Eyecatching Ads!

Which Ads are the best Ads?

For me, best Ads are those which are simple and make me smile. That which makes me smile, makes me relook at it. & thats what advertising is supposed to ensure. Isn't it?

'was browsing on the net for some of the best add campaigns. Two campaigns caught my eye.




The first one is captioned "Reach out to children with Autism" & is from the Dubai Autism Centre. Very simple Ad exemplifying the need of an helping hand for such kids.

The second one depicts the harm that tobacco consumption can lead to. It is captioned "Terrorism-related deaths since 2001: 11,337. Tobacco-related deaths since 2001: 30,000,000". What a strong message though indirect!

Finally. I am onto it!

Here begins my work! For myself that is.

There is this concept floating around in my mind for a couple of months now. Floating? I would rather say haunting!! ;)

There is so much happening on the web. I want a place there of my own! & I laid the the first (e)brick today :). 'have been on exploration for a while now. It's time to act.

First task was deciding the software & tools needed. With so much choice available, it indeed is hard. Anyway, I have now got my machine setup with all needed s/w & utilities. Thanks to the concept of open source & free software :)

I have spent time deciding the first screen. & then, I need a logo!! & these are really really tough. I am sure it is going to take me a long time to get the designer out of me for the logo :)

"Well begun is half done", they say. Hope that's true :)

Thought provoking?!!

- They are so anxious about the future, that they neglect the present, and thus live in neither the present nor the future.
- They live as if they were never going to die, and die as if they had never lived.

So quoted a friend of mine, in her blog contemplating human beings, drawing from her readings of Paulo Coelho. & guess what was the title? "Thought Provoking"!!

Well! I agree. Most of us, very eager to take a firm footing in our careers, get into this loop. Only later do we realize what we lost. Time and again, one way or the other, we are reminded of it but still we give in to the allure of corporate life and loose out on personal life. If you look at it, life is always personal. we trade a part of our waking hours on work so we can make life better. Unfortunately that reasoning has gone beneath and work has become life.

I have personally gone through this phase. Fortunately, 'have realized and rearranged my priorities. 'have changed my routine including my workplace to accomodate the same. My motivation these days is the time I spend with myself, family & friends. 'am happy for my blogger friend if her readings have really provoked her to look at this. She seems to have been too busy with work. May she come out of it and make time for herself. :)

Celebrating Independence?

It's 15th August again & we seem reminded of the notion of independence! We send wishes around; we distribute sweets & take a happy day off from work!!

While all this is good & adds aura to the day, I continue to wonder on the notions of Freedom & Independence. So many, around the world, have sacrificed their lives (& many still continue to) for the cause of "Independence". The notion is rightly depicted by Andrew (Robin Williams) in "Bicentennial man" when he sets out on his path to freedom; "Great wars have been fought for freedom", so he begins. As the movie highlights', "Freedom" is freedom for will and willful existence, & not freedom that is derived from boundaries.

It's only fitting that we take this day to remember all those great souls and their selfless acts for the cause of our independence. The freedom we enjoy is bestowed by them. It's their spirit we ought to celebrate.

Willing to own & explore. Thats all one needs to be!!

Time & again, at work & otherwise, I have hit situations in which we tend to give in & accept defeat very easily. More so; surprisingly; for simple things & unnecessarily depend on others. Lazyness or lack of knowledge & experience in an area is often used as alibi. I guess, we just want to acquit ourselves of the responsibilty of solving problems & thus escape.

May be the problem is, we are all used to ready made things & solutions. We neither have the patience nor the interest in doing anything ourselves. We would rather have things ready than apply ourselves!!

Agreed, knowledge; shelved as it was earlier; was with the experts & such an excuse could be accommodated. However, now, in the time of the internet & open knowledge, where information is just a click away, do we still continue as lazy & pass the buck? I suppose not! A little tweak to our mentality, a small change in the way we think could do wonders I guess. All we need to do is to develop a willingness to own & explore. Whatever the problem be, ownership gives the impetus to persevere & exploration gives the knowledge which, together, can ultimately help us solve things ourselves. As the saying goes, one should think with the left side of the brain & not with what is left of the brain!!

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.
--Ernest Dimne

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
--John Locke

A flower feast!!

Had been to the annual flower show at Lalbagh today. Good I did! The flower collection was amazing! & colours?..really wonderful! Here are a few of the shots I took at the venue -



















All the photoes can be seen here.
The slide show can be downloaded from my skydrive -

I am reminded of Ladakh!!

I liked this image from the "Metro Plus" supplement of today's "The Hindu", titled "How is that for National Integration!". An apt title isn't it?

It's a contribution from a participative reader of the paper. Nice snap buddy!

My guess, from its background, is that the image is from around Ladakh region. That brings back memories of my own tour in the region. Such a wonderful place!. I remember, amongst other things, a hobby we had developed in those days while traveling around the region. The roads were all developed by BRO (Border Roads Organization) & they had done a wonderful job of displaying nice quotations, road safety & cautionary messages all along the roads. In fact, waiting for such displays & reading them aloud gave us so much joy. I wish I had a digi-cam then so I could capture those. I hardly remember all of them; but here are my favourite ones -
- "Be gentle on my curves". Very much befitting the sharp & dangerous curves on those roads.
- "It's not a race or rally; enjoy the Kashmir valley". Take my word for it. It's the journey & not the destination that matters when it comes to touring Kashmir.

Olympics 2008. I am impressed with the start!!

I am impressed! That sums up all I have got to say about the opening ceremony of Olympics 2008!!

It was an awesome show. Spectacular in all respects - the size, the grandeur, the emotions. I wish I could witness the event in person although I had a few wonderful hours watching the show live on television.

It was such a rich mix of people from so many different races; people so overjoyed while flaunting their ethnic dresses in national pride; such colours on the ground; the pride of a number of nations, their national flags, swaying to the encouraging screams! - ahh.. so many things..& finaly, the olympic torch & the way it was relayed elevated around the ground; too good; very innovative.

It marked an event I will cherish for quite a time. Kudos' to the people who made it possible - an event so mammoth is size & started so well!

A glimpse of the beauty that our Cosmos is!!

Got this image from my astro-feed today. Isn't it amazing? Wonderful colours!!
& hey! It is for real. It is an image of "Cat's Eye nebula" from NASA's hubble optics collection!!

Check for more here.

A recent find for my daily reading!!

What do you do to unwind at the end of a work day?
- So asked a friend!
I read.
- I replied!
Come on! As if all work through the day hasn't taxed your mind enough!!
- So she exclaimed!

Hmm.. Whatever makes us believe reading is taxing on the mind! I find reading a very enjoyable experience. Ofcourse the material matters a lot. Being in the tech industry, reading is half my job & sure, it is demanding. But then, does reading have to stop there? Light reading at the end of the day, before I slip to bed, has a soothing effect on me & is something I have followed for years.

& with time, I have moved on, from hard prints to soft copies. Most of my reading these days is on the net. But a problem, typical of the net, is that there is so much one gets his hands on, one barely follow a topic to end; one looses continuity.

& here is what I discovered a few weeks back - Daily Literature. Its a web resource where one can subscribe(RSS/email) to regular feeds of sections from one or more books. That lands a snippet of writing in one's RSS reader/mail inbox which can be read in a matter of minutes!! I find it a good way to keep up with books, follow them till end & experience the narration. Also, by mixing selections, one can have a dose of humour, classics, fiction & many more on a daily basis. & that is very intersting to me.


I am following "Sense & Sensibility" by Jane Austin & "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde together enjoyably. There are many more that Daily Literature offers for free & I already have my list to follow ;)

I wish I were his student!!!

Professor teaches students how to hack!

So read an article I stumbled upon today. It talks of George Ledin, a professor in California, teaching his students the tricks of hacking computer systems and challenging antivirus software. One can read the full article at newsweek here.

Antivirus software vendors don't seem to be happy with him. Does it matter?
I don't think so.

Knowledge is something that needs to be shared. Knowledge itself cannot be malicious; It's more how one uses it. It's no use criticizing and hiding such knowledge. All I feel we should be looking at is building a good value system through our schooling, culture & societal norms.

I liked what Jim, one of the commenters on the article had to say - "This professor is adding knowledge, parents are tasked with adding character before the professor gets the students". How true!

With strong character preceding & sustaining, such knowledge shouldn't be any issue. Is it?

& for me, I wish I had a professor like him. One who understands and passes on what a student really needs - the thought process.

Shared browsing!!

Of late there have been a few instances when me and a friend have been co-browsing!! i.e. while we were both online, we shared the interesting links that we stumbled upon, browsed them, commented & discussed about them. Fun as it was, we felt lacking since we had to collaborate on our browser content using instant messengers & mobile telephony!! It left me wondering why hasn't there been an application to help share the browsing experience easily; especially in these days of web2.0 and the social (i)networking!!

Today, I tried looking for such applications & to my surprise found a few. One of them is Me.dium. From their web pages, I gather that they support much more than shared browsing. 'haven't tried it yet but looks to be the kind of application I needed. 'll try it out with friends soon. :)

ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರಹ!!

ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆದು ಅದೆಷ್ಟು ದಿನಗಳಾದವು! ಕೈಬರಹ ತಪ್ಪಿಯೇ ವರ್ಷಗಳಾಗಿದೆ! ಹೀಗೇ ಬ್ಲಾಗರ್ ಹೆಲ್ಪ್ ನೋಡ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದಾಗ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಸಪೋರ್ಟ್ ನೋಡಿ ಯಾಕೆ ಟ್ರೈ ಮಾಡಬಾರದು ಅನ್ನಿಸಿತು. ಅದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಈ test ಬ್ಲಾಗ್!! transliteration feature ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿದೆ. ಇನ್ಮೇಲಾದ್ರು ಆಗೀಗ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರಿಯ ಬಹುದು :)

Blog template!!

For once, today, thought of tweaking my blog template to a custom one & here is the result. It was fun playing with HTML tags :)

Powerset; Wikipedia search made easy!!

Recently I stumbled on this new startup search engine named Powerset. What caught my attention was their goal of basing search on natural language principles. I was amused. I tried their current offering; the Wikipedia search. It was amazing. There isn't any point in me describing the experience dear friends, you should try it for yourself here.

I am happy to read they are now part of Microsoft. I liked what they are trying to do. This acquisition should give them the necessary resources. May Powerset go more powerful on its search index!!