father has an eye on. Nagesh offers Rs. 5 lakhs to Shanker's father for Meera, an amount which will get Shanker's father back the haveli and he agrees to it. Meera overhears the entire conversation and realizes that she is just another mode for making money for her father-in-law.

Zeenat meets Meera at the temple and speaks to her about Amir, something which she has been avoiding all this while, for the fear that Meera may also reject the plea the way Shanker's parents did earlier, and she may also end up loosing a great friend. Meera is shocked to hear that her best friend's husband was the cause of the misery that she was undergoing now and is not ready to forgive Amri by signing the form. The two friends part ways here, Zeenat leaves a note for Meera on the tree under which both of them would sit and chat for hours earlier.

When Meera gets back home and has a chat with Shanker's grand mother who has become pally with her of late tells Meera to go more with her conscience and not with what the society has to say. Meera decides to get back to Zeenat and sign the form, she rushes to the temple where she finds the letter Zeenat has left for her, and getting the clue, heads to the raliway station where she finds Zeenat is a train which is about to leave. Meera hands Zeenat the letter, and later when the train gets moving Zeenat also extends her hand forward for Meera to grab and get on to the train which will lead Meera to her freedom which she sensibly clings on to.

World's oldest child found by fossil hunters

Farewell Steve

Why are Ganesha idols immersed in water?

Yesterday night, As I was waiting for Mini to join me at the chinese restaurant, I decided to entertain myself by listening to the conversation which the 3 gentlemen (2 Indians and 1 Australian) seated at the table behind me were having.

At one point, when they were discussing about the festivals in India, the Australian asked "Why are ganesha idols immersed in water?". The other 2 did not know the answer.. neither did I. I was then wondering as to why we (Indian's) never bother to find out the details of anything..Is it our education system that is to be blamed which never encouraged us to delve into any subject?

Anyways, I tried searching for the answer and this is what I found..

Hindus pray to images of Lord Ganesha, large and small, many of them made specially for the occasion by cottage industries and street side artisans, and those that do not wish to keep the idols alive by daily prayers, offerings and lighting oil lamps, immerse them in the nearest water body (all rivers, lakes and the sea which are sacred to Hindus).

During Pooja Worship, the Deity is invited to enter the moorty / idol. So if you desire to keep the Moorty, you are obligated to tend it every day with offerings and prayers. You have invited the Divinity to be your guest, and your offerings are hospitality. If you do not care to do this, then it is respectful to place the Moorty in a body of sacred water.

As the sacred scriptures tell us, God casts forth these countless worlds and universes, as a spider casts forth its web. And what are caught in this Divine Web of Samsara and Maya but all the countless Jiva (Souls) which are little sparks and microcosms of that Divine Light of Brahman (which is brighter than 10,000 suns). And then God draws the web of the phenomenal world back into Himself again. So our worship involves Creation, Preservation (in the form of Pooja), and Dissolution (saying goodbye, departure) once again into non-Existence.

http://www.acharyaonline.com/ganesha.htm

Excel Tips

My all time favourite article from Anand's blog.

What's RSS?

RSS (RDF Site Summary) is an XML format for syndicating Web content. A web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its contents creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher.

RDF = Resource Description Framework

Kuala Lumpur Police Department

Wonder if they are called KLPD? :D

Actually, I just figured out that KLPD is the Netherlands Police.
Korps Landelijke Politiediensten .

Bored or Boring ?

I was quite bored and had nothing to do when I wondered what "boring" or "bored" in Google would return. This is how the first page looked like for "boring"

www.boring.com
www.utterlyboring.com
www.bored.com
www.i-am-bored.com

There were a lot more, but the ones listed above are the ones which I found interesting.. Results: 84,300,000

and "bored"

www.bored.com
www.boredatwork.com
www.boredshitless.com
www.notbored.org
www.atworkandbored.com

Results: 65,700,000

It does not prove a thing.. I am just bored.

It "only" saves your life sir !!

One of the weekdays during the 2 months break, I decided to pay a visit to one of the Maruti showrooms in the city to test drive the Swift (I had already done it before, but since there was nothing better to do, I thought I would experience it once again).. this time it was at Bimal's in Indiranagar..

The moment I went in, I was received by an executive who introduced himself as Anshad. I told him I was interested in looking at the new Wagon R and the Swift for my wife. After a brief demo of the Wagon R, it was time to discuss about the Swift. Swift comes in 4 variants: LXi, VXi, VXi with ABS and ZXi. The VXi is the largest selling variant since it has most of the features which the Indian crowd likes, But I was more interested in the top end ZXi since it has ABS, Air-bags and climate control - features which I am quite impressed with. When I started enquiring more about ZXi, the executive promptly responded "Why go for ZXi sir, It is almost 1 lakh rupees more than VXi and it only has air bags extra. In case there is an accident, it will 'only' save your life, and also if the air bags open, it costs Rs. 16,000/- to put them back in place". I was quite shocked at that remark - "Only saves your life".

I told the executive that I would get back the next day for a test drive, and I did go back the next day, but had already made up my mind that I would stop by only for 2 mins and not discuss anything more about the car or ask for a test drive.

How to taste Beer

Quite an interesting article, also leads to several other links which talk about the top 10 beers in Germany and all over the world.

Breaking 750 at GMAT.

Who is Microsoft's real competitior?

I was reading an article yesterday on slashdot about a gentelman asking Bill Gates a question about who he thinks could offer the biggest challenge to MS? Bill Gates said "Goldman Sachs"..??

The reasoning given was because he feels MS needs people with high IQ's, who get to cos. like GS and Morgan Stanley and he would like to get such talent into the organization. He does not fell IBM / Lotus as major challenges since they cannot attract such talent. Google of late has positioned itself above MS when it comes to IQ levels of employees in the organization.

Also, another point which was made was about the profit to employees ratio which reminded me of the small study which I did sometime ago to compare the patterns among services and product based companies in IT.

Product vs. Services

Microsoft
Revenues: 44.3 billion $
Profit: 36.6 billion $
# of employees: 71,000

Google
Revenues: 8.2 billion$
Profit: 3.56 billion$
# of employees: 5,680

Manhattan Associates
Revenues: 270 million$
Profits:145 million$
# of employees: 1600

IBM
Revenues: 88.5 billion $
Profit: 36.53 billion $
# of employees: 3,41,750

Infosys
Revenues: 2.29 billion $
Profit: 908 million $
# of employees: 52,700

Phishing ?

Having ignored one of earlier Gaj's mails, I was forced to do the searching on google for this term which I keep getting to hear often.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/phishing.html

Pythons and their "huge" snacks

Pythons eating huge stuff and landing in trouble is something I've always got to hear time and again right from my school days. Here is the latest I got to see on nat geo.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060915-python-ewe.html

What lies beneath New York?

Calvin & Hobbes on Google Images

Another piece of gyaan from Anand's site. C&H comic strips for any day b/w 18th November 1985 and 31st December 1995 can be searched on Google Images by typing "chyymmdd". For Ex: Cartoon strip for 18th November 1985 can be found on entering "ch851118".

Bill Watterson is the author of the comic strip.

Mohawk Hairstyle

The Mohawk hairstyle (Mohawk or Mohican) is a hair style often thought to have been worn by the Mahican and Mohawk tribes.

What is "Sun Outage" ?

I had bumped into this term many times in the past but had never bothered finding more details about it. Today, I did, thanks to all the free time I have and the internet connection.

What is Sun Outage?

The conicidence of the satellite and the sun at the site of ground receiver terminal signifies that the sun is viewed from the ground receiver terminal in the same direction as the satellite. As the antenna of the ground receiver terminal is pointed towards the satellite, it also becomes pointed towards the sun, and this additional input highly increases its antenna noise temperature.

As the satellite turns around the earth, the sun-ground terminal coincidence is a momentary event. It is predictable and actually happens twice a year for several minutes over a period of 5 to 6 day before the spring equinox (March 28) and after the autumn equinox (September 21) in the northern hemisphere. The practical outcome is a sudden degradation (perhaps an outage) in downlink performance because of the high rise of antenna noise temperature.

- Satellite Broadcast Systems Engineering By Jorge Matos Gómez

Also, managed to find a Sun Outage Calculator.
http://www.satellite-calculations.com/SUNcalc/SUNcalc.htm

Test your typing speed

I averaged about 54 wpm (words per minute).

Mathemetical Expansion

Taken from my guru's web site www.s-anand.net