Confused Soul

I found this Ad in Economic Times today and found it quite humorous to share with you guys...

This post is to salute Abhinav Bindra to earn a gold medal in Olympics 2008 for India in 10 meters air rifle event. He made India proud and ended the 28 year drought of gold in Olympics for India. He won India's first individual gold medal in Olympics. Before his feat, India had won eight gold medals in hockey, six of them at successive Games, three silver medals (two in athletics and one in hockey) and five bronze medals from the Olympics.

Here are some more images of Indian Hero...

I found a great presentation on male vs female thinking. I am embedding it below to share with everyone.

Abortion

Look at the above presentation and you will get to know what I'm going to talk about. It's about the much hyped case of Mehtas who want to abort their 6 month old fetus because the baby will be born with a terminal illness. By looking at this presentation you may think that I'm going to advocate the decision of the court. No, I am playing neither for Mehtas nor against them. It's an open question what one should do in such case and how the court listen to this.

NOTE: This is to be cleared that court didn't know about the clerical error as admitted by hospital later. In its first report, the hospital had said that there "are very fair chances" that Niketa Mehta's child would be born incapacitated and handicapped. They meant to say there "there are very few chances" according to Dr Subnis.

Let me ask you guys how many of you want an incapacitated baby. Raise your hands if you like to have a baby who is to be put on respirator just after its birth. Having babies are always good but ask those parents whose babies are suffering from any fatal disease. Their baby may die or may survive but those parents die every minute until the baby is declared out of danger. So getting a baby who has very rare chances of survival is correct or not especially for those parents who can't afford the cost of treatment.

According to rules in India, you can't get abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. An embryo converts into fetus much before than 20 weeks so shouldn't be allowed to get an abortion before 20 weeks also. In many countries you can get an abortion if either mother's or baby's life is in danger. Finally Mehtas have to give birth to their child. Let's pray for good health of baby and mother.

For a list of abortion rules around the world, click here.

Just in a mood to listen "Please forgive me" from Bryan Adams again and again. Posting a video of this song and the lyrics for no apparent reason :)

Still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss
It's getting better baby
No one can better this
Still holding on, you're still the one
First time our eyes met
Same feeling I get
Only feels much stronger
Wanna love you longer
You still turn the fire on

So if you're feelin' lonely don't
You're the only one I ever want
I only wanna make it good
So if I love you a little more than I should

Please forgive me I know not what I do
Please forgive me I can't stop loving you
Don't deny me this pain I'm going through
Please forgive me I need you like I do
Please believe me every word I say is true
Please forgive me I can't stop loving you

Still feels like our best times are together
Feels like the first touch
Still getting closer baby
Can't get close enough
Still holding on you're still number one
I remember the smell of your skin
I remember everything
I remember all your moves
I remember you, yeah
I remember the nights, you know i still do

So if you're feeling lonely don't
You're the only one I ever want
I only want to make it good
So if I love you a little more than I should

Please forgive me I know not what I do
Please forgive me I can't stop loving you
Don't deny me this pain I'm going through
Please forgive me I need you like I do
Yeah, believe me every word I say is true
Please forgive me I can't stop loving you

The one thing I'm sure of, is the way we made love
The one thing I depend on, is for us to stay strong
With every word and every breath I'm prayin', it's why I'm saying
Please forgive me I know not what I do
Please forgive me I can't stop loving you
Don't deny me this pain I'm going through
Please forgive me if I need you like I do
Babe, believe me every word I say is true
Please forgive me if I can't stop lovin' you
Yeah, believe me I don't know what I do
Please forgive me if I can't stop loving you
Can't stop loving you

I found this article on Digital Inspiration and found that it may be very useful for all fellow bloggers. At least this article taught me a lot about image formats for my blog.

The quality of screenshot images and illustrations used on your website can make a difference.

You may use the good-old Print Screen key or any of the professional screen capture tools to grab your desktop but the basic requirement remains same - the output image should be sharp and that the file size be well within a reasonable limit.

Now PNG, JPG and GIF are the three most popular image formats for sharing screen captures on the web. Of course there’s another format called BMP but people rarely use that for obvious reasons.

Text & Clipart - If you are capturing text (like a block of source code or Google search pages or a navigation menu), always use GIF or the PNG format - the screenshots are clear and file size remains pretty low.

Regular Desktop Windows - If you need to screen capture a regular window on your screen, dialog boxes, Windows Explorer, DOS command prompt window, Google Maps or even splash screens - use the PNG format.

The advantage with PNG is that it preserves all the colors and yield a much sharper output when compared with JPG. See this Photoshop splash screen for a comparison between JPEG and PNG quality.

Videos & Photographs - If you doing a still image screenshot of a video (YouTube Flash video player), Google Earth, video games, Flash animations, desktop wallpapers or photographs (like Flickr) - always go with JPG instead of PNG because the image file size would be smaller without much degradation in the quality.

To give you example, this Wall Strip video on YouTube would take around 92kb when saved in PNG format but that would fall to 20kb if we changed the format from PNG to JPG. Surprisingly, there isn’t any remarkable difference in quality.

Source:'Delhi Times', a supplement with 'The Times of India'
Date: Tuesday, March 5, 2008
Article link

I was very excited about new iPhone 3G and was all set to purchase it. One of my friends is in US these days on an official trip and I asked him to get me one. I was very happy that I will own an iPhone very soon. But what all I got to know was nothing but sad. This time, Two-year contract from AT&T is required to get an iPhone 3G and this contract is all set to make iPhone users bankrupt. In the initial version of iPhone, no such contract was mandatory and anybody could easily get an iPhone without AT&T contract. Aware of various softwares used for unlocking iPhones , Apple and AT&T this took this step. This step has shattered dreams of many to get an iPhone and I am one of those :(

Though iPhone is much cheaper this time than its initial version this contract made it out of reach of many probable customers. IPhone 3G costs $199 for *GB (Black) and $299 for 16GB (Black/white). In addition to this let's have a look at AT&T different plans for 3G iPhone:

Despite these expensive plans, there is no fall in demand of new iPhone and there is a huge wating on iPhone delivery after purchasing. There are versions available to have an iPhone without AT&T contract but those are too expensive. If you want to use the iPhone with your own mobile provider all you have to do is pay the price of an unsubsidized iPhone. You can purchase the iPhone 3G without a contract. How much will the iPhones cost. The 8GB is available for $599 and the 16GB will be available for $699.

Also despite the best efforts of Apple and AT&T, it appears that the latest version of the iPhone has been unlocked via the same method as used on the original iPhone. To know how, please follow this link.

If anyone knows, Please let me know the way to get an iPhone-3G without AT&T contract and that too on subsidized price.

Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, on October 4, 1957. The surprise launch of Sputnik 1, coupled with the spectacular failure of the United States' first two Project Vanguard launch attempts, shocked the United States, which responded with the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on July29, 1958. With the Soviet Union's launch of Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, and driven by Kennedy's challenge, this Space Race took pace and John Kennedy, America’s president at the time, responded to Gagarin’s flight by saying that an American should go to the moon by the end of the decade. In response, the United States launched its own astronauts in capsules with the mythical names of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

Here is a nice flashback on the achievements and failures of NASA. For reading full article with videos please click here.

1961: KENNEDY MAKES MOON PLEDGE
President John F Kennedy called for millions of dollars to fund a space programme to get the first man on the Moon by 1970. In his 1961 State of the Union address to Congress, he asked for an extra $1,700m (£600m) on the federal budget. In September 1962, Kennedy made a further speech in which he spoke of wanting to further his space ambitions "not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

1969: ARMSTRONG TAKES 'ONE SMALL STEP'
American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon on 21 July 1969. Armstrong and his partner Buzz Aldrin spent 21 hours on the lunar surface after Apollo 11's landing craft touched down.

1975: SPACE RACE RIVALS MEET IN ORBIT
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in July 1975 was the first joint flight by the American and Soviet Cold War enemies. A US module carrying three astronauts successfully docked with a Soyuz capsule carrying two cosmonauts in orbit, and signalled the end to the "space race".

1981: FIRST SHUTTLE FLIGHT
The space shuttle Columbia made history when it launched from Cape Canaveral on 12 April 1981. It was the first of the winged, reusable craft to be used by Nasa as the US sought a departure from the capsules of the 1960s and 70s.

1986: CHALLENGER SHUTTLE DISASTER
Seven astronauts died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after take-off. The astronauts' families and millions of Americans witnessed the world's worst space disaster live on TV.

1990: HUBBLE "EYE IN THE SKY"
The giant Hubble Space Telescope was delivered into orbit by the shuttle Discovery in April 1990. Although dogged by early technical problems, repairs and upgrades resulted in stunning images of deep space.

2004: BUSH'S NEW MOON PLAN
The US will send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, President George W Bush announced in 2004. In a speech about Nasa's future, the president also unveiled plans for a manned mission to Mars.

2008: PHOENIX LANDS ON MARS
Nasa's Phoenix lander sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars in May 2008. The probe had survived a fiery plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere following its 680-million-km (420-million-mile) journey from Earth.

A nice slide show explaining NASA's 50 years can be found here. For a complete write-up on NASA's 50th anniversary by Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian, please click here.

What do you think - Googlers are smarter than ex-Googlers or vice versa. If you think that ex-Googlers are, your days of using Google as your default search engine are over. What is new and better now a days is CUIL. Cuil(an old Irish word for knowledge pronounced as "cool") is all the buzz since its launch the day before yesterday. It's a new and purportedly "better" search engine started by ex-Googlers.

Cuil claims that it searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft. It may be, but my initial few searches showed that it has a smaller database than Google and also the page ranking algorithms are not as good as Goolge. But really Cuil is a very fast search engine and very cool (as it is pronouced).

It gives you certain widget and result organization is also very good. I do like the look of the results pages, if only because they are a welcome change from the usual style of results pages on Google and other commonly used search engines. Instead of usual text results it gives you a feel of the actual link, a small screen shot of each search result. (have a look at the screen capture of results of searching Adobe). There also offers tabs that organized the results and the neat "Explore by category" widget on the right, something very similar to an old search engine called CLUSTY. You can also arrange your results in 2 coloumns or 3 coloumns.

Let's have a look at complete feature list offered by Cuil:

Drilldown: “Explore By Category” widget with a list of subjects related to your search. If you roll-over a category, it will open and show refinements related to your search.

Roll-over definitions: Really nice. When you pause on a subject suggested by “Explore By Category,” a definition of that term may appear. This gives you additional information to help you decide whether or not to click on that term and so save you some time.

Tabs: Cuil helps you to search by offering you other choices and suggestions. Cuil will show you “Tabs” that suggest ways to clarify your search.

Navigation suggestion: When you type a query, sometimes you'll see a search suggestion with an icon representing a website. Click on this link and you will go directly to that website.

Their claim of bigger database still needs to be verified. When I searched for my blog "akashthoughts.blogspot.com", cuil gave no results while google produced 3 pages. Same thing happened for many other searches. But I read at many places that it gave more results than google for many users.