Microsoft Community Tech Day 2009

Some snaps from the Microsoft Community Tech Day 2009 conducted by Microsoft at Technopark, Trivandrum – Kerala. My session was on Rapid Prototyping.

Meera speaks englis

It’s not bad to not know English. But, it’s definitely pathetic to force somebody to talk English! Why would one want to do something like that?

I do appreciate and respect the lady’s boldness in trying to speak a language she has no clue about in national television?

If the World were a Village

Nice way to look at things

Who rules my life

Got this email. No comments

Last night my spouse was berating me for wanting to check my
email as soon as I got home from work. “You know”, she
complained, “I think that work rules your life”.

“No dear,” I replied, “_you_ rule my life. I just prefer work.”

Musicians demand Guantánamo Playlist

Wow!!! This is funny…. I wonder what Himesh is thinking right now!!!??!!!!

Musicians Want to Know if They Were on the Guantánamo Playlist
By DAVE ITZKOFF

Hiromi Yasui for The New York Times
Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Trent Reznor are among the musicians who have joined a campaign to close the prison at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as they seek to learn whether their music was used during the questioning of detainees there, The Associated Press reported. The National Security Archive in Washington said it was filing a Freedom of Information Act request on behalf of a coalition called the National Campaign to Close Guantánamo, including an effort to gain more details about how loud music was used as an interrogation device. Based on public documents and interviews with former detainees, the archive said, Guantánamo prisoners were played loud music, including songs by AC/DC, Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson, as well as advertising jingles and “Sesame Street” tunes, in their cells and in preparation for interrogations. Thomas Blanton, the executive director of the archive, told The A.P., “At Guantánamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture.” A spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantánamo, which handles the care and custody of detainees, said loud music had not been used with prisoners since the fall of 2003. [more]

Microsoft TechEd in June 2009

This happened in June 2009. Some snaps from the event. Didn’t get time to post it till now.. Here goes!

And here’s the slideset -

BloodBelly Comb Jelly

Cool and creepy creature Watch only if you have nothing important/better to do!

At the Aquarium

Brilliant and seemingly glowing, the bloodybelly comb jelly comes in different shades of red but always has a blood-red stomach. The sparkling display on the outside comes from light diffracting from tiny transparent, hair-like cilia. These beat continuously, propelling the jelly through the water.

This species has only recently come to the attention of scientists, thanks to images like this, supplied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s remotely operated vehicles.

Natural History

Ironically, at the depths where the bloodybelly lives, it’s nearly invisible to predators. In the darkness of the deep sea, animals that are red appear black and blend into the dark background.

Conservation

The deep sea may seem remote, but what we send down eventually cycles back up into our lives. Deep sea animals are part of a thriving ecosystem. Our trash and chemicals may harm them if we are careless with our waste.

Cool Facts

Scientists believe the bloodybelly’s red belly helps mask bioluminescent light from the prey it swallows. A predator with a glowing gut could easily become prey.

The bloodbelly’s depth range is from 984 to 3,320 feet.

It grows to a length of six inches.

The genus name Lampoctena derives from the Greek roots for “brilliant comb,” referring to the bright iridescence diffracted from the animal’s comb rows.

Indian engineer builds glaciers to stop warming

Nice..!!!

New Delhi: A retired Indian engineer, Chewang Norphel, 76, has built 12 new glaciers already and is racing to create five more before he dies, and by then he hopes to train enough new ‘icemen’ to continue the work he is doing to save the world’s ‘third icecap’ from being transformed into rivers, reports Telegraph.

His race against time is shared by Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, who called on the region’s Himalayan nations, including China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, to constitute a united front to tackle glacial melting.

The Himalayan glaciers, including Kashmir’s Siachen glacier, feed the region’s most important rivers, as they irrigate farm lands in Tibet, Nepal and Bangladesh and throughout the Indian subcontinent. The acceleration in glacial melting has been blamed as the reason for the increase in floods that have destroyed homes and crops.

But Chewang Norphel, the “Iceman of Ladakh”, believes that he has an answer.

By diverting melt water through a network of pipes into artificial lakes in the shaded side of mountain valleys, Norphel states that he has created new glaciers.

A dam or embankment is built to keep the water in, which freezes at night and remains frozen in the absence of direct sunlight. This water remains frozen until March, when the start of summer melts the new glacier and releases the water into the rivers downside.

His glaciers have been able to each store up to one million cubic feet of ice, which in turn can irrigate 200 hectares of farm land. This can make the difference between crop failure and a bumper crop of more than 1,000 tons of wheat for the farmers.

Norphel says that he has seen the effects of global warming on farmland as snows have become thinner on the ground and ice rivers have melted away.

His work has now been recognized by the Indian government, which has given him 16,000 pounds to build five new glaciers. But time is his enemy, he told The Hindustan Times. “I’m planning to train villagers with instruction CDs that I have made, so that I can pass on the knowledge before I die,” he said.

The Google Chrome OS Scam

Wow!!! This is good! Actually pretty old stuff. Yet! This guy pulled off something thats truely commendable. Hope it doesn’t land him in the prison. Yet, its wonderful.

A clear showcase of how false information can be spread globally and how even the big brands of news aggregation providers publish information without checking up the authenticity of it!!!
 

Here’s what this person says in his blog -

I am sorry if you beleived it. It was a really bad attempt.  You all are smart people. I never planned on it getting this big. But it did.  (Come one, I know the Google logo. I am actually a graphic designer, I just wanted to see reactions if it was a crappy back.)

Oh, right, I also DO know CSS and HTML. Just clarifying that.  I never was going to let this go on longer than 12 hours.

Click for full sized!

124,381… WOW.

I thought I was at maybe 2,000. Only off by 122,000 views.

Anyways, again I apoligize that THIS many got fooled. But stay tuned.

I WILL use this blog for REAL Chrome OS News in the Future

Google story in 2 mins

Nice video!