Google Sky

If any of you have read Asimov's Foundation series, you know about the system that they had for creating a 3D map of space. They'd use it for plotting their way through stars. You could look at the galaxy in 3D and translate yourself to any other point in the galaxy to see how it would look like from there.

Well version 0.1 of that tool is out :D. You can now use Google Earth 4.2 to roam around in space. Check out this video for an how-to:

A New Take On Research

I read Jabberwock quite often and sometimes, like this time :D, Jai comes up with some very funny articles. In this article titled "Research findings we could use" he directs our attention towards how preposterous some research findings are, and of some others that he wishes they would come up with. Here are just a couple of excerpts from just the comments:

1. James Bond has a lesser risk of heart disease, since his martinis are shaken and not stirred!!
2. Regular Breathing leads to 100% chance of being alive. Researchers found that people who breathe had a 100% chance of being alive....

Read the rest of the his blog post here, and enjoy :).

Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi Advertisement

Some very awesome stuntwork. Definitely worth a watch:

Sir Arthur C. Clarke Passes Away

I read it just now on BBC News, and it saddens me to no end to know this.

The grand old man of SF, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, died at 0130 hrs (SL time) after a cardio-respiratory attack.

His many books have given me great pleasure over the years, and it is horrible to know that no more will ever be written.

May he rest in peace.

How To Maintain Your Charge Slip

Sometimes you get to see the weirdest things. Like when we went shopping for a colleague's marriage present. The receipt that was handed to us had the following printed on the back:



:)

Why You Can't Type "S-H-I-T" using T9

I'm sure all of us have tried to type in swear words in an SMS window while using predictive text input, at some time or the other, and failed, and irritatingly so. Ever wondered why? Watch this:

Men Will Be Men... Even Those In Blue

GMail Advertisement

Here's an ad for GMail, in Russian. But some good fellow has gone and given subtitles in English. Until then I didn't even know it was an ad (thought it was a how-to). It's very innovative. Notice the way they are simulating the mouse pointer, and the caret etc.

Here you go:

Firefox 3

I love Firefox. It's my preferred browser, and works beautifully for me. And now they are doing even more :).

Here's a list of the coolest of the new features:
1. Native theme support (for Vista, Mac and Linux).
2. New location/address bar.
3. Places: An integrated look at history and bookmarks together.
4. Private browsing: You can now turn history, cache etc. off altogether.
5. Using web services for handling documents/media links, so that you can open attached documents in GoogleDocs and clicking on a mailto: link will open up GMail!

And hosts of others. FF3Beta3 is out, and here are some of the things you can do:
1. Have a look at the FF3 Feature List: Geek version, and Regular version (Note that the latter is 4 pages long, you might miss the page links at the bottom).
2. You can download it: Firefox3 Beta 3
3. You can get a FF3 "Gran Paradiso" Wallpaper, and the FF3 "Gran Paradiso" Poster:











Enjoy :)!

NBA 2007 Slam Dunk Competetion Highlights

Very good dunks, and some pretty average ones. All in all, worth a watch:

Frozen in time

I guess you've all played this game when you were like 3' tall and squeaked instead of talking. It goes something like this:
1. 8-10 people stands in a circle around the person in the den.
2. He calls out "S-T-A-T-U-E statue"!
3. Everyone freezes and is not allowed to move or laugh. If someone manages to touch the guy in den unobserved, he goes back in den.

Or, some form thereof (I remember a girl who couldn't spell statue correctly :p).

Well, this is something like that. Except that instead of the 8-10 people, there are 207. They aren't kids, they're all adults. They aren't standing around in a circle in the park behind your apartment, they're all doing it in the Grand Central Station in New York City. And they are from a group called Improv Everywhere. I can't help but admire them.

Lots of fun :). Watch it:

Google Doodle?

The Google logo, or the "Google Doodle" is redrawn by Webmaster Manager and Chief Google Doodler, Dennis Hwang, from time to time to commemorate special dates/occasions. You've all seen them. And some of you, like me, wish you could also do something like that.

Well now you can. Or at least try. If you are still in school :(. But still, it is worth a read. Heres an excerpt from the Official Google Blog:

"However, with the Doodle 4 Google competition, we're making an exception...

Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme "What if...?" We ask ourselves this question every day when we build our products, so we thought we would ask the same of the future doodlers."

Read more about it in this blog post.

Pune, Pretty Pune

Just back from a very good and well deserved (I say so!) vacation. To Pune. Aaaahhhhhh!

You know what they say right? "You never miss it until you don't have it?" Well, that's completely true. There's one thing more I'd like to add... "If you still don't miss it, visit it agan" :).

Met a lot of friends, partied like mad. Went out with parents. Went out with college buddies.

All in all, a very good vacation.

P.S. Had taken my SDCard for taking photos, but left it in my Dad's camera. So photos are delayed. Will put them up soon.

US Claims WMDs on Satellite

You all must've read about the US spy satellite gone rogue. Well, now they're accusing it of even worse things. It has WMDs (or is a WMD, it's quite unclear). So they're going to shoot it down :o

Read more about it here.

Bizzare Pingpong Round

Found this video on a friend's orkut profile. I really HAD to share it :). Here it is:

I mean... they actually changed sides!!!

Photo Collage

Have you ever wanted to create a collage for your desktop wallpaper? Wouldn't a collage like this one be great?



Well all you need is Picasa and you can download it here.

Once installed, let it discover all your pictures. After that, select any host of pictures and choose Create->"Picture Collage" from the top level menu. You can customize the type of collage and the background. I'll try to add a screencast later.

GMail's WebClips

I don't know how many people use them, or even notice them, but GMail's WebClips are a pretty useful and entertaining source of daily trivia/news (anyway you want to look at it).

I know what I'm going to hear... "I'm an RSS poweruser." "There's Google Reader (or replace your favorite aggregator here)."

But the bottom line is, if you are as much of an email junkie as I am, your GMail is always open, whereas your aggregator, you open once a day, and you're done with it. Besides, with an aggregator, you'll probably configure your feeds. You can do that with GMail also, but I suggest add new ones, but leave the ones that are there already, be.

Here's why. You will read random (and interesting) stuff from sources, at random times that you'd probably have vetoed off before you ever saw it. And it is non-interfering. If you don't like it... click ">".

And just to keep you interested... Look what I found today on a WebClip:
Kirsten Dunst: The Latest to Check into Rehab.

Yay, finally she won't look drugged on the next installment of spiderman... (and much more hopefully, she'll die of withdrawal symptoms :) ).

There was another one, a quote, by some famous actress of the age old days who said something derogatory about having sound in the movies... :p I'll look it up and edit this post later :D.
EDIT: It was Mary Pickford who said, "Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo. " :D
G'night.

Funny Recruitment EMail

As the title suggests, I received a very funny recruitment email today. The subject said:

Urgent opening for Debugging Professionals @ Bangalore

It's been almost a year since I've stopped active development work, and shifted to design. But the ~7 years before that, I was working on development, and I did all my debugging myself.

I won't give you the company's name, but here are the rest of the details:

Title : Lead
Required Skills : Debugging Tools (GDB, DBX, MDB...etc), C++
Total Experience : 6 – 9 Years
Job Location : Bangalore
Mode of Position : Permanent

6-9 years working only on debugging?!! I can imagine the kind of conversations that the selected candidate must be having with his wife:
Wife: "Honey, why don't you listen to me?"
Husband (to himself): "Hmm, I wonder why she said that... Let me launch gdb..."

and promptly reaches for his laptop... And he wonders? [snicker]...

A Tribute to "Weird Al" Yankovic's Parodies

I only ever knew of a few of "Weird Al" Yankovic's songs. There was "The Saga Begins" which is sung in the style of "American Pie" and tells the story of the movie Star Wars - Phantom Menace. And a couple of others. I always found them very funny, especially the lyrics. So the other day, I visited Deezer to find the above-mentioned songs, and guess what? I came up with hordes. So here are the ones that are sung as parodies. What follows is a streaming media player that'll play the parody playlist, and the lyrics of the songs below that. Click on the song's name to see its lyrics. Believe me, they're hilarious. :)

P.S. I'll post the lyrics widget shortly. It isn't currently working as desired. In the mean time, you'll find most of the lyrics here:
Smells like Nirvana
The Saga Begins
Eat It
Pretty Fly for a Rabbi
I Love Rocky Road
Amish Paradise
eBay
Fat
Livin' in a Fridge
Money for Nothing - Beverly Hillbillies
I Can't Watch This
Achy Breaky Song
Bedrock Anthem
Cavity Search
Gump
Like a Surgeon
Ode to a Superhero
Theme from Rocky XIII

Roboquad vs. Puppy

Are you afraid of artificial intelligence? Do you wonder (with curling toes) whether some day robots will take over the world, and all of mankind will be doomed to slavery or worse, extinction? Well it's not going to happen in our lifetime. As this video shows, the robots of today can't even get the better of a cute little puppy :).