ToI- Lead India Initiative

A very inspiring video for ToI's initiative! lovely one....enjoy it!

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Magic!

One more post on my fav. topic, music.

Watch this lovely song from Ullasam. This belongs a different genre - beautiful song in a crappy movie.  Unnikrishnan has a dominant role in the song. Harini comes up with beautiful piece in mid, but didn't have many chance to show her magic in this song.  

Now, revenge time ;)
One more beautiful song from my favorite singer Harini.....

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Ideas worth spreading!

This is link to my dear Ghosty's recent blog post. That is the first time I heard of Prof. Randy Pausch. Checked his website, didn't get a clue what he is working on. Later got his "last lecture" video from bit-torrents. This was my comments on GP's post after seeing that video:

boy, that was amazing lecture. inspiring, emotional....that's fete any man will want to achieve in his life time!
Hats off to Randy! I am impressed by his lecture...I would love to be in his making virtual worlds class for sure...
childhood dreams...I lost touch with my childhood dreams for these days. Will gonna look at it again...
thanks bro...thats wonderful experience listening to his magic speech!

See the video if you get hold of it! Truly inspiring!

And Have you guys heard about TED, http://www.ted.com/

Their caption is the title of this post. I want to write about that for long time, finally got it! TED is video collection of lectures shared by inspired thinkers. If you don't have patience to read through the whole book, boy, then TED videos are for you.  Enjoy!

BTW, Sep 28 is our dear Ghosty's birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear GP! ;)

 

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iPhone in India

Peeps, iPhone has been cracked in India to work with Indian service providers ;)
Initial details are here

Hope he publishes steps to crack it soon!

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India Rocks!

Man! it's amazing match to remember for my life time!

Wow! I love twenty 20 format of cricket! I never had patience to see one whole ODI. T20 comes as lucky boon for people like me.

Me and my friends were enjoying this match in my home here.  Nail biting, heart popping, deafening shouts....it's best! India team rocked and made us all proud!

As usual lot of sentiments while we were seeing the match. A friend of mine really got pissed of the progress of the match and decided to go back to office. When he had almost left the house, Pakistan team lost their first wicket. Hurray! we were shouting like madmen; he came back running to join in the celebrations. Then that sentiment worked till the end. Whenever he decided to go back, a Pakistan wicket fell. He almost sacrificed witnessing the nail biting climax of the match because of this sentiment.  Hurray!!!

What a great moment!

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Cheers!

Have you seen this great fete of ISRO?

As a alumni of GSLV team, I was very happy to hear this news. GSLV-FO4 was a grand success with great precision. This success for the rocket is much needed one there. GSLV had a bad launch failure last year. That was the failure after 10 long years in ISRO history and hopefully the last failure forever for ISRO. 

I was in cloud nine hearing the news because I knew lot of main people behind this launch. I was reporting to them directly during my days there ;) It's great to see your team's achievement and boss's smiles flashing in the newspapers. Isn't it?

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Grand (Robot) Prix

This is a different race.  It is race of Humvee's and SUV's maneuvered by Robots with their laser sharp sensor eyes and artificial intelligent computer brain.  The 'urban challenge'  is about how your robot drives 60 miles in 6 hours in urban traffic environment. This year's challenge is in Nov 3rd in CA. This race is not about speed, average speed is around 50 miles/hr.  The race is about the robustness in the autonomous maneuvering algorithm in extreme condition. The grand finale of 2005 challenge was in the desert, 175 miles in 10 hours.  The race track is full of human made obstacles and the robot had to learn and find its way out of the maze.

This race improves the research in Artificial Intelligence. More importantly, it finds one better utility for AI research than making computers play chess super efficiently. DARPA funds this challenge.  This has an immediate application in battle fields; where ground troops movement in dangerous places can be replaced with this auto-maneuvering robots. That's interesting application for these research!

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Software Easter Eggs

Easter eggs are interesting goodies packed with software distributed, but hidden and undocumented. Microsoft excel 97 has a flight simulator embedded in it and Microsoft word 97 has pinball game embedded and hidden in it.  Easter eggs are bundled with software for entertainment purpose and for adding personal signature.

If you use Linux vi editor, type :help 42. then you can see "meaning of life?" ;)

What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?  *42*
Douglas Adams, the only person who knew what this question really was about is
now dead, unfortunately.  So now you might wonder what the meaning of death
is...

There is this website which lists hosts of them.

The corporate who market these software rarely take it in light sense.  There was once a famous reported case, the engineer working on the development of the product got pissed off by the client's pressure. To vent his frustration, he added an Easter egg which pops up and say "that X company sucks!". Unfortunately during software adoption phase of the software, the client's found out this Easter egg.  Then what happened is no-brainer.

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Rock for Good Cause!

My blog is in lull even after I desperately tried reviving it.  Nothing much happening in my personal end.  My world now is my work, my friends, music, movies, magazines and occasionally spending time for good cause (like Dream A Dream work).  That's reason why I keep it low on blog world. Yet I do & will be reading all your blogs regularly.  Period.

Music and work are best combo. When you wanna concentrate on the work, spice it up with good environment and mellifluous music flooding that environment. Check back, your productivity would have gone up a lot. And that reasoning gives me a chance to listen to lot of world music. I reinvent my love for music daily.  That's why I invariably end up writing reviews for great music in my past blog posts.  Now one more...

I vote against rock music. I don't like most of rocks for the kind of pessimism and negative world portrayed by them. I was pleasantly surprised by this song. I am talking about "Zombie" from The Cranberries. Not the regular hear-deafening music. The song is catchy and caught my attention/interest. 

A good video of the song youtubed by Universal Music Group is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEySrDerj0

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Maestro

Illayaraja, the acclaimed music director of South India is fondly called as Maestro. The fete achieved by him is unbeatable and will be so for long time to come. He is celebrated music director among masses as well as from classical music world. He has used classical Carnatic music ragas, composed music in pure form and popularized the music among the masses.  A tip of the Iceberg, an example of cinema music in pure classical raga is this song. It is based on 'Shamugapriya' raga.

The raga in classical form is available here

And a tail piece, a recent song from another music director is based on this song (not in same tempo or tone or shruthi) but disguised version of the same song. This info is hear-say. I tried to relate both, but couldn't.

Anyway Illayaraja's piece is the best of them.  I enjoyed the song, music fiesta in the song. The song's opening tempo makes the huge impact. SPB's voice is heavenly. 

The lyrics for the first song....

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!
கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

நாணம் விடவில்லை தொடவில்லை
ஏனோ விடை இன்னும் வரவில்லை!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

அம்பா சாம்பவி சந்திரமௌலி ரகளா அக்னா உமா பார்வதி
காளி ஹமவதி சிவாத்திர நயானா கார்த்தியாயனி பைரவி
சாவித்திரி நவயுக்கயான சுபஹரி சாம்ராஜ லக்குமிபிரதா!

தென்றல் தொட்டதும் மொட்டு வெடித்தால்
கொடிகள் என்ன குற்றம் சொல்லுமா!
கொல்லைத் துளசி எல்லைக் கடந்தால்
வேதம் சொன்ன சட்டங்கள் விட்டுவிடுமா!
வானுக்கு எல்லை யார் போட்டது!
வாழ்க்கைக்கு எல்லை நாம் போட்டது!
சாஸ்திரம் தான்டி தப்பி செல்வது ஏது!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

பூவே! பெண் பூவே!
இதில் என்ன அதிசயம்,
இளமையின் அவசியம்
இனி என்ன ரகசியம்!
இவன் மனம் புரியலையா!

ஆணின் தவிப்பு அடங்கிவிடும்
பெண்ணின் தவிப்பு தொடர்ந்துவிடும்
உள்ளம் என்பது உள்ள வரைக்கும்
இன்ப துன்ப எல்லாமே இருவருக்கும்
என்னுள்ளே ஏதோ உண்டானது
பெண்ணுள்ளம் இன்று இரண்டானது
இரண்டா எது ஒன்று பட்டப்போது!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

 

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