Crying glaciers

How about this to depict mother nature crying? The glaciers and ice caps melting are some the highly perceptible effects of the global warming scenario.

Irrespective of the merits of the global warming debate.. this picture, captured by Michael Nolan, as a photograph is very descriptive of whats happening to the ice caps.

http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2009/10/pictured-haunting-face-crying-river-tears-glacier-melts-sea/

Tetris..

Have you guys played Tetris before? I am sure most of us have. Such an addictive game... Used to play this even in the Windows 3.1 time.. oops.. looks so much behind in the past. But nevertheless it was fun ... Have been hours at it before..

Also there is a two player version .. where two players compete against each.. the beauty in that if one player completes more than one row with a piece, two rows (jagged) gets added to the other player. This is apart from the points one gets for completing a row... U guys tried playing the two player version?.. It used to be fun..

Now how about this for a large scale tetris...

Google patents webpage !!

Another one those patent stories.. Which are ridiculous Google now has a patent for the google search webpage you know . The ubiquitous page we see whenever we go to www.google.com With an input box and few links is now patented. But cmon, this is such a simple page and anybody trying to give a shot at creating a webpage by writing a html code would end up doing something like this .. Check for Patent D0599372 at www.uspto.gov

Ganesha Processsions

This is Vinayaka Chaturthi season and this is the time the Ganesha idols are taken in a procession for immersion.

The processions vary from simple idols with meagre decorations to highly decorated idols. The people in the procession go about dancing with all kinds of drums single sided horizontal, single sided vertical to double sided drums of various sizes. But the enthusiasm of the folks who dance in the procession is amazing.. may be quite a few were "in high spirits" too.

BTW Ganesha goes around in the processions only covered with Police security.. ;-) You see Gods too opt for Z+ Security I guess..

I am moving to the moon !!!

I am going to move to the Moon.. Going by the present of real estate in Bangalore I am sure it would be better off to move to the Moon where the real estate I am sure would be cheaper.. and now here is all the more the reason..

The moon has a better bandwidth connectivity than what I can get at my house.. 100Mbps..

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/20/1233258/NASA-Probe-Blasts-461-Gigabytes-of-Moon-Data-Daily

All the more reason to move..

Dont forget your laptop when going on a flight..

How about this news.. Pilot used the laptop of a passenger for checking weather.. for their flight ahead..

http://gizmodo.com/5341675/random-dude-with-a-laptop-called-up-to-cockpit-to-help-pilots-plot-a-new-course

So you see it is better to carry your laptop when on a flight. You never know when it will be useful..

MIT Personas... Characterization of your digital life

Found this new project by MIT.. "Personas". The concept is so cool.. It basically tries to scrounge the internet for your name and provides an output which basically tries to characterize the digital life of you.

The best part is the way it does the characterization. The method it follows and the visual representation of the same is also soooo cool...

The only catch is it looks up by name and if there are multiple people in your name then personas might mashup all the characters together... Imagine if you had a evil namesake who is known for all illegal things ;-)

Anyway this is the output for me

Laser propulsion based space travel..

Came across this article.. now we can think of going to space without using present day rocket fuel based propulsion.. but with laser propulsion

Leik Myrabo, an aerospace engineer, who has been working on this for nearly 3 decades claims it can now soon become reality.. He also hints at using this technology to go from one region of earth to the opposite end within an hour !!!

Then we can commute between India and US daily for work;-) ... but still we might take more than that to commute to the laser transport station from our home in Bangalore with the traffic the way it is today :)

Read on..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090729/sc_space/laserpropulsionwildideamayfinallyshine

Bing Image Today in India .. Green

Today's Bing Image India.. is coool.. greennn

http://www.bing.com

Michel Lauziere playing Mozart with rollerblades and 284 bottles

Phew.. this is so cool... both the idea and the execution...

Bing image today

Today's Bing image in India (and most of Asia I think) is scary..

http://www.bing.com

Windows Media player wmv files playing at double speed...

I had a strange problem with my Windows Media Player that it was not playing wmv files properly.. I had upgraded to WMplayer 11 where the wmv files played only video and no audio. So when I downgraded back to WMplayer 9, the files started playing at twice the speed. :-)

After quite some searching found a solution for this vague problem.. Thanx to m05ue on this forum who posted the answer to this freak problem..

http://www.click-now.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3778

SpeedTest

New Speed test site.. at least new for me.. :-) I like the graphics and the report.. Check it out..

Come Back !!

Well, its been a while I blogged .. it is almost like I retired from blogging.. well not really.. let's say it was a hiatus away from blogging.

Now that this has become a season of come backs, I though let me too make a "Come Back" on blogging. Season of Come backs?? Yup.. Lance Armstrong and now Micheal Schumacher..

Lance Armstrong's, the seven time Tour De France champion, comeback has really been great.. He announced at the beginning of this year that he would come back from retirement into pro cycling to promote his Livestrong cancer support org and campaign. And he really did that great. He has rekindled interest in the sport of Pro Cycling again. He sported the Livestrong gear all through the tour.

His Twitter tweets has become a super hit and he now has 1,631,201 followers on twitter. All basically creating awareness. And finally what a comeback for a guy at the age of 37 pushing 38, coming out of retirement after 4 years, to ride the Tour De France , 3500 km race over mountains and valleys and plains and to finish on the podium at 3rd overall in front of much younger guys. And now he is going to be back next year at the Tour De France with his own team, Team Radioshack. Its gonna be great..

And the latest comeback.. by Schumi,the seven time F1 world champion. He retired 3 years ago and is now 40 years old. But he is now going to ride in place of Felipe Massa who was injured seriously in a freak accident last week Hungary Grand Prix. Again his return has been greatly welcomed by one and all to add more frenzy to the F1 circuit. He has been one of my most favourite F1 riders and am sure will be rooting for him. Not that Ferrari is in great form this year, they have not won a single race this year.. may be they were waiting for Schumi ;-)

Lets see how it goes.. both my favourite heros are back in their sports ;-) And to top it all, Lance tweeted on Schumi's announcement to come back "So excited to see Michael Schumacher race again. The greatest of all time!!"

Bye Bye again

Some time back I had written a post regarding Farewell Emails. That post seems to have become very popular. Not that I received a whole lot of responses, but then it seems to a page which has the highest number of hits. This is the case even today quite some time after I have written the post.

The main reason seems to be the search engines seem to lead people to this page when they search for "Farewell emails". Then the fact is that so many people are searching for "Farewell emails" which most probably means that they are all writing farewell emails and searching for some inspirations, formats etc.

Looks like quite a few people are leaving from wherever they are working and they more and more want to nice farewell emails so they go around searching for ideas. Also the hits do come from all over the world. By method of induction, it can be inferred that market's are opening up all over the world providing on opportunity to people to jump jobs ;-)

Happy job hopping :-)

Running for elections

I am going to run for the next parliament elections. It is official.

I am going to start my own political party. I have not zeroed in on the name yet. But a probable name is "Janata Jagaran Party (JJP)". Since I am the founder of the party, I shall be the President of the party for the first year, which will later follow a democratic process of elections. Posts of Secretary, treasurer and followers are still empty. Inviting nominations and applications for these posts.

If people are wondering why this sudden transformation and what I think I have in me to run for the elections, I am a true citizen of this country.. and I have one other great qualification in me. I have been judged as a "Politician" by the famous "Ultimate Personality Test" by Tickle. :-)

You're a Politician!


The Ultimate Personality Test

Brought to you by Tickle

This gives me an automatic qualification. I have come to know that this is one of the qualifications which Election Commission is insisting upon while filing for elections. So all people who are interested in joining my party are advised to take the "Ultimate Personality Test" by Tickle and approach me only if they are judged as a "Politician".

:-) :-)

The New Anthem

This is the latest offering of Rahman and BharatBala to the spririt of the nation. This has been released on the 60th Anniversary of Indian Independence. These guys manage to make great music and videos celebrating the unity of India.

Video Courtesy usthadh007

Rahman as always rendered another version of our anthem, albeit the score has not changed much, it is the arrangement etc. which has done the magic.

His earlier video, a version of "Vande Mataram" was a runaway success, where the both lyrics and the music score was different from the original one. But that too was superb. It gave patriotism a youthful shade to it and made Vande Mataram hummable by one and all giving it a "cool" feeling. 

Video Courtesy arrahmanfans

Hope to get more of such ones from Rahman..

Enjoy..

Cool ad..

Advertising is such a creative field... This ad talks about a bank but uses a seemingly different prop and models to convey the message. Pity not all ads are so good...

Cool ad..

Video courtesy subhasisbeura

New mungaaru male

Found this new version of the hit song from Munagaru Male.. in churmuri...


hilarious...

Faceless Banking

Faceless
Originally uploaded by museum of dirt

Tring...

[Automated Message]
Welcome to XXX Bank
Enter your Credit Card or Debit Card number
787988799366313308
Thank you, enter your PIN
6532
Sorry, that is an invalid entry.. Please enter ur pin
6523
Sorry that is an invalid entry.... Transferring you to a customer service executive.
[beep] [beep] [beep]

All our Customer Service Executives are busy.. Your call is important to us.. Please hold the line, a customer service executive will be with you shortly..
.
.
.
.
.
All our Customer Service Executives are busy.. Your call is important to us.. Please hold the line, a customer service executive will be with you shortly..
.
.
.
.
All our Customer Service Executives are busy.. Your call is important to us.. Please hold the line, a customer service executive will be with you shortly..
.
.

[Executive]
Welcome to XXX Bank, this is YYY speaking, how may I help you?

[Customer]
Hi,
My account number is 28284239.
I would like to know my balance

[Executive]
Surely, before that can I verify credentials

[Customer]
Yes..

[Executive]
Your date of birth?

[Customer]
mm-dd-yyyy

[Executive]
Your address?

[Customer]
343, aaa road,
BBBB

[Executive]
How often do you get statements?

[Customer]
That is the problem, I don't get statements. So I am calling for the balance

[Executive]
Sir, as part of verification, you will have to tell what is the frequency?

[Customer]
[Angry] Nil...

[Executive]
But sir, that does not match with our records.. please tell how often you get statement for us to verify you..

[Customer]
[At the edge] I DONT GET STATEMENTS.. I WOULD LIKE TO LODGE A COMPLAINT

[Executive]
Sir, I would have to transfer you to a different department which handles complaint. Can I put you on hold while I transfer..

[Customer]
[Sighs].. Ok..

[Executive]
Thanx, have a nice day...

[beep][beep][beep]

[Executive]
Welcome to XXX Bank, this is YYY speaking, how may I help you?

[Customer]
I would like to lodge a complaint regarding non receipt of statements.

[Executive]
Surely sir, before that I would like to know some details? What is your account number?

[Customer]
I already gave it.. anyway... it is 28284239

[Executive]
Thank you, Your Date of Birth?

[Customer].... Not again...

.........

-----------------------------------------------------------

How many times have we not gone through these kind of calls.... Banking today or for that matter many of the services have become faceless. There is no more personal rapport involved in most of these services. It is almost like one is just talking to some other machine everytime as we go through the same drill as above..

Many times it is so frustrating that one has to relate a certain problem to each of the executives and god forbid, if the call gets cut in between or the call gets transferred to a different department.. One has to repeat the same problem 'n' number of times to 'n' different executives.

But even though it is sometimes irritating.. It gives the ultimate convenience of being able to achieve most of the things just over the phone instead of actually visiting a bank which is a great achievement in itself compared to the olden days when one would have to go to the bank talk to the counter clerk, or the manager to get the work done.


But the present 'call center' based services though is a great thing, it has become so error prone either due to lack of commitment just from the fact that customer and employee are not face to face or lack of proper information furnished that many transactions invariably needs follow up either due to the delay in processing or due to some error in the processing.

How many times have you faced this?