Mimosa

Pulling out Rodin’s teeth.

2009-07-07T17:54:00.000+05:30

All the book shops I visit have huge section of books dedicated to the “management”. Considering the amount of space dedicated to the “management book”, I would assume that there is brisk movement of these tomes. I am sure this would be the scenario all over the world.
I wonder why no one has asked these questions till now.

Who buys these books? Who writes these books? What happens once the books are read?

Assuming that these books are read by the “managers”, and further assuming that the contents of these books did have lot of information and knowledge, why did we have the huge organizations failing? Why are we in “should be getting out of recession soon” situation?

I guess the “management” books were brought by people who wanted to prop up their monitors or there was more fluff than matter in these books. I guess it felt good to tell your colleague “Man, that book on “purple ocean strategy” was great, you should read it”, though all you did was use it prop up the clock in your house.

I guess I would rather, plunk down money on a good fiction book….’cause you see, there is not much difference in the content … both are just stories.

Let me get down to writing a “management” book on how to manage companies during “recessionary times”. I am sure it would work out to be a best seller, and I do like sci-fi.

Misty day in a bamboo garden

2009-03-19T12:10:00.001+05:30

Tea and bonsai at the dawn of a new day

2009-03-19T12:07:00.003+05:30

First inkart painting! green thumb?

2009-03-18T10:56:00.002+05:30

life has been interesting..
botanically speaking. a sudden spark seems to have moved me from photographing nature to actually working with nature. in that last 30 day, we have about 23 pots ( at the last count) of all kinds of plants, shrubs, trees growing around the house.

will try and post photos of them soon. the list of plants currently in the "Project Go-Green" are

Adenium(Desert rose, this is the one which started the entire greenie thing)
Ficus Benjimina ( to be converted to a bonsai, in the next 4-6 months)
a Rain tree ? ( 6 inchs tall, with 2-2 1/2 inch trunk) seems to be good potential bonsai material.
2 lemon saplings
4 mango saplings
2 aloe Vera
and a few more...

And i just took a shot at drawing something on my tablet! Just my first shot at the inkart.

wassup update

2009-01-12T12:07:00.001+05:30

not much blogging.

shifted my residence, settling down in the new place.
work is kind of hectic.
recession seems to be looming.

naina's has been updating me with the learning she is going through .. NLP, Interplay

a wonderful life of abundance!

john braid and the bean

2008-07-15T00:04:00.003+05:30

nothing has ever scared me before in my life. my name is John Braid and i am 6 feet tall and weigh about 190 pounds on a bad day.

it was the 4th of may, when the strangeness in my life started. with an innocuous packet which was left at my door step. I opened the simple looking packet. if i had know what i know about it now, i would have run miles away. i enjoy running, i run to live and lived to run.

let me tell you about this packet, it was wrapped up in a plain brown paper, no tape, just tied with a plain thin string.

i opened the packet, i found a can, on which was written a simple note.

"please open the top and pour a little bit of water and do this for the next 5 days"

so me being a curious kind of chap, did as was asked of me. even then i had a feeling in my stomach, a sixth sense, which said run away. and me being a little hard headed, ignored all the signs.

the first few days nothing much happened, on the fifth day, the surface of the mud in the can broke a little. the next day i could see a little bit of green, popping out.

over the next four days the plant kept growing at a furious pace. it looked like a normal bean plant.

the eleventh day was when things started getting really hairy, and i mean literally hairy, green and hairy. that morning when i walked into the room where the plant was growing, i did a double take. the room was mostly covered in some long hairy green strands. it was growing in different part of the room, and mostly on things made of wood or cloth.

there was a movement in the room, when I quickly turned towards the movement, I saw the plant swaying towards me. and the movement had some amount of feeling, and i perceived it as being a little violent. I drew back a little and reassessed the room, and i was wondering if the movement was a trick my mind was playing with me.

everything looked normal, except for the green growth. i went out and got a cleaner and cleaned up the place. made a mental note to get some gardening tools which i could use to trim the plant. i moved out.

the next day, the door to the room seemed jammed, as if something soft was wedged against the door from the other side, as i was running late for work, with just a perplexed look at the door i moved out of the house.

that evening the air in the house was smelling a little musty, and at the same time had a kind of greenish smell, like stale cut grass. after a few minutes of sniffing this air, i started feeling very satisfied as if i had all my needs taken care of. kind of like a breast fed baby, i went to sleep, thinking to my self that this sure was the most wonderful birthday i have had.

i wake up in a white padded room, as i looked around i was amazed to see that i was wearing a nice and clean straight-jacket. sitting and observing me across the room was a nice looking doctor. she gave me a disinterested look and looked back at the notebook in which she was writing something.

when i spoke, she was startled, almost dropping the stuff she was holding.

she stuttered, and finally gets a grip of her emotions, she started talking to me and questioning me. at the end of the discussion i figured that i had lost about 3 months of my life, i had no clue as to what i had been doing during those 3 month.

the doctor let me know that, i was one of the most wanted man in america, and about to be executed for a few terrible murders and other disgusting activities performed on the victims. she was studying me for about 3 days,as i seemed to have been in a fix!

i had been captured 3 days ago and brought to this asylum. i had been in a deep sleep for the last three days.she gave me a long list of things done to me , during these 3 days, and i looked down.

i started laughing , and have never stopped laughing since.

sometimes , amidst my laughter, i wonder if i had paid attention to my sixth sense,kicked the can and run like hell,if i would have been in this hell.

you see, all she kept asking me and wanted to know was how and why my hair, my skin and in fact every part of my body was green, except my legs which were brown and deeply rooted in the floor of the asylum and growing deeper every day.

The Deep Pit

2008-06-03T20:37:00.004+05:30

For a quite few million years, it had lived a lethargic existence, vaguely aware of its dark surroundings, but not very concerned or worried, but just a dull awareness that it seemed to the most intelligent organism in its environment.

It was not threaten, by what it could sense outside it immediate environment. All it could sense was lot of turmoil, lot of heat and tremendous amounts of violence. Its slumber was deep, and often, a nap would be about a million year, a deep sleep would be 10’s of million years.

Once in a while, It would try and remember, remember its past, the reason for Its existence. But it was not very bothered, beyond the fact that it was not of this planet, and it had travelled for millions of year though the cold and silence of the space encased as part of an asteroid. The asteroid had crashed on to a hot planet. Over a period of time the crater caused by the asteroid was partly filled up, filled up initially with the molten material, and latter on with organic material.

It feed on all the material filling up the crater while it was sleeping, slowing absorbing the matter through its multipurpose exoskeleton, and growing in size from a relatively small creature to a huge animal. The eons were moving on the surface of the planet, the planet was evolving and from tiny one celled organism to huge dinosaurs , the ecology of the planet was experimenting, creature were being brought into existence and getting taken out of existence. None of these intermediate creatures disturbed It.

Then about 2000 year ago, a tiny slice of time for It, It became aware of a species evolving and who seems to be progressing on a path which It defined as a potential treat for It’s existence in the future. For the first time It started to move its huge body in the crater and like a large slug, wriggled to the surface of the crater so far above it, it took the creature a long time to reach the top, as it had to push through all the matter which has filled up in the crater.

It looked around, and was not very impressed with what it saw on the surface of the planet. After laying on the surface for some time and sending out energy from its feelers on the surface of its skin, It was able to sense that though this species was intelligent, it was far from being a treat to it. It goes back into its crater, and this time It ensures that the path to the surface is kept clean.

But the rains and the melting snows of the surrounding mountains soon filled up the crater, but this did not reduce the efficiency of its senses, as it was in tune with the energy of the water.

For a further short period of time there was nothing which excited the thoughts of It.

It felt the electromagnetic waves for the first time and It was really startled by this sudden spurt of energy, from an unknown source, and was immensely excited and at the same time it triggered of a wave of anxiety, an emotion it was feeling for the first time, and It translated it into something which it could understand, fear, which in turn was converted to anger.

It came out of the pit once more. When it start sensing the surroundings, It was shocked when it compared the current readings to that of the last visit, the entire topography was different, one species seems to have become a dominant species and they were dominating the environment in a very suppressive and destructive way. It sent its sensors further out and it could sense that out there it was even more of the same, but a surprising fact it had observed was that the development was not even all over, there were a few patches of planet which seem to be more evolved than the other, and the species seems to feel that it was the only intelligent species in this universe. It made a specific note of this disparity as a possible strategy to overcome the species and return to being the true lord of this planet.

It was really angry now.

It went on a rampage, in its immediate vicinity. Miles of forest around its habitat was vaporized, vaporized totally, as if they had never been in existence.

This event triggered off alarm bells at the various governments and military headquarters, as their different satellite captured this release of enormous electromagnetic radiation, with no accompanying recording of terrestrial tremors, in any of the recording stations at different parts of the world. The geniuses of each country were salivating with the thoughts of a new weapon system which they could build if they got their hand on this technology, and the governments of every country was worried that the country in which this event had taken place was testing out a new weapon, and felt threatened.

All of them focused their satellites on the spot where the event had taken place. All they could see at the epicenter was a deep crater; the devices measured the depth of this crater to about half a mile. The government of the effected country asked the United Nations for help, and a task force of scientist was assembled from all over the world. They reached the place late in the evening, with the best and the latest measuring instruments and probes-electronic and otherwise.

First night all their instruments recorded was an initially vague movement, which all the wisest men on earth could not be sure if it was a movement at all. And then a burst of static on all the recording equipment in the entire spectrum of the electromagnetic waves, and this was discerned only from the remote sensors recording units, the equipment on site was totally melted and fused, nothing could be salvaged from them.

After a hiatus of about two weeks when the brains had sat down to figure out the way forward, they came up with a slightly different plan to monitor the crater. The word was put out to the powers that be that they needed a launch freighter space craft, while this was being organized the scientists had in the meantime started work on a satellite version of the monitoring equipment and were programming the software to control all the measuring instruments.

This was launched into orbit without much fanfare or noise, and the equipment was positioned in space above the crater, in the movement of crisis the brains had come up with a system of camouflaging the electronic waves used to monitor, as normal cosmic waves.

Over a period of time they found out amazing amount of information about It, without It being aware of it. The humans called it the E.S, a play on E.T. and E.S stood for Enormous Slug. Guess the brains are entitled to be childish. The information on the E.S was slowly building. The brains, they had initially guessed that this could be a non terrestrial being, were thrilled when this was confirmed and supported by the bio-geneticist.

What now? Was the question flowing through the minds.

Then suddenly for a period of about three years there was absolutely no activity observed at the crater, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

It was tapping into the electronic networks of the planet, and imbibing a vast amount of data about the planet, info about evolution of science, philosophy, generally about everything. No security device detected the intrusion by It.

With a total awareness of what the dominant organism of this planet was capable of and with the knowledge of what minerals and technology the planet possessed.

It could project into the future to see what that organism was capable of and It saw that there was a medium probability that the planet would be wiped out of existence.

It made a plan.

It thought through what it wanted to do. Then it made its intentions know to the dominant species, by modifying and rebroadcasting all the television and satellite transmission to the entire world from the pit. It gave the world 24 hours to vacate a large area around Its pit.

The people were not ready. It made its move.

Its craft took off from earth in a huge blast.

Many years have passed since, the few of us who survive, still remember the noise which reverberated around the world that day.

That was the day Yellowstone Park got vaporized and turned into a huge sheet of glass, and that was the day earth tilted off its axis by about 4 degrees.

(The True Lord of Earth)

Alchemist - 2

2007-11-15T16:54:00.005+05:30

It all started on a dark and gloomy night when my mother was serving her customers in her tavern, the usual rounds of shredded horse meat and warmed teflonian beer. In walked a tall gangolian warlord, looking weary from the latest crusade wars.

This warlord went by the name of Dreadgranger.

I remember my mother telling me as I grew older, that for some strange reason, she was strangely attracted to the warlord, and this attraction was tinged with awe and respect along with a bit of sexual stirring.

Lord Dreadgranger was one of the most cunning and vicious warlord, who had made his bones in the First Rebellion. The killer and the most dreaded young warrior.

It was on this night that I was referring to, when my mother was with the warlord in the night, and eighteen months latter, I was born. It was also the last time my mother saw my father. The very next day to my birth, my father disappeared forever. Over the years my mother kept getting news about my father from the traveling minstrels , and she recorded all the adventures of my father so that she could share this with me when I grow up.

The genetic material of my father was so strong that even as a child I was a soldier. My skills in tracking and hunting were renowned. I could feel the killing lust flow in me even then.

I was considered to be one of the most vicious of the hunters known to the Bragalians. This reputation I had got when I was 3 years old.

At around this time I came across a strange monk , Crepovani. He was a silent one, real quite. For some strange reason when one night in the tavern, he took me to his table and started communicating with me silently. This was the my first feel of telepathic powers of the Creambic mystics.

My blood froze and my heart stood still for a moment when I felt the monk's powers, but at the same time I strangely understood that he was restraining himself , and displaying just a fraction of his magic.

After this strange encounter, the monk left. And a few weeks later he just turned up at the tavern
and I followed him. I was initiated into the arcane art of Creambic mystics. The next few years after I followed
Crepovani, was an intense learning experience. He took me on all his travels, and each minute of my life was a involved with learning. The arcane art of Creambic martial arts. Which involved the mind as much as the body. I had become invincible by the age of four.

I was initiated into a test of strength in the Creambic way, I fought the then champion of the Creambic clan and I beat him in a short time. The Creambic elders silently applauded my skills in their telepathic way, and they spoke among themselves and observed that I would one day be the most dreaded warrior ......

Alchemist

2006-08-12T23:15:00.003+05:30

it was a few years ago while i was still a bumbling youngster, in the prime of my life, more spirit than sense, that i came across a bamboo hut during a walk through the forest.

on my first glance, i disregard the place as a potential night shelter for myself. the structure looked too flimsy to offer any protection from what i was expecting latter on that night. the dark clouds looked foreboding.

while i was walking away , I heard a sound which chilled my blood. made me quickly glance behind me. I giggled when I realized that it was just a strange man laughing crazy, it was a crackling rising laugh, it sounded out worldly. It was only latter that he told me that I was the first human he had seen in a number of years, strange.

i wondered what was wrong with him. He started talking to me. At least I think he was trying to talk to me. But all I heard was strange rumbling sounds coming out of the man.

i decided to stay there that night and see what this was all about.

after a few day I slowly began to understand the words the man was talking, was surprised to realize this was a language I had spoke from the time of my birth. He started telling me his story and what a strange story it was.

what I am putting down today, on the papyrus is just part of this man’s strange story.

“I do not remember the name my biological parents had given me” he told me. “as far as my memory goes I remember being called the Alchemist” . I shuddered when I heard this. For this was a name which I have heard brave men whisper in dread.

this dread was not the dread mere mortal feel. This was a supernatural dread. A dread which is allied with the night terrors.

he continued “I was given the name Alchemist by my master, when I was less than a year old, for he had sensed and seem what my future holds for me”

“from then on, all that my master talked to me was on how to awaken the strange power which were innately part of my life. These were magical moments of my life, the joy of learning the secrets of controlling my telekinetic and clairvoyance powers”

“I became really good with the sword and I had gone beyond what the best of the martial arts students knew, why I had gone beyond what the masters knew of martial arts, and all this before I was 5”.

(click for chapter 2)

Google Answers for free or indications of my growing paranoia

2006-07-22T11:22:00.000+05:30

looks like the "government" has finally lifted the ban on blogger.com. ah no need to use various 3rd party tools to access the blogs.

BUT.....the last few days have been spent exploring a few options of anonymous access on the net. now that's a thought for a long term implementation.

what were the guys thinking?? when they decided to block blogspot.com blogs? but allowing access to blogger.com to update blogs?

from a few of the news reports i did check out, i believe the directive was a few certain blog urls were to be blocked, but i believe the ISP's in their wisdom decided that it was easier to block the whole thingamajig, the reason given was that they did not have tools to block specific urls. hoik.

was this a situation to simulate a electronic network attack and to test the emergency reponse procedures of the government? where they able to handle the situation? i wonder what reports are being written up about this event.

now all "they" have to do is sit down, go through all the blogs where the smart bloggers would be crowing away as to how they beat the "ban". and then next time around all "they" needs to do is block what these smart blogger did.

i am sure something else will be available the next time around.

this seems to a good method of test marketing or it looks like someone decided to use the free version of the google answers. create a situation and wait for bloggers to come up with feedback and other inputs and solutions! the power of collective wisdom and the tendency of humans to share and be happy sure is such a powerful tool for research.

for those 2 or 3 readers of my blog...did jesus really live in india?

guess, what i thought was funny in feb 2005 ,is no longer funny (blog,search and get paranoid)

heaven aint in andromeda, it has just moved into your building. (get the connection in the feb2005 article)

times mumbai is going through

2006-07-18T11:30:00.001+05:30

stuff happening in mumbai.

first it was the rain,
then it was the riots and burning,
and we had that 7/11 with lot of people loosing their life,
innocent people who were on the way home.
after a hard day work, to be with their family and friends.

all this in about a 10 day stretch.
life sure aint giving no guarantee, that,
once you leave your home,
that you will get back.
if mother nature dont get you, then, the "people" would.

i wonder what outraged thoughts, infuriates peoples mind.
who is the victim and who has been victimised.

there are those who have got back on the train,
and there are those who would take sometime.
the children wonder, will they meet their father again.
the spouse wonders if they would see each other again.

how many road must a man walk, before he can be called a man.
times, they are a changing.

picasaweb

2006-07-10T18:54:00.000+05:30

here is my experiment with the picasa web just got to upload a few pics. for the first time have uploaded a few pics of myself.

here it is
..

mumbai wet again

2006-07-04T14:15:00.000+05:30

last few days the monsoon has broken .. and as usual flooding being reported all around. the road leading out of the housing complex i stay in, is kind of flooded. i took about 90 minutes to cover a distance of about 1 km. had to u-turn from my normal road as it was fully flooded.

and on the other road which i finally took, the water was reaching upto the bottom of the car(could hear the gentle lapping sounds of the water) since i was not doing much travelling, i used my mobile to get a few quick snaps while stuck in the "river".

generally things seems to be looking "normal" as normal can be in mumbai during the rains. no reports of scary stuff like last time..

the rest of the pics can be checkout here.

rude mumbai

2006-06-21T13:22:00.000+05:30

mumbai has been branded rudest city in the world.
"
Mumbai Judged Rudest City In World
Mumbai is the rudest city in the world, where
door-holding, paper-picking and thanking a retail
customer is not part of the culture.

Reader's Digest magazine sent reporters to the principal
cities of each of the 35 countries where it is published
to conduct a survey of local politeness. Three tests
were employed: dropping papers in a busy street to see
if anyone would help; checking how often shop assistants
said "thank you"; and counting how often someone held a
door open.
etc..
"
i am not a native born mumbaite, i have been living here for the last 6 years. i was surprised to see this take on mumbai.

mumbai is loud and a tough place to live. but rude?

the first day i landed into mumbai, and i was shifting from the hotel to my rented house.(this was somewhere in july 2000) there was some "hard rain" and most of the streets were flooded. the taxi which naina and i were travelling in came to halt at a place where the road had was covered with about 2 and half feet of water(this was in the vertical direction!)

the taxi driver was so concerened, trying to figure out a way to get us to our new home. then we started wading through this water. as is a habit with most of us we were trying to walk on the sides of the road, the native mumbaites, came to our help asked us to walk in the middle of the road, because there would be lots of potholes, and other manmade opening on the sides of the road.

and post the last mumbai floods(july 2005), all kind of stories were published which showed the kind, helpful nature of mumbai people.

of course i do get yelled at,at the stop signs if i take more than 2 seconds to move the car after the light turns green.

the below is a kind of joke ... but is it? i am sure that mumbaikars will have a wry smile when they read it, but i am sure no one is going to be rude about this... (check the below note on being a mumbaite got this from this link)

25 Sure signs that you're a Mumbaite.

1. You say “town” and expect everyone to know that this means south of Churchgate.

2. You’re suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

3. You have never been to the Gateway of India.

4. You don’t hear sirens anymore.

5. Hookers, beggars and the homeless are invisible.

6. The trains make sense.

7. Your door has more than three locks.

8. The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

10. You call an 8’ x 10’ clustered room a Hall.

11. You consider beyond Andheri as “Upstate”.

12. You think Chowpatty & Juhu beaches as “nature.”

13. You’re paying Rs 10,000 for a 1 room flat, the size of a walk-in closet and you think it’s a “steal.”

14. You’ve been to New Bombay twice and got hopelessly lost both times.

15. You spend more time each month travelling than you spend at home.

16. You haven’t heard the sound of true absolute silence since 1977, and when you did, it terrified you.

17. You take fashion seriously.

18. Being truly alone makes you nervous.

19. You have 14 different menus of Free Home Deliveries next to your telephone.

20. Going to “town” is considered a “road trip.”

21. You take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise.

22. Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes.

23. Rs 500 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.

24. You have a minimum of five “worst cab rides ever” stories.

25. You’ve mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city’s air quality and what it’s doing to your lungs.

Music setup

2006-06-08T13:55:00.000+05:30

finally took the plunge and went in for a marantz setup. the amp Marantz PM 7001, the cd player Marantz cd 5001. both being classified as "budget" equipment. running them on a jpw 188 speaker, this has a single 8 inch driver and two 3 inch tweeters. sounds quite impressive. this was a export material and not available for sale in india. i have not been able to get any further spec's on the speakers. still searching the net for more info on this one. seems to be some sort of "custom" speaker.

i am now working with the audio shop people to organise for a wharfedale 9.5 demo at my house so that i can audition this in its final "work" environment. let me see if i can work this out.

back to the current setup. the amp and the cd player combination is delivering some real wonderful music . still not "blasted" the volume high. mostly playing the music at a low volume (9'o clock) when no one was around did move the volume dial to the 12 o' clock position.

the music and sound at both these low and mid extreme has been crystal clear and perfect.

bhimsen joshi, prem joshua, deva premal,roger waters, pink floyd, deep purple, billy joel(piano man), dave brubeck, ms subbulakshmi, "sound from the grand canyon", muddy waters, miles davis, rainbow, a little bit of led zeppelin have so far been fed through the system intermittently in the last 4-5 days and what the amp and the cd player have been dishing out, the jpw speakers have been able to handle it quite well.

quite happy with the setup as is, other than for a nigiling feeling that i may be missing out on some bass. AND i guess the NEED to spend MORE money on a floorstander is part of a male genetic makeup and i feel the urge and pull towards the wharfedale 9.5's..

wonder if the spouse will buy the genetic makeup crap?

15 days of bliss

2006-06-02T14:29:00.000+05:30

i was out of mumbai in kashmir. 15 days of bliss. wonderful place, untouched beauty.the presence of armed forces was continous and quite visible most of the time.

visited jammu,pahalgaum,yusmarg,gulmarg,srinagar, have post a few pics. I am working on posting a few more pics soon.

got quite a bit of photo shooting done...will try and upload some of the snaps over the weekend.

now it is back to hectic work schedule!!

longest break from blogging

2006-05-03T13:34:00.000+05:30

24th Feb, seems to be a date which has no major relevance, in my life on this earth. but for whatever reason this seem to be the date on which i had last blogged.

i am getting back online after a long time, never realised that i was off for such a long time. so what have i been upto all these days?

i have been trying to get an o2 atom running wm 5.0 to connect to a firewall, still stuck. other than that, guess just plain hectic work schedule.

last week: i have been trying to audition some audio equipment, looking at upgrading the home audio setup.(currently surviving on a sony minicomp system), also lurking on various audio/hi-fi forums getting a crash course on hi-fi equipment.

what am i looking at? a pure 2 channel stereo amp and a set of speakers. the number of options available is huge, and the cost seem to look huge.

what i have evaluated so far:
- a yamaha ax-496 amp with yamaha speakers and pioneer floor standing speakers(both speakers rejected)
- denon amp with marantz cd player, with wharfedale diamond 9.5, kef iq5, polkaudio monitor50.
- a yamaha ax-496 with bookshelf speakers from jpw ( at a friends place) -no model number- along with custom made cubes and subwoofer.

to be auditioned this week, marantz pm7001 with the wharfedale diamond 9.5 or a kef 1q5.

wharfedale 9.5 were the most impressive.

but the low cost jpw seems to be packing a major punch. guess finally this will be build of my first hi-fi setup(marantz ...hang on will get to you soon!!) yamaha amp with a couple of jpw's and maybe a sony/pioneer cd player this should come to less than INR 20k. not bad for a first hi-fi setup.

other than that...

i have finally got the google analytics invite, the google page invite,(have got a under construction page up already in the 15/20 minutes i spent on this) need to beef it up soon.

will be one year older tomorrow.

why, paranoia?

2006-02-24T11:21:00.000+05:30

first impression of the google desktop, it seems to be highly user oriented. giving access to what a user would want on the desktop quickly.

but like the man says, encrypting the search index sure slows the system down.

the sidebar is kind of bothersome. but i like the way it can be customised.
the deskbar/floating or nonfloating is nice.

the scary part was that things which are supposed to be private suddenly appeares on your sidebar the first time you install the application.

a nice feature which i have not yet tried out is sharing the index between multiple pc which one would tend to use. i can see this being a kind of iffy where security is concerend.(hey remember i have not tried this out yet and have no intention of trying it either).

i think i may give it a shot. use it for a longer period of time. or should i wait for a version which can boot up the pc at 0900 hrs in the morning, automatically answer all my mails, handle all my telephone followup's, remotely attend all my meetings, and hit the bar at about 1900hrs and call it a day by about 2400 hrs, while i am roaming around the best beaches in the world, catching up with my reading and music.

this day does not seem very far off, what with softwares/programs analysing your browser cache, and deciding your preferences etc and showing you content tailored to meet your needs. it must be a minor tweak to finetune the software to start thinking and acting like you.

when i wrote this in feb 2005, i was going for the humor part of it. but now it look like, it aint funny nomore.

Google Desktop Beta

2006-02-22T14:51:00.000+05:30

came across this today. guess i will take it out for a trial run shortly. going throught the features list right now.

kind of excited and at the same time kind of unsure.

Google Desktop Download

i guess my theory on google world domination aint very far off. :)

seems to be a huge

2006-02-11T15:57:00.000+05:30

archive ot jethro tull stuff. hail willerup brothers, way to go

Willerup Bros: Jethro Tull

now i am getting deep into the site. i may find some lyrics of tull songs which i have lost, yet to find anywhere.

one white duck on the wall. fly away peter flyaway paul.

The answer is 42

2006-02-06T13:11:00.001+05:30

the world being taken over google style. "rumours mount over googles internet plan" read more about it here.
Technology, Technology news, Times Online

taking off on THAT article, my thoughts follow, Mr.Google please note this is just my creation and i own all rights to these ideas, and if you plan to use any of these you, i am ready to license these ideas to you on a per click basis.(i am launching mysense ad revenue sharing product)

i have the inside dope on the what the google wizards are working on for the future , these are a few of the essential technologies they are working on

a) hyper-drive - essential tool for delivering space travel at the click of a button, will be available as a beta download by the January 2010,
minimum system requirements: G-o/s (google-operating system version 12, patched for hyper-jumps), google space cube human interface hardware, memory requirement : enough to remember history of the last 2 millennium. disk capacity : latest adenine-thymine drives with atleast 240 strands of unused DNA.

b) positronic brains - why hire smart people when you can design brains which are built for one purpose ie. work on world domination by google. the positronic pathway are already in pre-alpha testing. the design document states,that, the positronic brains are not ment to be mobile and walk off from the Google headquarters, so they have skipped the robot exo-skeleton in the design. this is just the BRAINS. wonder if this will close the gates for bill.

c) "Google Guide to the galaxy" : they have already tied up with douglas adams descendants for royalties, they would pay 1 cent for every million copies of the guide sold. this will be the definitive guide to everything this and that side of "The Deep Web", the marketing department is working on a galactic release of "the Guide" (a few of you may have worked on a new tool recently, "Google earth" this is the precursor to the ultimate Guide, thank you for contributing your time in the development of "The Guide")

"Don't Panic: Google instead"

The answer is still 42.

I,Human

2006-02-06T11:40:00.000+05:30

i have been reading, and reading stuff which i had read a long time back. While reading "I,Robot" and "Robots and Empire", i was kind of engrossed in the conflict which daneel and giskard get into. i thought it was about time that we get down to defining the 3 laws of humanity. i am using the 3 laws of robotics as a basis for the 3 laws of humanity as they seem to have severed robots quite well.

0. a human may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1. a human may not injure a human being or, through inaction,allow a human being to come to harm.
2. a human must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth or First Law.

as you can see that i have used the zeroth law and i have dropped the 2nd law of robotics. the 3 laws of Humanity now look workable.

essentially if you look at the 3 laws being extrapolated here, you would see that this would be basis for any kind of utopian living. simplifying thoughts and ideas from the past, the basic 3 laws of humanity have been around for a long time. and example (refer to the wikipedia article) on utopianism.

The Krita Yuga, the First and Perfect Age, as described in the Mahabharata, an old Hindu epic:

[...] Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and no rich;there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will; the chief virtue was the abandonment of all worldly desires. The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. [...]

I,Human

happy trails (comet)

2006-01-24T11:02:00.003+05:30

journal entry dated 19th January 2006 :
nasa dc-8 stardust mission was a great success. all initial reports from johnson space center looked great. the scientists were ecstatic and happy, they all got down to analysing the collected samples.

journal entry dated 29th January 2006:
on the NASA website. the normally immaculately dressed doctors, i have been noticing over the past few days, were looking totally in disarray, i was wondering why. was the stress of the project getting to them? No one in NASA seems worried.

journal entry dated 31st january 2006:
i push my wheel chair to the tiny window of my small apartment, and look out of my window. curious. the normal bustling streets below seems to be looking deserted, with just a few people walking around in a hapazard manner. i ignore this, thinking that this might be because of the usual political protests, police blocking movement into the street.

journal entry dated 4th february 2006:
the unsual silence around the apartment and the streets were slowly getting to me. all my server logs and the hit counters on my webpage seem to be indicating that web traffic was normal, the visitor patterns were looking absolutly normal. my dread is increasing, though there is nothing to indicate that anything is amiss.

journal entry dated 5th february 2006:
something is up, it was not just me that has been observing the changes that have been happening. a few of the bloggers whose posting i persue deligently, from yesterday,have been commenting or making observations along the same lines as me. i am perturbed.

journal entry dated 9th february 2006:
i have not posted much on my journal in the last few days, i have been actively pursuing my investigations on the web,(i wish i had not given up on my television, when it broke down about 2 years back). my investigations confirm that something is wrong. it looks like people are disappearing in large numbers, and this seems to be instantanous. some of my reports indicate that there have been cases when two people are talking, one end goes silent,suddenly. this report was curious, when the people at the other end of the telephone get this checked, they see that the telephone is lying in a reducing puddle of bluish white frothy gel.

Journal entry dated 4th may 2006:
The airwave are dead, there are no transmission happening, my wi-fi hotspot is dead. The only people left on the world seem to be bloggers and blog readers. The heart wrenching appeal posted on boing boing to all the bloggers to meet where ever they are and get together and procreate to create the future generations seems to have signaled the end of the â€œinvasionâ€� of what the bloggers called the gillette virus.

Journal entry dated 15th may 2006:
This would be my last post to my journal for a long time. I am getting out of this city, my leg seems to have healed quite well and I am able to walk and climb quite well. I am planning to hit the hills and live off the land for as long as I can. There must be a reason why I had a broken leg just before the dc-8 missions was completed. The enforced seclusion with only my desktop as company for the 20 odd days before the break seems to have built up my immunity to the gillette virus, one theory going around, talks of the radiation from the monitor generating immunity in a personâ€¦who cares now. I have a higher purpose in life and I am going to find out my purpose.

This entry linked to &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://pvvindia.wikispaces.com/Journal Entry Dated 19th Jan 2006"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Wikispaces page (Journal Entry Dated 19th Jan 2006)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

in the beginning

2006-01-16T22:47:00.002+05:30

I wanted to get a feel of how it would have been for a person writing the bible. since i was not there at that time, i thought i would kind of write something along the lines of genesis, but with what is happening currently in the world.
there is no disrespect/intent to anyone or anybody, and this is just an attempt at trying my hand at writing. man it is really difficult, as would see i start off with a lot of fire and than as it goes on further, you would see that i am kind of loosing steam.

well here goes nothing.

1:1 In the beginning Man created the DARPANET and the Private net.

1:2 DARPANET was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Man moved upon the face of the ip addresses.

1:3 And Man said, Let there be connectivity: and there was global connectivity

1:4 and Man saw the connectivity, that it was good; and Man divided the connectivity from the darknet.

1:5 and Man called the connectivity internet, and the other he called peer-to-peer. and the downloads and the uploads were the first day.

1:6 and Man said, let there be firewalls in the midst of the ip addresses, and let it divide the ip addresses from the ip addresses.

1:7 and Man made the firewall, and divided the ip address which were under(behind) the firewall from the ip addresses where were outside the firewall; and it was so.

1:8 and Man called the firewall dmz. and the downloads and the uploads were the second day.

1:9 and Man said, the the ip addresses under the dmz be gathered together unto one place, and let the approved ip's appear; and it was so.

1:10 and Man called the approved ip address static; and the gathering together of the ip addresses called he DNS; and Man saw that it was good.

1:11 and Man said, let the approved ip address bring forth browsing, the content-filter yielding seed, and the approved urls yielding websites after his kind, whose urls is in itself, upon the static ip's:and it was so.

1:12 and the static ip brought forth browsing, and the content-filter yielding seed, and the approved urls yielding websites after his kind, whose urls is in itself, upon the static ip's:and Man saw it was good.

1:13 and the downloads and the uploads were the third day.
1:14 and Man said, let there be valid ip's in the firewall of the dmz to divide the internet from the darknet; and let them be for proxy's, and for 404, and for days, and years;

1:15 skipping from here till 1:19
1:20 and Man said, let the flowing packets bring forth abundantly the moving packets that hath ip header info, and 802.11g that may fly above the earth in the open firewalls of the DMZ.

1:21 and Man created great operating systems, and every living pc that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind and every 802.11g packet after his kind: and Man saw that it was good.

1:22 skipping to verse 26

1:26 and Man said, let us make microsoft in our image, after out likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish(desktop pc user) of the sea, and over the datapackets over the air and over the sun's and novell, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

1:27 skipping to verse 28

1:29 and Man blessed them(microsoft), and Man said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the consumer of the operating systems, and over the 802.11g of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

wtf wmf

2006-01-14T17:34:00.000+05:30

i find that my blog posting have become kind of newsgator'ish and not much fun, so kind of working on making up something which is funny along the lines of why i started this blog. hopefully this will turn out as a funny fiction.

and what am i taking up for my "return" to origin? the wmf "vulnerability" in windows. some of the respected denizens of the internet are propounding the theory that this is not a vulnerability but a backdoor deliberatly left by microsoft. you can check out the podcast or the transcript of the the podcast here

i have a simple question to ask. backdoor? in wmf? what about windows itself? is this not the biggest threat to the world? why would anyone want to create a backdoor, when you have the keys to the front door.

was it a billion or 100's of millions of pcs/servers running windows in the world right now? my hypothesis is as follows, and i humbly submit this to the world for digestion. This is not a vulnerability nor a backdoor,but, a preview of the great grandson of MicroSoft Vista. this is the pre-pre-pre alpha or you can call it the proof of concept of the the new version of Microsoft Windows which is to be released in the year 2020, codename "Wolfgang Amadeus" for the desktop version or the server version codenamed "Conjuror".

why did i call it "proof of concept"? if you read the go through the podcast, mentioned above, you will recollect a word which was thrown around there? "SETABORTPROC" , this is the crux to the entire hypothesis. at this point of time i would urge all of my one reader to go through the transcript in extensive detail and to remain focused, once you have done that get back here pronto, to continue with the preview/review of the exciting new version of Windows 2020(aka "Wolfgang Amadeus").

the essential feature of "Wolfgang Amadeus" here onwards called as win2020 is borrowed from Sun vision, ie. Network is the Computer. this "SETABORTPROC" is the most critical component of the design. the microsoft has developed code which will hook onto the WMF "vulnerability" and search for other desktop pc's and servers running the new operating system. once such a desktop is identified, the new code launches itself on both the desktops and they in turn search for other pc's with this operating system. essentially turning the entire internet into a single grid computer, with such enormous computing power, and high availability. As most of you,who, live on the planet earth , are aware that the earth rotates and revolves around the sun,giving us day and night. why did i bring that up here in a discussion on operating systems..hang on, it is highly relevant. the high availability which i talked off, is high availability on a follow the sun(solar sun, not the sun systems) pattern. as people are switching of pcs and going of to sleep, there are other people waking up and putting on their pcs.

so all you gentle folks, please take away this crazy paranoid thought that microsoft has built in a backdoor. but be enormously thrilled that you are all alpha or beta testers for windows 2020.

and why is Microsoft doing this? because they will be using this enormous grid of computers to compile the new operating sytem codename "Ant Walker" to be released in the year 2030. I would be doing a review of "ant walker" latter on.

Pulse of the blog ecosystem

2006-01-13T14:14:00.000+05:30

have you ever wanted to get a feel of what are the blogs around, how popular your blog is and profile of the blogger/bloggers? i just came across this site called the blogpulse. click here for the site.

i have visited this site, there seems to be so many options and features available.

quite a lot of the blog resources ("directories") are managed manually, ie someone updates or punches in the url of a blog and then the blog gets updated into database of blogs.

this is the second site where i have come across where there is an automated process of searching and additions of blogs. the first being blogshares.com
i have not seen any categorization option in blogpulse, maybe i need to search more or deeper. Blogshares.com on the other hand has an active categorization process, being handled by the game players and this categorization is in turn moderated by game players who have achieved a certain level of expertise in evaluating such categorization. an exciting game, this blogshares.com and very addictive. just to bleat about it i had managed to reach the top 20 players in the game before the "market crash" and now i do not seem to have the time to play this full time. but i still do spend some time on this once in a while.

getting back to blogpulse.com there are few nifty tools available, Trend Search: gives you ability to plot graphs on blogs based on search terms, Featured Trends : to quote the site "one-click answer to the simple question: "What’s
the buzz?" ", Conversation Tracker: creates a threaded view of the millions of "conversations" taking place on the internet(WOW!),Blogpulse Profiles(this is beta) helps the users find more in-depth information about specific blogs and their authors. the profile did not find much for this blog or for my photoblog

and interesting place this one. keep an eye on this one.

Technorati Tags: blogpulse, blogshares

Microsoft, Apple Sign 5-Year Software Pact

2006-01-13T13:50:00.000+05:30

i jumped out of my pants, when i saw this item. was wondering if this was a prank. zoomed into the article and it seems to be looking serious. guys get serious. what is all this about?

find the link to the article here

all this while i was searching to see if i can get max os to work on my intel pc and this happens.(i am not serious here)

this happens only in the us of a, a new spin on spam

2006-01-12T11:19:00.000+05:30

Supreme Court refuses to hear Univ. of Texas spam case - Computerworld

this is the original link from where i picked up this new article.

Some sanity in usa. the land of might is right and anyone gets to have his 15 minutes of fame. land where (this is the perception) anything goes and no one can question.

i, for one am happy to hear this. wonder what the spammer's will come up with next?

or would the next bunch of people to come up to the supreme court come with an argument that law cannot stop one from killing/raping/murdering people because of the following reason

a) guess i am not qualified enough to get a new spin on the existing law, and figure out a way of getting a loop hole.
b) reason 2, bloody hell, i just want to take a chance and see if i can get this through.
c) wait and watch.

Jethro Tull

2006-01-09T13:39:00.000+05:30

Jethro Tull is to play in mumbai, on 31st jan 2006 and Feb 1 2006. this was the new which was published yesterday morning. i saw this article only in the evening as i was out. quite a few of the FM channels were playing jethro tull and we were wondering what this was all about, never heard Jethro Tull much on the FM's of mumbai.

Ian Anderson has stated that he is an Indophile and loves curry! not that i care much what he likes to eat. What i care for is his music, the man is a god (!? :) )

i still remember the day i got my first paycheck, and going out to the HMV on brigade road, Bangalore and picking up my first Jethro Tull tape, Aqualung.
the title track aqualung, locomotive breath, cross-eyed mary. amazing stuff.

the name jeffrey hammond-hammond, a wonderful name.. a "song for Jeffrey" kind of wonderful song, and Ian Anderson flute is magic.

will i attend the concert? guess not. why? i prefer to listen to music rather than watch music.

Technorati Tags: jethrotull, bangalore, HMV, Mumbai, Concert, tull

Image database search using a drawing interface

2006-01-05T14:29:00.000+05:30

Imagine searching a database of images by drawing what you are searching for. Retrievr seems to be a Flickr hack. prediction for the furture of this technology?

this will evolve into a future of visual database searches, someone is right now working on a system where in a person will wear a digital-tactile glove with a wireless connectivity to a huge database of images (has images loaded on from the time the first image was recorded on any media, starting from daguerreotype, the first film, first 8mm, every single frame that has been ever recorded by humankind)

and how will the digitial-tactile glove work as an input device, you wave your hands in the air, drawing images of what you want in the air.

the software quickly scans the database and starts displaying all the images which it can find on the huge 3000 square feet projection display system.

Apple coming into storage?

2006-01-03T13:43:00.000+05:30

Apple seems to be coming into the storage business, one of the testimonial is given below. the bench mark for selection? "gut" feel that it is the right technology. guess this is one of the time i am seeing someone truly admitting to the reason for going in for a particular hardware/software. instead of giving a lot of bull supported with benchmarks reports, test analysis etc

South Park turns to Apple for new storage setup - Computerworld

looks good , so should be good. J.J. Franzen , we hail you for being honest!

the neat peice of storage can be viewed here
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, xserveraid

invisibility cloaks

2006-01-02T12:07:00.000+05:30

Quite of few of us who had seen the james bond movie, (i am not great remembering names of movies. i think it was "Die Another Day".) were quite thrilled to see his car turn invisible. and those of us who take thoughts forward and like to figure out howstuffworks, there is a post on "How Invisibility Cloaks Work"

the technology is in nascent stages of evolution, guess in another couple of years time this technology should be fully evolved.
howstuffworks.com have given quite a decent writeup on this one.
what would i use this for? may be for birding.

maybe in the future nikon d200M30P models would have this as part of the special software download, which would convert your fancy bio-digital 30 gigapixel camera into a invisibility cloak generator.

and pray what is a bio-digital camera and how does one make a bio-digital sensor? in the year 2009 the pundits in the photo industry realize that the limits of ccd and cmos technology's have reached its peak and there was no other technology which could excite consumers to purchase a new camera, then one of the technicians in nikon sneezes onto a experimental mixture of chemicals which he was working on, his boss gets upset with him and send him off because, that sneeze had costed nikon r department about half a million dollars.

the boss-man keeps this mixture out near a source of microwave radiation and goes home, next day in the morning he see an image of ceiling reflected in this petri dish of chemicales, very excited and starts working on this and discovers bio-digital sensors,of course the guy who sneezed was given the credit for this, but his life was made miserable for the next 2 years, as he was not allowed to get his cold cured, and he was the only source of the virii which could produce this material.

so this a brief note on how the bio-digital sensors came about into existance, and the other foot-note to history, this was the year when canon closed down their imaging business and moved into manufacturing batteries for cars. this was the year when kodak moved from imaging business to be become the worlds biggest photo stock an trader of images.

Technorati Tags: invisibilitycloaks, howstuffworks, photography

a new one. instablogs

2005-12-30T22:28:00.000+05:30

i came across instablogs.com today, was looking at the blogging formats employeed and i thought to my self, maybe this instead of struggling with moving everthing i own in the blogsphere to here. and then i read the splash page on instablog.org and i says it is by invite.

Dammmmmm!

well ladies and gentlemen, can i invite myself in?

Technorati Tags: instablogs, uninvited

for the birdies amongst us

2005-12-30T17:15:00.000+05:30

there is an exciting race which is scheduled on january 22nd 2006 in mumbai, the HSBC Mumbai Bird Race. this is the second time the event is being organised in mumbai. and seems to have become an annual event.

last time there were about 277 species of birds spotted ! bravo birders!.

where to get more info on this? click here "HSBC Mumbai Bird Race"

Technorati Tags: Birding, BirdRace, Mumbai

Turking

2005-12-30T17:14:00.000+05:30

Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it. Choose from thousands of tasks, control when you work, and decide how much you earn.

this statement was what caught my eye.

i have taken the definition of "turking" from blogshares.com , you can find a list of blog/blogger who are writting about "turking" here

Definition:
Turking is an act of accomplishing Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) on
Amazon Mechanical Turk. Workers are paid for the numbers of HITs they
accomplish. Since the Nov. 2005 launch of Amazon Mechanical Turk,
turking has become a popular online activity for many college students
and computer enthusiasts.

a very interesting concept. i can see the future were in lot of people would get involved into turking. the profile of people currently seem to be like the definition college students and "geeks"(?!).

i can see a future were in there would be new companies formed, whose main source of income would be from turking. would they be looking at outsourcing this activity to people who are looking for work? possibly the companies formed would hire infrastructure, possibly high bandwidth, have remote access servers to which hundreds of college students and techno-managers with spare time would be connecting to handle HIT's.

why do i think companies would be get into this business?

one simple fact, currently there is a process of qualification based on which a HIT is assigned to a person, the companies would have a higher turn around time in archiving and building on this qualification requirement. (by the way i had qualified to handle a few hits, and the first one i took was for a man who wanted to decide if he looked good with a beard or without a beard, in case this is accepted i guess i will be richer by $0.01)

i guess more qualified you/entity are, more HIT's will be assigned to you.

for an organization, this would be one continuous stream of HIT's

will pen more on this latter. but one this is sure, this is one definite activity which will be on peoples radar for some time. this could turn out to be as popular as RAP music.

Technorati Tags: Turking, Amazon

trying the performancings blog this page

2005-12-30T17:13:00.000+05:30

I was just waiting for something like this. I guess it should be soon available in india.

Boing Boing: Kill-A-Watt electrical usage meter

Technorati Tags: firefox, extentions, performancing

on the roll

2005-12-29T16:44:00.000+05:30

i have not blogged so much in one day as i have done today. and i started blogging in november 2004.

i guess this is because of the convenience of PerFormancing extension for firefox.

viva la PerFormancing

Test post using Performancing for firefox 1.5

2005-12-29T13:04:00.000+05:30

This is just a test post to check out how performancing for firefox 1.5 works....looks good so far!

update 29th dec 2005.

still getting used to this interface, looks extremely powerful and convenient to use. maybe i can get to figure out how to connect to blogzy.com blog and transfer my content from blogger to blogzy.

why am i looking at moving to blogzy? one simple reason, categories which blogger does not seem to have and the work around's seem to be involve lot of work. currently i am maintaining a number of individual blogs just because i want to categories the contents in a particular way.

i have been working with firefox for quite sometime now, i am a FAN.

the firefox extensions are amazing. performancing for firefox is great and you can find it here at

Performancing

Technorati Tags: Performancing, firefox, blogginginterface

On photography and people

2005-12-29T09:57:00.000+05:30

not sure what exactly that i want to post. i have been working on 2 ideas for my normal humor/sci-fi writing, have been cooking this for about 10-15 days not much progress.

i seem to have got over the craze of playing blogshares.com. and this is giving me some time. i still log in every now and then. after about 10 months on this wonderful game, i am getting back to photography, and you guessed it....blogging.

(just a footnote in the history of blogshares, i had reached the 20th richest player about a month back. and now since the market crash i have been pushed down to what? 30? 36? place, the new turks are on the rampage give the old rich players a run for their money)
today i was browsing through the forum at jjmehta.com

and it was wonderful to see all the great photographers and their photos.

and posted one which i was working on...using a br-2a and a 50 mm nikkor reversed on a d70.

came across a guy going by the nic of "The Rider" and he reminded me of abijeet, the one whose blog is linked to the right of this post. Going through his blog i got a link to his wifes blog, and man i was crying after seeing the posts there...she was talking of walking around on brigade road and other great places in bangalore. and this is Priti's blog

i guess i am really missing bangalore.(or bengaloore or whatever they want to change the name to) wonder if Pecos pub is still around,they had a gobi manchurian which was absolutly out of the world, never had it so good anywhere else. dry and crisp went wonderfull with the beer.

Indian, the burger joint on st.patricks complex, "stars and stripes" in the same complex, the man running the place used to make apple pie once in a while and it was mind blowing, i was lucky couple of times when i was there(before marriage) that i got to eat this pie.

fanoos kebab rolls, his beef masala and roti was wonderful, the wet spots you see on these pages are my saliva....drool droooool.

there was this tiny mallu joint somewhere at the back of wilson garden, the food was real cheap, and quantity was big and quality was wonderful. hygine forget it! i think this place was called "Saigo"

enough about the food and bangalore( watch out bangalore i should be visiting soon!!)

i am still trying to figure out photoediting, it is slightly more than a year since i had picked up the d-70, still figuring out monitor caliberation. i have a feeling that this time i will be getting a hang of it.

had a wonderful day, this christmas, had a few friends home over, gala time, no booze, only veg food and also some jain food going around!! in the evening was invited by kumar to view the puja for the pilgrims who are heading for shabrimalai. kumar was one of the participant in the event.

and the event? fire walking! for those who have been looking at my photoblog, they would remember photos of a similar event 25th december 2005.

will post the photos soon.

guess that's it for now.

Technorati Tags: bangalore, food, memories

Himalaya pictures

2005-12-28T23:24:00.000+05:30

i was trawling the net and i came across a post on ramesh dhami! on a blog. have given the link here On the Edge - René Seifert's Insights: Exhibition in Bangalore: Himalaya Pictures

having seen a few of dhami's pictures, this must have been an absolute fantastic show.(not this shows one)

i guess this is one more reason why i need to look at bangalore! missing out on a lot of stuff there.

on the other side, life if real interesting in mumbai. from a different point of view, i have met lot of amazing people from tania's school. the parents, the teachers(didi's) a great man called Manoj Lekhi, a person who is sooooo active in ISP and SSY and the school.

all such high energy people. so charged.

keeping in touch

2005-12-15T18:12:00.000+05:30

Posting here after a long time. This is just to let blogger know that i am still around. I have been totally bogged down with work and personal commitments.

In the last few months i have spent quite some time travelling, have been to ooty,coonor, mudhumalai, mysore,ganapatipule,cochin. these are some of the places i can recollect off hand.

I have become an uncle to a beautiful little girl.

my daughter has been awarded the yellow belt in karate, she is 4 years old!

work has been continiously interesting. the chinese curse which goes "may you live in interesting times"

i have been spending quite some time in photography. also thinking of taking up a formal course in photography.

have started working on macro photography(or photo micrography as it is known) have posted a sample of a dead fly i found in the house at http://pvvpics.blogspot.com

i have not picked up a macro lense. i am doing macro photography using a lense reversal ring, br-2a for nikon, reversing a 50mm 1.8 lense onto a d70.

a few rounds of this has convinced me to start saving for a macro lense. he he.

with a br-2a all metering and auto features of d70 disappears and it becomes a manual camera!

till the macro lense comes in guess it is nikons br-2a to the rescue.

I have been regularly posting images here

2005-08-03T23:50:00.000+05:30

I had very briefly met the actress Sonali Kulkarni at a birthday party of a friends neice.

2005-08-03T23:43:00.000+05:30

this a photo of my daughter take a few days back.. just before the rains. a very thoughtful mood!

hard rain

2005-07-27T11:44:00.000+05:30

last 48 hours has been a wierd,wonderful,scary and a real crazy time. hopes...simple wishes...a wish to be with your family, a wish to be with you child, a wish that your loved ones are safe whereever they are.

i guess i know what noah went through with his ark'ction, man..966 mm (96.6 cms or about 38 inches) of rain in a 24 hour period.

Naina was to pickup our daughter tania from the school, she was caught up in unmovable(sic) traffic about a km from the house. then i ventured out, with about 5 other friends, managed about 4-5 km in a small car, in about 12-16 inches of water, and then we came across a road which had turned into a river.

we could not drive the car here. we got out and tried walking across the river/road and that was one scary experience. the currents were so strong, but the friendly helpful people of mumbai were using ropes to help people get across to the other side.

one scary visual here. a road normally packed with cars,autos, buses, lorries and what nots, was deserted towards one side,(and on the other side cars and other automobiles floating in water), nothing was visible except water for a distance of about 2 km. and on this waterway i seen a solitary man dressed up in rainwear, walking on the edge of the road. knowing the condition of the road's in mumbai(dug up roads and uncovered drains)about 40 people raised their voice as one, warning this man about the perils of walking on the edge of his life?

then we make it back to the office as there was no other option. and this was a difficult journey, water levels had risen further. driving was tougher the earlier venture. a canal ment to carry the excess rain water started overflowing and caused hard flowing water.

we met our daughter after 48 hours today. we dropped about 5 of her class mates back to their houses. one of the area was still slighly flooded out. the people are trying to get their houses in order.

the roads were clear of water and traffic in the morning...0700 hrs.

in a 2 km stretch of road i must have come across about 3000-4000 abandoned vehicles along the sides of the road, some in the middle of the road.

i have noticed the civic infrastructure teams starting to work at a few places, moving cars from the middle of the road, getting it towed out of the way. clearing up bodies of dead animals.

last two days people of mumbai were so helpful to each other. supporting strangers and helping, and i belive at a few places people were singing song to pep up the people trying to walk home.

today the people of mumbai are slowly limping back to normalcy.

infrastructure is still scratchy, medical shops are opening up at a few places, bread and milk does not seem to be available.

i saw the sun come out a few times in the last hour or so. with a few patches of rain.

p.s : i have been trying to upload this for the last 3-4 days..no luck. whats up blogger.com??

Who are you

2005-05-23T14:19:00.000+05:30

When you are down and out and feel that you need to quit, sometime, you come across people who are there to pull you up, encourage you, prod you to go on and not give up.
Guess this has happened to lot of people in real life. And most of the time you call these people family.

So what’s the big deal? Right?

Now close your eyes imagine that you are in a game, intensively competitive, everyone trying to get an edge over the other, to be the alltime top player, best player for the month or whatever.

You are in trouble, you are not progressing, you are stuck for ideas. Now imagine the same things happening to you in real life, happens to you in a GAME?

WTF?

This is game right, and in a game people are supposed to be aggressive with no quarter give and non expected. In real life they are all "nice", and games are places where people are “supposed” to let out aggression.

Blogshares is an aggressive game. Played by some extremely helpful, some not so helpful, some indifferent to what’s happening around and some thoughtful fun loving people.

I have never come across such a bunch of humorous, supportive, aggressive and helpful people, who seem to thrive in teaching the newcomers, welcoming the new players. (Actually I dont think this happens in real life). But these are all real people!

I have seen some of them answering the same question put by multiple newcomers with smiles (or :) ).

The guys maintaining the site are doing it on their own time. There are volunteers who help out by contributing their time and skills.

I wonder why? For the love of the game, maybe. For the sheer thrill of working with similar minded people.

I feel like I am at home. The game is addictive as are the people.

Player nickname : Judge Fred
Player Id : 26422
Category : BlogShares Community

What have i gotten into, mate?

2005-05-05T13:57:00.000+05:30

I had never heard of blogshares.com until a few months back. How and why did I landup on blogshares.com?

Like a lot of things that have been happening in my life, this was, once again a coincidence. One day when I had a lot of time on my hand, I was looking for a directory of blogs, to get a feel of what the rest of the universe was blogging about. This was a few months after I had started blogging!

I searched the net, went to a few blog directories listed out by the search engine, most of them did not interest me much, a few more clicks and I landed up here.

HOW WAS I TO KNOW THAT THIS WAS THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP?

A few clicks, got myself registered. I had checked into Hotel California.

I have sold my soul to a game!

My life is revolving around this game. I started blogging and now I am just blogshare(s)ing! The last few posts in my blog were about, (take a wild guess here), blogshares.

Considering the fact that I have never been much into computer games, I had never imagined that I would get hooked on to Blogshares.

I never thought that I would bust a pulmonary artery when I see numbers like 120, 80, 323. By the way these are the tiny number of ideas which keep popping up in expensive industries and your keyboard skills come into picture trying to buy them of the “market” before anyone else does.

I must be crazy, refreshing the screen every few minutes trying to see if any ideas have dropped or been sold by an existing holder.

I had never cussed my ISP, until I lost out on picking up a few great ideas because someone else was operating with better net infrastructure.

Where I used to spend time reading or thinking up “creative” fictional writing for my blog, now I am spending time plotting and planning on how to increase my virtual wealth.

Take a look at me now, sitting and writing up about blogshares.com.

This really is “Hotel California” , and I am sure the owners of blogshares.com were the original members of “Eagles”

To have a look at how i have been spending my time at blogshares, check out my BlogShare CV

Player nickname : Judge Fred
Player Id : 26422
Category : BlogShares Insanity

one more on blogshares.com

2005-04-23T12:24:00.000+05:30

still playing blogshares. an interesting couple of weeks, have managed to break the trillion mark. with help from some of the players who have been here for quite sometime now and have breached the multi-trillion mark.

a very interesting game. and so many helpful people around. if this was happening in real life wonder what would happen to the world?

i am finding the concept of gifting economy very interesting. i have started practicing this in the real world

slightly less than 2 months to break the trillion mark. wonder where this will go from here!

signing off for now. and you can guess that i am playing blogshares.com rather than blogging!!

one month on blogshares

2005-04-04T13:39:00.000+05:30

i have now been slightly more than a month on blogshares.com.

i have realised something funny. the way i have been playing blogshares reflects the way i have been handling my real life finances.

sometimes stupid, othertimes more stupid.

right now, i am using blogshares as a place where i can fine tune my personal finance handling skills.

what are the realisations so far

a) money makes money
b) think big , if you want to make big money
c) going after the safer smaller returns options continues to keep you a smaller safer person, but not rich

and an act of chance/fate (yesterday), a friend of mine give me a summary of a book,i think it was called "rich dad,poor dad" and this summary seems to confirm my realisations.

note to self : get this book.

so based on my "realisation",today i have made some "serious investment"(at least for me) which have reduced my blogshare networth substantially.

the objective over the next 10-12 day is to get returns back on this "serious investment"

more latter, on how i fare and if my intutions on the above financial wisdom is right.

Lady Laila

2005-03-08T17:20:00.000+05:30

Lady Laila started blogging on Saturday, April 26, 2003; little did she realize what she was getting into.

Lady Laila joined blogshare on 24th Jul 2004. Little did she know where she was going to be.

September 30, 2004, Lady Laila's blog was nominated as Philippine Blog entry into the Annual Philippine Blog Awards and the blog made it to the Semi-Finals.

The first feel of the blog, was like standing on the edge of an abyss; you know the feeling one gets when one is about to loose one’s balance? You see everything that is happening to her, you get to see how her mind works.

I am looking into the soul of another human, no filters no masks.

The Blog is a central part of Lady Laila’s life, and a very essential part of her daily life.

The look and feel of the blog:

- the background though essentially an yin and yang arrangement of the floral design could go easy on some of the darker colors used

- the archive links are organized easy

- all that, which has played an important part in Lady Laila’s life have been organized into the “Life’s Journey”

And hey she is doing good, making real money out of a game and using it to help real world people. Kudos to her.
An very interesting use of “THE GAME”.

blogshares frenzy

2005-03-04T17:38:00.000+05:30

this one is a review. of a nice, cool and an exciting place on the net.an addictive stockmarket game on the net.

this is just like the real commodities market. only difference is that the commodity traded in are blogs.

i got on to this by accident, when i was trying to get traffic moving on to my blog.

last few days have been crazy. i have stopped blogging and just working on increasing my blog $'s.
concept is simple.

blogshares is a place where you trade in blogs. this is a fantasy stock market , where on registeration you are given 500 blog $'s. you play with this $ 500 ; invest in blog shares ,buy,sell and increase your blog wealth, stuff like in the regular stock market.

if you have have a blog of your own, then you can claim ownership and start trading. this is were the difference comes in, this is like having your own company, you can issue shares, bonds and increase your company's market valuation.

considering that this is not real money , it still gives you a real kick is you pituitary glands .

there are actual blogshare trillion'ers. nice people they are(i mean most of the interaction i have had and based on what i have observed), if some one likes you, they might even gift you a couple of billion blog $'s.

the few things which i have figured out so far are

a) there is something called the shares, these are shares in a blog

b) there are something called as industry, an industry is basically a classification of the blog
ie. a blog on india would be part of an industry called india. or a blog on humour would be part of an industry called as humour( were your surprised??)

c) there is something called the idea, i am still grappling with the idea(!) here. i think an idea is basically a blog entry which a person makes into the blog. investing in ideas seem to be the way to add wealth to yourself. the price moves up and down like in a real stock market, more rare an idea, more valuable it is, as the coolkats of the blog world want to buy and collect rare ideas.. more detailed stuff on this is put on the blogshares help page.

d) there is something called as an artefact which i have still not checked out nor have i figured out what this is yet, why? why because i dont have the moola,( yet!)

e) your interaction on blogshares (like voting a blog into a specific industry based on the content, earns you karma points(?) and chips

f) chips are the currency of the blogmarket. one correct vote give you 1 chip and i belive the going rate of a chip is about $25M (and M is million what else?)

i am just a couple of days into this, i am still wonderstruck just thinking of the mathematical/ computer model which is running in the background.

mind blogging(!) stuff.

there are a set of people working in the background, working on the maths of how the markets would move in the real world. checking out the forums i see that there is lot of interaction on evolving the game further.

just get to blogshares.com and get hooked yourself's.

I have seen the future

2005-02-25T22:25:00.001+05:30

And it scares me.

Post reading the serious stuff in today’s news paper (the cartoon's lah), I turned to the crappy stuff which comes along with the news paper. Lo and Behold, what do I see?

I see a future which John Connor’s had. (Remember Sara Connor’s son? From the Terminator movies?)

Four bits of information has hit me today, I think I will take half a byte and make it into a blog.

One : the availability of a virtual girlfriend on a mobile phone
Two : a product called de Bono Thinking 24x7™
Three : work going on in the field of tactile recognition and force feedback
Four : the work Honda is doing on robotics

I can see that you are wondering as to where I am going with these little piggies.

With all kind of mergers and acquisitions happening around, at such an hectic accelerate pace I might add, how long do you think it will be before all these technologies belong to bill gates (or who ever else is there in the future) ?

When this happens, you will have an Asimo, running dBT 24x7™ having full functional tactile recognition system (with force feedback of course) and who talks intelligent.

This by itself is not scary, but envisage a future filled with such Replicants? You get it now?

Anyone remember the movie “Blade Runner”?

Anyone’s thoughts went to Isaac Asimov when reading this? And did the book “I, Robot” pop into your mind?

I hope the guys who would be working on the future “Replicants” remember the three laws.

There already seems to be dissent on the three laws of robotics.

I have seen the future and it works.

this thing about westerns

2005-02-22T20:10:00.000+05:30

i was a fan of western novel's, by westerns i mean the shoot'em up cowboy stuff. i grew up on the sackett, sudden, dusty fog, "the KID" and waco lore, they were my friends.

admiring and yet hating the apache's and comache's tracking skills.these were the people i grew up with.

Sudden was a hero, he was fast on the draw. then i met Cap Dusty Fog. he was also fast, i mean real fast. wonder what would have happened if Sudden had met Dusty. mostly they would have gone after the bad guys together(after all they were the good guys)

the heroes on the frontier could do no wrong, they would help any lady in distress,irrespective of the said lady's primary source of income. they understood that the ladies did not choose to do what they did.

the heroes were always clean shaven and took care of their horse before they settled down for the day,never crapped,rarely had a bath,even though it was hot and dirty. this sure was an ideal world to live in, where right was might.

then i met this guy, they called him Herne the Hunter. this guy's life gets into a mess about 3 pages into the book. his wife gets raped by a rail crew, her life is derailed(no offence to anyone but pun intented), somewhere during the next few pages she kills herself.

then "the Hunter" gets after the guys who railroaded his wife. i think it takes another 6 books before he finishes the job.

"the Hunter" goes after the bad guys along with his neighbour, who drinks a lot and has wet dreams while on the sleeping on the range, and loves killing "redskin" as he "affectionately" calls the native indians. the neighbours other fancy was beating up ladies who work the nights.

you get a drift of the kind of stuff i am talking about? right?

it was somewhere during this time that i kind of lost the facination for the west.

it has never been the same since i met Herne the Hunter, a mighty fine man he was, if i may say so myself. quick on the draw, a man who used to get angry, used to feel dirty till he took a bath, a man who used to get hungry.

just a man like anyone of us.

blog,search and get paranoid

2005-02-21T13:40:00.001+05:30

googol is a number followed by 100 zeros, this by itself should have triggered of a paranoid reaction. who wants to know about such a big number, even gate's money is not measured in googol.

in the begining there was the written word. did it ever happen to you that a letter you sent or was sent to you, was never delivered?

then there was the electronic word. did it ever happen to you that a email you sent or was sent to you, was never delivered. there you were, sitting smugly on your arse blaming the spam filter.

i,due to my immense awareness, got by being continously one with the universe, have divined the essential truth about search engines and blog's. by the end of this note you will realise that mail was just version 1 of their project plan and does not warrent a serious discussion, as it was insignificant in the scheme of things.

Ah, the search engine,you think that you are using them to your advantange,for your own good? think again my simple minded simian sibling. this is what they WANT you to think.

THEY are recording and analysing everything you search for, if you have used a search engine at least 4 times by now, they already know how you think, what your desires are, and they know what you want to hide from other people.

if you have used it more than 4 time then even your deepest,darkest filthy perversions are know to THEM.

think about it, do you think they are giving you access to a search engine for free because they love you? no,no my innocent little child, they want to get into your mind, they want to steal your soul.

you have been blogged and logged,my online friend.

blogging is a natural extention to the search engine. why should THEY waste time analysing what you search, when THEY can directly get your thoughts and experiences, from you,you, who have been blissfully blogging your life out.

before blogging was made available people used to die and go to heaven. did you ever wonder why?

there is this huge complex of cross-relativity biological computers somewhere. (a technology so advanced that it it not even a twinkel in intel eye, and even i cannot comprehend its workings, one thing i know is that, it is not based on von neumann architecture).

dare i speak my mind out?

let me whisper my thoughts, out there somewhere in andromeda galaxy, is the ultra powerful computer running a complex algorithm which is extracting, refining and extrapolating our blog's , and building mirror images of us bloggers for "experiments". have you noticed that our life span have increased tremendously in the last 10-15 years? THEY dont need us anymore.

now you know that heaven is in andromeda, and now you know why people used to die and go to "heaven".(it was for the "experiment" duh!)

with the advent of blogging they have reduced the transportation cost of bodies, the guy on andromeda who invented the blog was nominated as the employee of the week and he was given a check of 200 andromedean dollars.

viva la blogging.

think before you type, for you know not where your thought can land.

Atlantis discovered and the Mars Farts

2005-02-19T18:02:00.002+05:30

From the beginning of the recorded human history there was this talk of the lost continent of Atlantis. I believe that this is true.

I also believe that we have been looking at the wrong place for the lost continent, and I believe that we have been looking for the wrong object.

I am putting forward two pieces of information, based on which I will draw up a potential hypotheses and a loosely woven story as to what happened millions of years ago.(but i must confess that this is all just part of my collective subconscious and is not based on any personal experience or any direct interaction or observation)

The first piece of information:

Quoting from a website "Plato in 350 B.C described Atlantis in various dialogues as per his descriptions the Atlanteans were a wealthy, successful, politically advanced and militarily powerful society that overrun Europe with their armies, being only defeated and repulsed by the Greeks. Shortly afterwards an earthquake caused Atlantis to sink beneath the ocean. Plato recounts the story of Egyptian priests who 200 years earlier had reportedly described Atlantis as a powerful island empire seeking to dominate the Mediterranean world more than 9,000 years before Plato's time."

The second piece of information:

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there is something called the asteroid belt, this is the largest collection of asteroids orbiting our Sun. Hundreds of thousands of asteroids, none with a diameter of over 1,000 kilometers, and only sixteen of them over 240 km, spin around the Sun.

The hypotheses :

In the vast seas of our solar system there existed a planet called Atlantis, this between Mars and Jupiter. This planet was extremely wealthy, successful, politically advanced and militarily powerful society, with a very highly advanced science and weapon technologies.

The scientists of Atlantis were monitoring a planet( 3rd from the sun, around which 9 planets orbit, or is it ten?) they had big plans for this planet, the bio-probes they had sent from Atlantis were mixing all kind of organic chemicals and they landed up with a set of 4 new hydrocarbon chains, they called it Vadinine, Thighmine, Sitosine, Gauvanine(over thousands of years the true names have been lost and we now know then under a different name, Watson and Kirk almost got it right).

One of the pointy hat Johnnies started mixing and matching these 4, threw in little bit of electricity and voila, life was born and things have been evolving every since.

In the meantime there were signs of impending doom on Atlantis, there was a certain mutant strain of a virus which was slowly wiping out the entire race of Atlanteans (the 3rd rock infection, they called it, 'cause this was imported from the 3rd rock from the sun, duh!).

A few Atlanteans decided that it was time for some of them to move out of the home planet and get to a safe place (of course after getting vaccinated and getting necessary custom clearances). They decided on this blue planet covered with H20. And they decided to call it Earth.

At first there was light! (while you read the below, keep your copy of Genesis open next to you, you will be amazed at the similarities in thought process)

A limited number of people (you can guess the demographic profile of these guys right? Guys like Atlantean Bush, and other VVIP’s) get up on a spaceship and land up on planet Earth.

In the mean time back on Atlantis, the crazed mob (the universe is such a small place,after all) decides to hijack the most powerful weapon on Atlantis, and after the capture they accidentally set it off (there was this one button on the bomb which said "do not touch" and you know what happens when someone tells you not to do something, somethings never change) and blew the entire planet of Atlantis into tiny pieces of rock, these rocks still orbit around in the solar system between Mars and Jupiter, if you look closely, you may find a few calcified skeletons too, one of them would be having a smiling face and would be holding a piece of metal and a plastic button on which the words "Do not touch" is written in bold red letters.

There is this one theory that goes to explain why the guy pressed the button,the theory goes that the 3rd rock infection made the Atlanteans color blind(this has never been conclusively proved due to the lack of willing atlanteans for the study) and this guy thought that pressing this button would get him a cup of coffee.

The Atlanteans who have traveled to Earth were heart broken that the mother planet was lost forever( and they cursed the day coffee was discovered).

Over the next thousands of years they start interacting with the Neanderthal man and the Homo sapiens, and they decided that homo sapiens had a better chance of evolving into something worthwhile. They terminated (with extreme prejudice) the Neanderthal man in a shameful black bag operation and then the homo sapiens flourished.

They kept feeding in technological inputs to homo sapiens. Atlanteans indulged in some serious R&R (what is now called as getting a nookie or a quickie) with the locals, this accounts for a few deviants in the homo sapiens race, guys like Genghis khan, Einstein etc. You can guess the other folks on earth who carry the original Atlantean genes.

Somewhere during this time (give or take a million years) they decided to clear out the dino’s from planet earth,(there you see, one more, till now, unexplained mystery solved, the stuff about ice age and meteorite striking the earth were just cover stories, (the file for this operations ("Operation Medium Rare") will be open for public reading in another 2 million years).

The debauchery recorded here are so shamefull, the entire race has still not forgotten this big party which happened a few million year back, and they shudder when then think of all the dino steaks they had that shameful day.

Some of the Atlanteans on their R&R(they liked their scotch neat) kept talking of their lost planet, and when they were sober, using simple analogies they explained to the Homo sapiens about Atlantis, they told stories about their lost planet. The homo sapiens were finding it difficult to understand what planets were, or what an Mass Degenerating Weapon was (WDM, guys do you see what is happening? not much has changed), the Atlanteans used examples of an island in the middle of the sea, stuff the homo sapiens could relate to. The homo sapiens were told that the this island disappeared in an earthquake.

The homo sapiens started inducting this into their bedtime stories and the legend of the Island of Atlantis was born.

Just to record a few famous atlanteans who are still part of our collective subconscious , remember

- Ra the Egpytian sun god
- Zeus
- Apollo
- Hercules
- Atlas
and guys like that.

if you research deeply you would find similar characters appearing in most of the earth's religious folklore.

p.s. the methane emission on mars, makes me think that something bad is going on,on mother earth, are the original Atlanteans moving onto Mars from earth? about the methane signature observered on Mars, was this an accidental leak from the sewage system of an Atlantean colony on Mars. Time will tell.

signing of for now, earth date feb 21,2005

Tread softly earth children

2005-02-19T16:13:00.002+05:30

(This entry has been encrypted with a human DNA sequence, only genuine human would be able to read it, THEY would not be able to read or decipher the contents of this post, in fact this is one of the test which can determine who THEY are. If you see anything printed below this line then you pass)

THE END.

(The above is what I would like to call the sentry sentence or the second level of alien defence.)

The END.

It is my solemn duty to bring to the attention of all human kind that we have aliens living amongst us. By the end of this note you will have irrefutable proof of their existence.

Let me begin at the beginning, so that all of you fellow humans can understand my profound and dismaying discovery.

I have realized that all the movies on aliens, all the books on aliens, all that erik von daniken had written was true. It is only those few amongst us who have a highly developed sense of the unknown and true cognitive abilities, have intuited the state of affairs. All the humans who have intuited it earlier have been strangely been keeping quite. Is it that these humans are being threatened? I do not know.

I am compelled by my conscience that I revel what I know,for the greater good of human kind.

I shall just put down what I have seen and understood, you be the judge.

I had always wondered about this guy in the office he did not seem to “normal” as defined by us. He used to keep looking dreamy and he was always smiling, he was always happy, to top it up he used to be helpful to others.

I talked to him on a number of occasions around the office coffee machine, when ever he spoke I used to feel very uncomfortable, those ugly thoughts of his filled with unnatural feeling towards others. He talked of people being in love with everyone, helping everyone. A place were no fossil fuels were burnt, the air was breathable, no disease, no inequality. The worst thing he suggested was that all of us have the inherent right to remain happy through out our life.

He started quoting from some books; he used to call them Bible, Koran, Gita and a lot more books whose names I have purged from my shivering mind.

The final proof of this species living amongst us.

Do you recollect my first post(“Musing caused by a Raindrop”)? Tthe simplified theory of bathroom(life) usage states that if there is an option, two men would always like to pee with at least one free urinal between them.

This guy in the office always used to stand in the urinal next to me EVERYTIME, I mean every time. Even if the whole place was empty, he would choose the urinal next to me and be happy about it.

This is when it struck me, that there is something weird going on.It was worse than what I had thought earlier.

This was the last straw that broke this camels back, and I stopped being seen with him and I stopped talking to him. What would people say if they saw me talking to him?

I started observing other people more closely, and strangely enough I found similar sort of behavior among different people, I was now getting scared. There were so many people who did not mind peeing, standing next to each other, even though there were other free urinals.

“What is happening around here?” were my confused thoughts.

Fundamental theory of life (unified theory of peeing) states that

"NO HUMAN CAN STAND NEXT TO ANOTHER HUMAN AND PEE, EVEN THOUGH THERE IS SO MANY UNSUED URINALS IN THAT PLACE."

I rest may case.

I hope all of us humans can gather strength and group together and defend against the coming Wave of happiness, freedom, truth, love, equality, peace and other similar unnatural thoughts.

I hope all of us survive and continue with our traditional standard of living which we have been evolving over the last 1000’s of years.

I shall continue posting as long as I can, I will always fight against this invasion.

Crux of the Cuneiform

2005-02-17T18:50:00.003+05:30

There was this one time when I stuck a thought into my cerebral anus, hey lay off okay..that was an accident, I was actually aiming for my nose, with an objective of cleaning the crud in the grey matter.

The logic was that the shortest distance between any two points would be a straight line. (Thatâ€™s what everyone kept telling me when I was in school. Where was the theory of relativity, my teachers did not seem to be aware of this relativity stuff, where they born before relativity was postulated?)

Who knew that I would land up in thoughtful shit?

When I pulled my thumb out of my cerebral bum got your attention right, now let us move on to the funny stuff, enough already with the serious stuff.

Let me delve a little into the mystic symbolisms of what is and what should be.

The balance in life is the coexistence of this duality; to have these two in balance is bliss, the yin and yang, the linga and the yoni, truth and the lie, life and death.. You get the picture right?

You could call it the "secret code",GOD had given us to figure out the universal laws. Hey this must be what people call as hidden in plain sight. HE made everything in two's and where there was only one, HE made a complimentary receptacle (!?) (need to follow this thought further on its own i.e. the complimentary receptacle part of it)

Man seems to have caught onto the concept accidentally, and one of the material manifestations of using this "secret code" is visible in binary mathematics and its usage in what else, computers. (the guy who figured this out must be a mutant)

Have you observed the pace at which life has started moving in the last 10 years, is it because we have had a glimpse of the "truth" and HE has decided that we are ready for the far future? Are we running too fast and heading up the evolutionary cycle at the speed of light(hoik hoik)or should the right word be extinction? Is the true reality of our existence going to be reveled soon?

Once upon a time, just a few years back, life used to be slow paced, people used to realize that they were growing old (painfully slowly), now you do not feel that you are growing old, but suddenly you find out that you have grown older by 5 - 10 years.(where in the hell have I been for last 3600 odd days?)

By "accidentally" latching onto the universal truth, has entire mankind moved from one plan of existence and reached some other parallel universe where time keeps flying ever faster.

Close your eyes and ask someone to read the following few lines and you just imagine whatever is going to be described below.

Imaging a wonderful life, lot of joy, lot of fun, sex, food, parties, orgies, marriages, births, diseases, cures, health, wealth and death just the normal stuff which happens to everyone on a daily basis.

Now imagine that you go trekking and keep walking over mountains and hills and country side enjoying everything god has made available to you and finally one late evening you come to the edge of the world as you know it, you look up and see the bright stars above you and then suddenly the stars disappears and then there is a strange looking man in a surgical mask looking down at you, he reaches down with his tongs and picks up the Petri-dish injects a little bit of foul smelling liquid, swishes the Petri-dish around and places the dish back onto the storage tray and goes for his smoke break.

All confusion comes when you try to reduce the gap between "what is" and "what should be".

SHIT HAPPENS.

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Am i getting paranoid

2005-02-08T12:35:00.000+05:30

I was thinking of the movie Gattaca. Or am i just plain paranoid ? read the clip below and tell me that you did not think of the movie Gattaca.

Just A Skin Test To Gauge Heart Risk

A skin test to measure cholesterol levels almostinstantly may challenge more complex and costly procedures now used to gauge cardiovascular risk, US physicians have said.

"A simple test that measures the amount of cholesterolin the skin can identify persons who appear to behealthy but actually have early-stage cardiovasculardisease," said James Stein, Associate Professor ofcardiovascular medicine at the University of WisconsinMedical School in Madison.

The study compared cholesterol levels of 80 persons withthe results of tests done with an ultrasound to detectearly signs of blockage in the heart arteries.

The measure of cholesterol in the skin, which can beread in minutes, gives doctors a simple and inexpensivemeans of evaluating cardiovascular problems in otherwisehealthy patients during routine consultations, he said.The test is marketd by McNeil Consumer Healthcare forabout $25 (Rs 1,125).

where were you, when mother earth twitched in her sleep?

2005-01-25T01:53:00.000+05:30

i have been watching and hearing people talking of tsunami and its effect on humans, i have seen grief being expressed, i have even seen silence from people,i have seen people who have let it slip out of their mind already.

the enormity of the tragedy strikes one and one is dumbstruck as to what one's reactions should be or has to be. or should one react at all.

then i heard a master talk, he asked everyone present why we were upset?

humans have been ripping mother earth for last couple of centuries,she has been silently taking all the crap which we have been dishing out in the name of progress, and this on a daily basis. we stick drilling machines into her to suck out oil,gas, dig holes into her,cut her side to get out coal,diamonds ,gold etc and she has been keeping quite most of the time.

and you know what, the master is right.(funny this master looks younger than me and most probably is younger than me) does anyone cry that this has been happening for 100's of years.

when mother earth tries to, kind of, get comfortable and shift her position a little bit on her "chair", there is obviously going to be some effect, considering her size and our size, the effect is going to be really considerable. when this happens why do we cry?

remember mother earth has nothing against you or i. she does not know that we exist.to mother earth, in her hibernation of the past millions of years, the recent tsunami would not even qualify as a major burp, maybe just a tiny rumble in her belly.

are we angry at mother earth, i dont think so. is mother earth angry at us? i dont think so.

is it okay that we do not cry? i dont know. do we need to feel sad? i think yes. yes we need to feel sad that people have lost their lives.

we continue to lead our lives, waiting for the day when mother earth decides to get comfortable again.

in the mean time we need be considerate in what we do to her. one day she sure is going to wake up and shrug off the dust mites which live on her body. and it sure would not matter much to her what damage she causes during this time. everything is relative. to a person who lives millions of years , would the person even remember what happened in a 24 hour period.

like i noted in my first post, i am very lucid person,you can see that my above thoughts are so clear and neatly stated.

this is a note documenting thoughts which hopefully leads to catharsis.(this is the first time ever that i have felt the need to use this word)

p.s : i think i need to re-read conan doyle's "When the world screamed"

a bird called roc or how blackholes are formed.

2005-01-22T13:33:00.001+05:30

i do not remember which book i had come across, the concept of a bird flying in ever reducing concentric circles.

butt,it has always fascinated me, and it seems to be the most fundamental truth of nature.

sometimes life feels like this. butt i digress.

so what's the theory?

here goes....you have seen birds(raptors) circling in the air,calm and peaceful, with no other thoughts in its birdbrain other than to figure out what to eat and who to eat?

just imagine if this bird forgets or looses it purpose in life! did you imagine that? no? then let me clue you in, into my imagination.

what would happen if the diameter of the flight circle kept reducing(remember the bird has lost it purpose of life)

to rephrase my query, what happens if while flying,the bird starts reducing the diameter of the circle it takes(remember, no purpose). would it, at an certain infinite point in time, fly up its own arsehole?

intriguing thought?

if you take the above thought process, and extrapolate it to the universe, and use this theory to understand and explain one of the phenomenons,that occur in the celestial world,

BlackHoles!

essentially this is what happens to the star. the star starts to fly up it own butt, and then nothing escapes out of it, including light. of course the science guys uses words like gravity, relativity to explain the birth of a black hole.

forgive me, my refined maths or is it physics,not sounding right...you see i have been flying in ever reducing concentric circles for quite sometime now and ......

In control?

2004-12-29T19:41:00.000+05:30

You are cruising on the highway of fate thinking that you are in control, and that you seem to know where you are headed. Think again you child of god, things ain't the way you think they are....

hey tis aint a post on de pil-o-sophical stuf of life, but just a few thoughts on why i(some men?) go in for fancy expensive gadgets,or become golfers or why some men/i feel a great affinity towards computers? (hey did you notice the way i switched i/some men to some men/i?...hohoho)

is life so out of control for you , that you need to control some inanimate object,to feel in control of your life or fate???

and the funny part of this is that when you are young(below 30?) you generally do not feel the need to control anything , and you sure are cruising the highway of fate with no care or thought,in your youthful mind.

hey its altogether a different matter that when you are young you generally cannot affort to buy these expensive toys or procure golf clubs or afford the golf club membership.

you grow older and when you see your monthly paycheck surviving and leaving behind a few bucks at the end of 30 days, you now start getting all responsible and want to save and all that crap.

you do that for a few years and then you realise that this aint going to amount to nothing much,and the first inklings (hey a lot of shit happens during 30+ years of living,right?all that beer and smoking, remember?) to the fact that you aint in control at all of the rollercoster you called life, this is when your subconscious mind kicks in and tells you to go buy that complicated, expensive piece of equipment to compensate for the fact that you do not control nuts-you guys figure out what tickles your wallet,mine was photography.

i know a few guys who buy thin titanium sticks and wack little round hard balls(yelling "FORE" everynow and then...i wonder what that is all about, fore hmmmm, and play,why does that sound so familiar?) all around 200+ acres of mother earth for about 4-6 hours on a sunday,then sit down drink beer and talk about what they did the last 6 hours. i am dreading that day, i think i am kind of safe as of now, let me go pickup some more expensive lenses(he he he!)

anyway to get back to why i started this post.

men need to hold things in their hand, twirl a few tiny knobs or install the new browser, (no one complains,least of the equipment in your hand! and the company which makes these toys laugh most of the way to the bank.... hey by the way was something wrong with the old browser?) and feel on top of the world.

is it not easier to buy a amplifier/computer/home theater or whatever,rather than building one?

these are the pacifists.

the aggressors,i think the more "out of control" men, get onto the great outdoors, wacking balls or shooting stuff out of the air.

to sum it up, if you think you are in control...keep feeling good about that. but remember you aint.

Worm hole "theory!"

2004-12-11T19:04:00.000+05:30

"worm holes help woodpeckers feed easier. "

aaah the thought felt good, then i googled and i came across various coloured holes...went into a tail spin for some time, or was that a space-time warp?

scotty beam me up!

what connects a Blackhole to a whitehole? a wormhole?

when i was a kid i was working with a very "dense"(!) concept of a blackhole, and today when i was trawling the google i came across a concept of white hole. a kind of anti-blackhole, where everything gets spit out instead of sucked in.

Schwarzschild worm hole. mind blowing stuff.

wonder what went on in asimov's and a.c. clark's minds, was there some connection from a different universe into their heads? some sort of wormhole?

wonder when someone will come up a transport system based on this! when it happens would everybody be just casual users ? or would they be wonderstruck by the process which enables them to traverse across time and space?

wonder what my great-great-grandparents would have thought of a computer or the internet or blogging?

why are we seeing so many techonological changes in such a short period of time, what has happened that human invention process is operating at such a high accelerated phase of recent.
is there some sort of "Alien" inputs being provided,or is this technology transfer through a wormhole. who has opened the wormhole?

why has life become so fastpaced? once upon a time the children played, with no thoughts on the passage of time ...and when i see now..hey it is still the same.....

what is wrong with us grown ups?

Essence of Life:Just Let Go

2004-11-23T10:18:00.000+05:30

Does your thoughts make you what you are? I say yes. Allow me to expound on this thought process.

Have you noticed that the day you get up and feel that you had got out of the wrong side of the bed, your day gets totally shot to hell.

Try this, for a change ...When you feel,what you felt, as mentioned in the para two above of this said page, further referenced to in annexure B subclause 44.3 section 3 para 12.4.a......OOPS my day is shot to hell, these damm SLA agreements I need to go through!

a) JUST LET GO.

Just let go of all thoughts, close your eyes,(if you are the sort of weakling who depends on cigarettes and uses them as crutches,go ahead and DO NOT LIGHTUP and DON'T PANIC...I smoke too!). Allow your mind to flow with thoughts that are flittering in your head, but DO NOT THINK or follow any of these thoughts,just let them flow in and out. Do not worry about what is happening around you, ofcourse if your house is on fire etc or your spouse decides to get cosy with the milkman or the maid during this time then quickly change the plan.

Do this for about 15 minutes and then open your eyes and see the difference. This is the basic concept of meditation(as i know). To really get into meditation, it is recommended that you spend sometime with a Guru or a teacher,who can guide you.

b) Take what Toffler says "I am okay, you are okay" to a new level ie. "Everything is OKAY" .
Try it it works. everything is actually okay. This is the refined evolution of the famous thought process/theory ie. "Shit Happens".

kind of running of steam right now...

Check out the following site Samadhi meditation , SSY was a founded by Rishi Prabhakar. more on this in a latter blog.

Photography and other thinks that go click

2004-11-22T18:48:00.000+05:30

After watching and waiting for a loooooonng time, I finally bit the byte(!) and added a digital camera to my arsenal of cameras.

Photography has become more interesting, but I seem to be spending more time on the computer post the photo sessions, downloading, sorting,deleting, and finally editing and then uploading.

It is funny just a few months back, I kept filling up cupboards with prints, negetives and the albums, now my harddisk is filling up with the RAW files, the 4 to 5 variants of the digitally processed files,the backups of the images which are WIP. Not to forget the backup of the original files on CD's,(DVD writers still looks expensive..i know, i know about the amount of space you get on a dvd blah blah...)

Has my photography improved? not sure, but I sure have become a little lazy. The PC is there to fix it!

Digital world has opened up more options, previously shots which I would have thrown out(exposure problems) seem to be salvagable.

Interesting stuff which I figured out in the last 10 days. You can take 2 images ,one exposed for the highlights and the other exposed for shadow and blend the both using a photo editing software. Considering that I am lazy,(hey dude,use the tripod!) I change the exposure in the RAW file editors and merge the original with the modified exposure one... seems to work.

Wonder what other stuff I am going to figure out.

Previously I never had the energy to scan a slide and correct it...but now,anyway you need to sit on the pc to see the results of the days work,so you tend to screw around with the editors. See Newton was right about the inertia stuff.

Does it matter what software you use?

Some of the more interesting try and buy software which I have laid my hands(oops the mouse) on...Noise Ninja(why do you leave lines all over the image, oh ninja master?what have we evaluators done to you?) Shortcut PhotoZoom ( an impressive sharpening tool), how could I forget my first imaging software IrfanView.

Nikon's Capture editing software is real nifty.

Not very impressed by Bibble (must have tried out an old version, could not open the D-70 NEF's)

PhotoShop CS (seems to have too many options for a simple mind people like me! But a real powerhouse of a software)

Will i purchase these programs?I may end up paying more that what I paid for the camera, so till then it is IrfanView.

P.S: Just in case you are wondering about the rig i use : f-80(right now gathering dust), d-70, 18-70 (kit lense), 80-400 vr and a 50 mm(love this one and it costs so little,at least compared to the other shit i blow up money on)

Thanks to Abhijit

2004-11-22T18:05:00.000+05:30

I did wonder what blogging was all about. I have been looking at what Abhijit has been putting up for the last few days on his blog, and it kind of triggered of a sort of thought process in me.

You can see that i am a very lucid person, with a clear sort of ..huh...focused sort of thought process... see what i mean?

Obviously, i cannot let all those amazing thoughts which i have die with me. Like i said somewhere previously, not that any of these thoughts are going to change the world in any way...

a few of Abhijit's interesting blogs are Pctweaks and Media hub and the Thoughts and Ideas

Musing caused by Raindrops

2004-11-22T17:48:00.001+05:30

Not that I am pissed off about thisâ¦just curious, do others see what I see.

Last few months this has been bothering me, kind off shows the time I have on hand. This has nothing to do with anything, and has no universal significance, does not add value to anyone or any process. Would this be something which Arthur Dent would be bugged about?maybe â¦maybe not?

Have you noticed that if there are 6 urinals in a toilet, and all are unused, you either go to the one in the middle or the one on the extreme left or the extreme right?
(The 6 urinal is just an sample case study of my office loo, the theory seems to operate in otherframes of reference too, like in the airport loo)

The theory becomes slightly more complex when one ofthe urinal is in use...like so...

The new variable(y) entering the equation will ensure that he uses the urinal which is the farthest away from the one being used. Enter the third variable(z); this variable will make sure that there is a gap of at least one unused urinal on his left or the right.

And to get to the crux of the biscuit, when there is only one urinal, and the last variable is added into the equation, you would see an uncomfortable looking man furtively glancing around, wondering why fate has been so cruel to him.

I have seen a few men who decide to hold on to his "beliefs" and wait for the "comfort"zone rather than letting go.

The expression of pain on the "Judas" (*) during this"boot-up" time is priceless, (for everything elsethere is Master, right?)

Does modern man still have his caveman instincts? Isthis the territorial imperative at work? Not having spent much time with Dilbert, I am unsure if this has something to do with the mutation of the caveman instincts in modern man.

Like I said at the beginning, I am not pissed off at all, just curious.

DONâT PANIC.

Note : (*) Judas : The apostle who betrayed his divine master.

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