I've been meaning to say this for quite a while - Use the Google Deskbar! Amzingly convenient tool to search the web. Lots of cool keyboard shorcuts and ability to add custom searches. My favourite custom search queries the WordWeb OneLook Dictionary Search [the deskbar custom code - http://wordweb.info/3/lookup_v2.pl?{1} , with associated shortcut Ctrl+G]. So now looking up a word* - in any language, through 964 dictionaries!!! - is done in three easy steps -
1. Highlight the word.
2. Ctrl+Alt+G [Jump to deskbar, also copy-pastes the word! No need for Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V]
3. Ctrl+G.
Voila! [Etymology: French, literally, see there. -- used to call attention, to express satisfaction or approval, or to suggest an appearance as if by magic] :D
Of course, for when I'm not connected to the net [yeah right...] there's always good ol' WordWeb. [For searching words just on webpages, there is a (IE on Win) plugin, and another (IE/Netscape on Win) plugin for multilingual dictionary search/translation.]

And by the way, you can use the deskbar instead of convert, and as a calculator!

I also just modified a Depth of Field calculator to accomodate for a 2/3" CCD sensor - and the accompanying change in focal length. [Such as those found in the DSC-F828 ;-). Twice in the last week I've got the chance to go to Best Buy/Circuit City and play with it. That baby feels AWESOME!]

Tools make life easier! :D

In Passing: President Bill Clinton sent a grand total of two e-mails during his White House years. and Amazon has announced its first ever full-year profit - $35.3M.

^{* Also useful for confirming those tricky spellings you mix up ;-)}

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~
Edited on: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 7:51 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Have you ever listened to National Public Radio? There's wondeful stuff on all the time, including Classical music, discussions about political, social, environmental issues around the world. Much like PBS - the television counterpart. [Find the PBS schedule in your area here]
NPR also has a lot of internet transmitted [Real Player] programs. One of my favourits is Performance Today which features a different musical performance every day. They've also recently added a list - the PT50 - 50 classical music must haves. You can listen to snippets of all 50, and their cultural significance on the PT50 page.

If you want to listen on 'real' radio, you can find the AM/FM frequency in your city here. You can also listen to a wide variety of music on winamp radio. Here's my playlist of classical stations.

In Passing: Read all about the "My job went to India and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirt.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Arts~ ~Fun~
Edited on: Friday, January 23, 2004 11:51 AM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Check out this owesome reminiscence.

An excerpt:

...And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
Barefoot, uphill both ways,
Through blizzards in summer and winter
Back in the good old days.
Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran
And the PC was only a toy
And we did our computing by gaslight
When I was a boy.

When I was a boy all our networks
Were for hauling in fish from the sea--
Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!),
And our IP address was just 3.

And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web
Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin',
'Cuz when I was a boy every packet
Was delivered by carrier pigeon...

The /. discussion that it's quoted on, and a similar discussion between Angband players [scroll down ¹/₃^rd page].

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~ ~GeekStuff~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Science: Climatology of Advanced Industrialized Planets: Preventing polar meltdown on YOUR planet Modelling and Prediction Enivironmental Fluctuations Accelerating Evolution for Optimum Biodiversification Engineering: Handbook of Interstellar Water Harvesting Handbook of Interstellar Mining Burning Space-Time with a simple Glalactic Transporter 27.X - 100 Hacks for when you want to be at the other end of your Humanities: Galatic Politics and Interplanetary Relations A case Study of Boundry Disputes in the Crab Nebula Management: Law: Medicine:

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~ ~Science~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In an article in The International Herald Tribune, four prominant environmentalists related to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme talk about how the earth is going through more changes than in the the past half million years, and could rapidly flip from the current state to another stable state - making the change irriversible. Also a BBC summary of the IHT article...

In brief:

• "Our planet is changing fast. Change is a fact of life, but in recent decades many environmental indicators have moved outside the range of variation of the last half million years... "
• "The human-driven increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is nearly 100 parts per million and still growing - already equal to the entire range experienced between an ice age and a warm period such as the present. ... has occurred at least 10 times faster than any natural increase in the last half million years."
• "It is now clear that the Earth has entered the so-called Anthropocene Era - the geological era in which humans are a significant and sometimes dominating environmental force."
• "It would take about a millennium for the Greenland ice sheet to melt [resulting in a sea-level rise of six metres]. But we could reach the trigger point that makes the process unstoppable within the next century"
• "...there are significant risks of rapid and irreversible changes to which it would be very difficult to adapt."
• "at current extinction rates we may well be on the way to the Earth's sixth great extinction event."
• "A lack of certainty does not justify inaction - the precautionary principle must be applied."

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~ ~World~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A little colour for the blog...I looked at it for the first time on another computer, and it looked really bland...
I've been using this colour for window background (with the 'Rainy Day' scheme) for about 3-4 years now...
So now you see the blog like I see it...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~ThisBlog~
Edited on: Monday, January 19, 2004 1:55 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Maybe you've heard about his before... The National Innovation Foundation is a CSIR related organization - chaired by Dr. Mashelkar - that aims to "help India become an inventive and creative society and a global leader in sustainable technologies" "The Department of Science and Technology help establish the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) of India, on March 1 2000, with the main goal of providing institutional support in scouting, spawning, sustaining and scaling up grassroots green innovations and helping their transition to self supporting activities." A related organization that has been around for about ten years [mainly in Gujrat, I think..] is SRISTI with their Honeybee Network and even an Innovations Database.

I'd say this is one of the most important things going on in India right now...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~ ~Science~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

See what the 'secular alliance' is saying - "Speaking to the press after holding a meeting of PCC chiefs and state CLP leaders, Sonia Gandhi said the Congress was ready to have a common minimum programme (CMP) ‘‘if necessary’’ but it was not on the agenda right now. ‘‘Agar alliance banayenge, to zaroor hogi, par abhi nahin’’ she said in reply to a question.Speaking to The Indian Express, CPI(M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet criticised talks of a CMP at this juncture. ‘‘The stage for that has not yet come. That question will rise only after the elections. Earlier also, we never went for a pre-poll programme.’’"

How can they even think of fighting an election without declaring a commonn program???

- Chinmay

Categories - ~India~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There's something about looking at the earth from an airplane that inspires poetry....
or maybe it's the blankness of the papernapkins that come with the pretzels :-|

Flying in the plane
I can see the earth
Land meeting the sea
And etheral clouds
Our world is precious
---June 20 '03

Sharp, angled hills
Tiny rivers carving through
Hills become plains
---
It's not her fault
That the Earth likes to shrug
Once in a while
---Dec. 21 '03

Endless squares,
Green, brown and gold.
Hunger remains.
---
One door,
That never opens.
Question haunts.
---March 13 '04

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Writing~
Edited on: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 10:05 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

... to Mars! "Would NASA entertain a one-way policy for human Mars exploration? Probably not. But other, more adventurous space agencies in Europe or Asia might. The next giant leap for mankind won't come without risk." Interesting NYTimesOp-Ed and a /. discussion too...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Science~ ~World~
Edited on: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:35 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Is this a coincidence or what? A few miuntes ago I posted Reatuality, and now I stumble upon an article on a computer wearing cyborg! This guy - Steve Mann - is an engineering prof at the University of Toronto. Check out his own website - EyeTap -- "By various modes of thought we can take a picture, or tune the brightness, or change the contrast on the EyeTap system, all hands-free. Also, a new feature of the code, is a display of the various waveforms that a user might want to see. This will allow the user to practise, and train on our system, so that precise thought control can be acheived. It also looks neat."

Cool toys! I can't wait to make myself one! ;-)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~ ~ThisBlog~
Edited on: Thursday, January 15, 2004 2:34 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Admittedly, putting old stories on your blog as a recent entry might be called cheating, but what the heck...
It's a good way to allow more people access to good literature ;-)

- Chinmay

Categories - ~ThisBlog~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

23 August 2043

Mr. Anand Bose, sitting in his tastefully furnished Calcutta office, was engrossed in business negotiations with Mr. Darrel Adams, his US based partner, who was sitting in his own office in San Jose. When the meeting was over, they both got up and, according to the custom, shook hands. It was the very moment reality and virtuality chose to get frightfully mixed up. At that instant the Storm, as it is now known, struck for the first time. Over the period of a week the it struck innumerable times across the world through any device – communicators, gamepads, classrooms and operation theaters, just to name a few, connected to the Virtual Reality Network or the VRNet.

Now I am telling you this so that the entire world knows exactly what happened during that time, The Month of the Storm. It took me three weeks to even start sorting out the chaos that the world was thrown into. You see, I was the only one who knew human physiology, psychology and enough about the working of VRNet to be unaffected by the Storm. But all that comes later, much later. During the week that it raged, the Storm affected almost three fourths of humanity though Mr. Bose and Mr. Adams got the dubious honor of being the first in the history of mankind to get rigor mortis while still alive. When the doctor arrived, called by a visibly distraught secretary, he almost pronounced the businessman dead. It was only his eyes that saved Mr. Bose from being autopsied. And this was to be true of all the people affected by the Storm. These people did not show any sign of movement- no breathing, no heartbeat, nothing. But no doctor, looking at these obviously alive eyes, could certify them dead. The shining eyes, and the steady, continuous alpha wave on the EEG. The alpha waves, as discovered in the early twentieth century, denote brain function in its most relaxed mode; seen in a yogi deep into his meditation or even a common person just on the verge of falling asleep. So, apparently the affected people were in some state that could be similar to these situations. Yet what could parallel the heart stopping and the brain in meditation?

Logically, I tried to stimulate the brain into action, the thinking parts and even the parts associated with the most vigorous muscular movement. Because of course, I could not risk using VR medicinal devices; I had to contact doctors by paper mail, which consumed a lot of time. Unfortunately the approach failed to have the slightest effect. It was as if the brains had become waveform generators programmed solely for alpha waves. The next step I took was to look for the possible cause of the Storm. For a whole week I tried to search the answers for the endless series of questions about the Storm that I could think of. I searched my own knowledge and all the available databanks searching for the slightest hint of any precedent to this never before behavior of the human body - - and mind. This effort was as futile as the other- if not more. Now, for the first time, I was absolutely unable to do anything about a problem presented to me. No clue about the cure and none at all about the cause. On the third day of the third week a lucky break came by- Mr. Bose ‘woke up’- and in perfectly normal condition- when his wife put on a CD of Tagore’s Geetanjali. It was, as he later told me, his only ‘addiction’. The waking up could be reported to me only on the sixth day as no one would dare touch a communicator and it took three precious days to find - from the Calcutta Museum of Archeology - repair, and install a ‘telephone’ which could tap into the VRNet. On what remained of that day, and the whole of the next, I preferentially ‘woke up’ all available psychologists who could then carry on the remaining task. By the end of the next week most of humanity was ‘shaken awake’ using their ‘addictions’ – from religious texts to cartoons. So the world rejoiced surviving a major crisis, even while economists cried about losses of about 300 trillion US dollars.

Now I want you to think real hard about anything related to the Storm and any affected people you know. We need to know all the whys and how about the Storm, so that if and when the Storm strikes again, no one may suffer. Anything that you may have noticed, any thought, any idea – nothing is irrelevant or unimportant. And don’t worry about getting your ideas to me. Just connect to the VRNet and think – I am watching all information that contains reference to the Storm.

I need ideas from you because I myself have not yet been taught to think. You see, I am what you call the VRNet.

*-----------------*------------------*

Note: -

I wrote this story for a creative writing competition in FE (1998, The day probably was 23rd Aug.) – the subject given was Real virtuality or Virtual reality, and it bagged me the first prize! For three years it was just laying around, read, at the most, by three people - including me!

Then in the first week of September 2001, three separate news articles appeared in Times of India, which made me sit down and type it - I have maintained the original structure on the whole, while trying to improve the readability.

The news were —

· Tuesday, September 4
'Beware of AI'-- in which Stephen Hawking is quoted as saying “We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it”

· Thursday, September 6
'Combining biology with technology' – which reports the first successful interfacing of two neurons with two FETs (I suspect this bit of news to be a bit stale.)

These two deal with the aspect of VR that I had in mind- though it is not explicit in the story- that of connecting directly to the brain bypassing the five senses. The third one deals with another property of the VRNet that I have used.

· Friday, September7
'Techies in quest of the Next Generation Internet' – which quotes John Patrick, IBM’s VP for Internet technology “Autonomic computing is a vision that we have at IBM to allow server infrastructure to be able to self-manage and self-heal. It’s our vision to be able to provide an infrastructure that is very highly automated, that manages itself”

And just because I like the fear of the unknown, I will quote another piece of news from the same day – Sept. 7th.

· 'Solar wave threatens global phone calls' – reports possible disruptions in satellite aided phone calls due to a solar wave – ‘supernatural phenomenon occurring in space which would allow no countermeasures’ and ‘The waves sporadically interrupt satellite signals, creating noises or even halt international calls all over the world’

What happens to a brain totally immersed in a virtual world when the world is suddenly shut down…….

Hope to shake hands with you across the world.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Writing~
Edited on: Thursday, January 15, 2004 1:23 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amusing news - PETA rented the domain beef.com from its owner right after BSE was detected for the first time in the Americas, and put up quite an interesting page -
"If you eat meat, you already have to worry about salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter, heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, and cancer, as well as your weight. Now, add mad cow, chicken, fish, pig, and turkey disease to the list—that’s right, if there’s a brain, it could have a spongy brain (spongiform encephalopathy); we’ve already identified mad cow disease variants in humans, sheep, mink, cows, elk, deer, and cats."
...and...
"The dangerous practice of feeding sheep and even cows to other cows was not banned in the U.S. and Canada until 1997, and the U.S. government said that as recently as 2001, there was widespread violation of the feeding regulation. It is still legal to feed cow’s blood to cows, to feed sheep and cows to pigs and chickens, and to feed pigs and chickens to one another and to cows..." Is that barbaric or what!

Meanwhile PETA has another website - MeetYourMeat which hosts a number of videos [which I haven't seen...] attempting to turn people vegetarian by showing how animals are butchered etc... Interesting...
BTW, if you want to buy beef.com, it's on sale for $250k, although if you are National Cattlemen's Association, the price is $2.5 mil! LOL

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~
Edited on: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 8:38 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An article on clichés in photography, and the response it generates...
Mike Johnston writes very interesting Sunday Morning articles on photography on the Luminous Landscape website.

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Photo~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

DPRview just released its complete review of the new Sony DSC-F828. On the good side, they like most everything about the camera. On the bad, the image quality, as many had feared, is quite poor. Hence the F828 gets a (barely) recommended rating! This puts me in a great dilemma, as I've been waiting for F828 to be available for quite a while. It's a shame that the only major problems with this camera chromatic aberration and image noise, are related to the hardware and hence there is probably little that Sony can do - in terms improving the image processing algorithms - that will solve these problems and not introduce other artifacts.
On the other hand, quite a number of people who've purchased it seem to be happy with it, and are posting a large number of pictures on the net. I suppose I'll wait to see if Sony upgrades the firmware to reduce noise and CA, and go through the pictures people are posting. Also, post capture processing in Photoshop or other image processing tools should be helpful, although that'll eat up more time....

The other cameras under consideration are Minolta's Dimage A1[Recommended] and Canon's EOS 300D [Highly Recommended], but both have their own limitations - A1 is 5 megapixels, and the image processing introduces a lot of artefacts, and EOS 300D is - a) costly - when you include the cost of lenses & b) a hobbled version of EOS 10D (QUITE expensive)

Other F828 reviews - DCResource, Imaging Resource [a preview, as of now] Luminous-Landscape [verdict: A flawed jewel!] etc....

...UPDATE: The final comment from the 'flawed jewel' review: "So, should you wait for the F838 and some of the needed fixes. Hell no — you'd be missing out on one of the most enjoyable digital cameras yet available. There's always going to be something new on the horizon." However, I think I'll wait till April to buy(?) mine. Knowing me, if I bought it right now, I'd likely abandon my research and go off clicking... ;-)

In Passing: I don't know how many people have heard of Google's New Alerts service. It's quite a handy tool if you want to keep on top of developments about some particular thing [provided said developments are reported in the '4,500 news sources' Google looks at, of course!] That's how I've been getting to know whenever somebody posts a complete review of the F828. Also, as I've just come to know, there's a Google News India which focuses on news important to India. Interesting...

- Chinmay

Categories - ~GeekStuff~ ~Photo~
Edited on: Sunday, January 11, 2004 9:02 PM
;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ten principles of good consumption from WorldWatch.
Also, summary of the State of the World 2004 report

Remember State of the Planet from a while back?

- Chinmay

Categories - ~World~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lose the mane
Before:

After:

- Chinmay

Categories - ~Fun~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Back to work after a wonderful vacation. Came straight to the lab from the airport. Have to complete my work in 2 months now! [leaving a month for writing the thesis...] Let's see how that goes.
Completed the story while waiting for the delayed flight out of Jacksonville... don't like the way it goes though :-| maybe I'll rework it...
More later....

- Chinmay

Categories - ~~

;  permalink
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~