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Showing posts from 2005

Taj - My Taj

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Taj, Is this not lovely!!! Lovely Carving Taj, a dream in white marble A door of Taj Taj, An evening delight Beautiful view of "NatKashi" Lovely Jali Work More Natkashi Natkashi with Jali Work

Some Improvements

New year is approaching. I thought of making some improvements to my blog 1) Added a visitor counter. 2) Added google safe search. Aditya

Should Ganguly be selected for Pakistan tour

DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed in this article are only my views. They are not meant to affect the views of selection committee. If final selection of Ganguly matches the views expressed in article it would merely be co-incidental. Ganguly was dropped after second test match. The decision to drop him was controversial and controversy was well justified. It looked as if there was more politics involved than performance. Ganguly might not have set the field on fire by his batting but he did have two good knocks of almost 40 in as many innings. More over he was involved in two long partnerships at two crucial points. I thought that Ganguly had done enough to be selected again for third test. Both Yuvraj, Laxman were picked up ahead of Ganguly. Considering the performance in the test Laxman scored 69 and 11 making 80 runs overall and Yuvi made 0 and 77 making 77 run overall, while Ganguly made 40 and 39 making 79 overall. In-fact figures show that Ganguly was more consistent. Many pe

Why is Bono standing between Bill and Melinda Gates

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Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Bono are Time persons of the year 2005 but why is Bill Gates not standing with Melinda Gates !!!!!!!

How to buy a Camcorder

I recently bought a Sony DCR DVD 403 camcorder. I had to do a lot of research before buying the camcorder. There are just so many models and so many features that I was very confused. This post is just to make the task easy for others who are interested in buying one. We can classify camcorders by type of media they store on Tape Camcorders: These use tape as media to store images. There are many types of tape available like Mini-DV, Hi-8, Digital-8, Micro-DV, VHS. The only tape camcorders I would recommend are Mini-DV. The reason is size VHS, Hi-8 and Digital-8 camcorders are large. Micro-DV is failed technology although the camcorders are very small. More over finding Micro-DV tapes is difficult Tapeless Camcorders: They use media other then tape to store images. DVD, Flash memory, Hard disk are some of the media used. Flash memory is not very large and Harddisk one's though promising are very new. So I prefer only DVD. So for rest of the discussion we will only consider Mini-Dv

"The Leader"

Read the following poem. It describes the qualities of a(THE) leader. In fact the name of the leader is hidden in the poem itself. Interestingly this poem is being taught to students of class XI in Pakistan. If you get the book ;) , it is on page 216. Can you find out the leaders name? P atient and steady with all he must bear, R eady to meet every challenge with care, E asy in manner, yet solid as steel, S trong in his faith, refreshingly real, I sn’t afraid to propose what is bold, D oesn’t conform to the usual mold, E yes that have foresight, for hindsight won’t do, N ever backs down when he sees what is true, T ells it all straight, and means it all too. G oing forward and knowing he’s right, E ven when doubted for why he would fight, O ver and over he makes his case clear R eaching to touch the ones who won’t hear. G rowing in strength, he won’t be unnerved, E ver assuring he’ll stand by his word. W anting the world to join his firm stand, B racing for war, but praying for peace,

Initiative - A new game of cards

An old saying goes "Necessity is the mother of all inventions". So I am in search of other family members of invention. Till now I know four of them and they are: invention the child, necessity the mother, Inventor the father, and Laziness the nani. Yes, Necessity is child Laziness. As only laziness could have given birth to necessity of remote, vehicles, flush, toilets... etc recently I discovered another nani of invention. Biwi is also a nani of invention. Let me tell you how. Playing cards has become one of the favorite time pass in my friend circle. The games we play are like Court Piece, judgment, chakree, Laad, 3-2-5, Uno etc.. depending on how many people are there. Judgment and Laad are the only games which can be played in any number of people. Court Piece can be played in four people, chakree in six , 3-2-5 in three. But there was no game which could be played in five people. So when five people gather the only choice was laad or judgment. Judgment was played so oft

Stratalite

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Stratalite:Is this is spelling mistake? Did I mean satellite? No, This time it is not a spelling mistake and I did not mean satellite. It is stratalite only. Are you now thinking what is Stratalite? By definition A stratalite is an airship designed to cruise at an altitude of 20 km or 65000 feet. Hmmmm by now you would be guessing that a stratalite is new mode of transportation and yes you are correct but not for humans. It would transport data. So basically a Stratalite is communication hub and would perform same functions as satellite. The difference being that it is placed in stratosphere instead of outer space and that is where it gets it name from. So just like satellite it will stay stationary at one point. You would be thinking how it would stay in one position in stratosphere as there is air there. Yes that is right but stratosphere is so thin that pressure there is much less than in troposphere. Hence the energy required is just fraction of what it would have been in lower alt

How are hurricanes named?

I recently noted that hurricanes names seemed to have some pattern in hurricane names: Katrina, Rita, Wilma. They looks alphabetic but there are missing letters. All look like names of females. So I wanted to know how they are actually named and it turned out to be more interesting than I thought. Here some interesting facts Tropical storms in North Atlantic are named in such a manner that masculine and feminine names alternate one after the other. And yes they are in alphabetic order, so my guess was right. The logical conclusion here is that there can be max 26 names. No, There are can only be 21. As they don't name storms by Q, U, X, Y, Z. So the next logical question is what happens if you have more storms then 21. Then they start naming them by name Greek alphabets starting with alpha beta. 2005 would be the first year to use these letters. So 2005 is the with record number of storms. Oh, did I tell you the names for all storms till 2010 have been named. And most storms after

Sania Mirza and her clothes

What matters more Sania Mirza Tennis or Her clothes. The answer is simple...... her clothes. For people who don't know Sania Mirza will think that she is MODEL or Fashion designer thats why clothes matter more. For those of you who know who Sania is will think that tennis should matter more as she is tennis player. This is not the first time a Tennis player is more in news due to her clothes. Anna was also more famous for her beauty and her dresses. The reasons though are completely different. In case of Sania some extermist group is offened by her dresses. Why this extermist group offended now? Why was it not offended when Sania started playing tennis? Why is this group only targeting Sania why not Jahan Afreen? I am sure you want to know who is Jahan Afreen. She is just another tennis player. The answer is simple "Fame". Had they target Jahan Afreen who would have listened. Or had they targeted Sania when she just started and was a no entity who would have cared. Is th

What’s wrong with team India?

This is certainly not the first time that this question is being asked and certainly I am not the first one to ask it. But the question still remains what is wrong with team India? Why is the team which in 2003 – 2004 showed potential of becoming a Cricketing powerhouse is not performing? Why is the team that challenged kangaroos in their own backyard today struggling against teams like New Zealand or Srilanka? Are the players not good enough? Is there some thing else? Let’s first see who the players are. Sehwag, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Yuvraj, Kaif, Laxman, Pathan, Bhajji, Nehra, Zaheer, Balaji, Kumble and more recently joined by Dhoni. I have only listed the player who I think are regulars in the sense that they may be dropped for series or so but would be in team in near future. Recently team India has failed in batting department mainly. We depend mainly on our batsmen to win games for us. So here is profile of our main batsmen. Sehwag, a natural striker of ball. He is arguably

I live, I learn, I enumrate

On Friday, I read Karanth's Blog which had a very interesting quote: - "You live, you learn, you love, you learn, you cry, you learn, you lose, you learn, you bleed, you learn, you scream, you learn. You grieve, you learn, you choke, you learn, you laugh, you learn, you lose, you learn, you pray, you learn, you ask, you learn."-Alanis Morisette Interesting quote but a very very true one. Yes each experience teaches us some thing, yes we keep learning from life each and every moment. But do we try to remember all we have learnt? I think if I make it a point to enumerate at least some important things that I learn would I be less prone to making same mistake or would I become more indecisive? Let's try if at end of some period of time I think my decision making is slowing down I would avoid enumerating these and perhaps would know that all important lessons we learn are in sub conscious brain. At present I am trying to make it part of conscious brain. What I am going to

Popup Blocker

You know why I was not able to post a blog for such a long time. The answer is Popup blocker!!!! Are you amazed? I wrote a long long blog and then clicked on Spell checker. As you know Internet explorer now has automatic popup blocker. So it blocked that spell checker and I clicked on Allow popups from this site and the whole page was refreshed. With all my writings gone? Who in the world asked to refresh the whole page!!!!! and is this bad feature or what? I was so frustrated that I unchecked the popup blocker and installed Google Toolbar which works beautifully :) Let me point out one more thing. MSN also has toolbar similar to Google toolbar. Try installing it on Windows 2003 and SP1, It looks and keep the popup blocker feature on both on Internet explorer and MSN toolbar on. See what happens. The main window window from which popup was generated freezes and IE hangs. It looks like as if MSN toolbar is fighting with IE that why is IE blocking popup when it wants to block it. :)

Power of Defeat

You might be thinking about choice of Topic “Power of Defeat”. Yes, Defeat is really powerful and it becomes more powerful when you don’t expect it. Yes, I am talking about Defeat of NDA in last general elections. I would admit that I did not expect it and that I was blinded by media hype and media intensive campaign that I could not see ground reality. Amazingly it looks like no one in NDA expected the defeat either and they themselves were blinded by there own “India shinning” campaign. There is no doubt that India did make good progress in NDA rule and but the campaign itself was shinning more than India was and it was shinning so brightly that NDA leader could see nothing else. What can you do when you get defeated? You actually have many options. You can choose to accept is gracefully and look for real reasons for defeat and work to iron out short comings or you can accept defeat and do nothing and wait or you can refuse to accept defeat and blame every one and any one for it. Ama

Power of Rupee

In my last posting which luckily or unluckily happen to my first one also, I mentioned about Rs 2.00 and how much that is worth. Talking about worth I had often heard my grandparents and parents say how much you could get in 1 Re in their era. My mom used to tell me before her marriage she used to drink coke for 4 Anna or 25 piase. Once I asked my mom how is 25 paise equal to 4 anna and how much was 1 Anna as 25 was not divisible by 4. Thru her I came to know that earlier 1 Re did not have 100 paise, rather it had 64 paise which was equal to 16 anna. So 1 Anna was equal to 4 paise. So I wanted to know when did the change from 1 Re = 64 paise to 1 Re = 100 paise happen. Here are some interesting facts about our own currency Rupee that I gathered. India introduced new coinage post independence on 15 Aug 1950 while Pakistan was much quicker as they introduced new coins in 1948 and currency bills in 1949. Have you heard the dialog "Mein khoon pasinaa baha ke tumhari pie pie chuka dong

Power of Rs 2

What is value of Two(2) Rupees? 2 Rs = 1/20 of US dollar = 5 cents 2 Rs = 2 Eclairs 2 Rs = 1/5 of Pepsi or Coke 2 Rs = 120 ml of Milk 2 Rs = 200 grams of Wheat floor 2 Rs = Cost of Pencil 2 Rs = 500 grams of Aloo (Potato) when it is cheap 2 Rs = Tsunami Relief cheque for damage of coconut crops 2 Rs = Shame on Govt of India 2 Rs = Promise for millions of dollars of Tsunami Relief You would be wondering why this Question for Value of Rs 2.00. Rs 2.00 Tsunami Relief तीन सौ पेड़ों का मुआवज़ा दो रुपये Is India really shining?