!!!First snowfall experience!!!

Today was a great day. First time in my life I witnessed snow. It was really amazing and I am really very thrilled and excited. I have never seen such a beautiful day.

Group of friends and me planned yesterday evening that we would go to snoqualmie pass. We heard that this season’s first snow fall has started and the skiing season also has begun. So we decided that we will get ready by 9 AM and go to the pass which is 2 hrs drive from the place we stayed. I got up at around 7 AM even though I slept at 1 AM. I guess the only thing that was running in my mind the whole night was the snow fall. After getting up I check the weather condition and driving conditions at the pass. It was very favorable. But I also noticed that the snow fall was going on and it was mild. Since they had mentioned that the snow fall is mild I woke up others and told everyone to get ready. At around 8:30 AM I just rechecked the site to see if we were still good to go, to my disappointment the traction wheels indicator was advised on the vehicle and the snow fall was getting heavier. I was very disappointed and informed others that we will have to wait and see before we go. Since the car in which we were planning to go was not having traction wheels.

At around 9 AM I rechecked the weather condition and it was getting very worse. Not only the traction wheel indicator was on but also the chain in the wheels was required as the snow fall was getting very heavy. The visibility was also very low. So we all decided that we will wait for some time and if things get better we would try going. I got back to my room and thought of taking some rest.

When I was at my room one of my friend called me and told that snow fall is starting. I was thinking that he is talking about the pass where the snow is falling. I told him well I know that I did check the weather site. He said not in the pass but outside the hotel. I did not think twice jumped from my seat went to the window to take a quick peek. He was right, it just started. Small feather weight drops of snow were falling. I did not think twice quickly grabbed my camera and ran out of the hotel to get the initial shots of the falling snow. My camera was not able to get any of the pictures since the drop of snow was very small and tiny. I was little disappointed. After taking couple of snaps I was feeling chill and cold. Then I realized that I was not wearing any warm clothes so went back to my room to get some warm clothes and hoped that by the time I get back the snow increases. I was not disappointed, to my luck the intensity of the snow was getting bigger.
Now my camera was also able to get very good shot of the snow. The pieces of snow were getting little bigger. Quickly took some shots of the snow fall. I went to all my friends’ room and woke all of them. Let them too enjoy the first snow fall. I was very sure that most of them have not seen snow in their life. So everyone quickly grabbed their cameras and came out. Since I got some initial snaps of the falling snow I wanted to get video of that. The video would give the real picture on the intensity of the snow fall.

For over an hour we all were out in the snow fall and I could see the smile on everyone’s face. Some of them took photographs of them standing in various pose. Who know when we will see a snow fall like today. We all returned back to our rooms. I was still not satisfied with seeing the snow fall. I opened all my windows and took a seat just opposite to the window watching the snow fall. It’s really a beautiful day. I was worried that I would return back to India without seeing the snow fall. Well now I am very happy I have seen snow fall in my life :-)

Locked in a Dreamy Cruise

It was a very sunny morning. This was something very rare to see in Seattle during this part of the year. We left our hotel and went for an outing. Who knows when we will get sunshine like this again? We decided that we will go to the downtown Seattle. Well what to do after going there. This was a major question running around everyone’s mind. Everyone suggested different things. Starting from the space needle to the pike place market to a cruise. But then as usual we had to take a majority vote.

The main factor of weather came into picture. If we are sure that we are going to get another sunny day we could take the outdoor events later but then its Seattle no one know when the weather will change. So we decided and convinced each other that the cruise was the right options to go at this time. So we all went to the water front to check out the cruise and its timings. The cruise was operated by Argosy. They are the pioneers in conducting the luxury day trips. There were many options available from the 1 hours harbor cruise to the two and a half hour locks cruise. There were many other options also like the Bainbridge Island or Tillicum village. Later all decided that we will take the Locks cruise since it was really interesting when we heard about it. The Bainbridge & Tillicum village requires a lot of time and we did not have the time for that. So we thought we will take the locks cruise.

So we went ahead and checked out the Locks cruise details and paid for the trip. The time when we booked the tickets was 1 PM and it cost us $31. This was a tour for two and a half hours. But then the cruise was at 3 PM and we were not sure how to spend time till 3. Anyway it was lunch time and we went looking for a good place to have lunch. Since there was one person who was vegetarian in our group we had to find something for him too. For Non-Vegetarians there are plenty of options. Somehow we found a subway for him where he could get vegetarian food. Rest all of us headed toward a restaurant called Ivars.

Seattle is very famous for Seafood especially the Salmon fish. And Ivars was one of the most famous and oldest shops in Seattle. We went and took Salmon fish and chips. This was the specialty dish at Ivars. I really enjoyed every bit of the fish. Well needless to say the French fries were just awesome. As I write this my mouth waters thinking about it. So after enjoying a wonderful lunch we just walked around the waterfront trying to spend the next hour. There was a nice shop near Ivars. They had many mementos of Seattle which I wanted to buy, but then I dropped the plan because I did not want to carry all this and walk around. I thought I will come back and buy some before heading back to the hotel.

Then the time came for the cruise. It was 3:15PM and we were all assembling near the cruise. We were told to line up and wait in the queue. As we were going to board the ship the cruise operators took group photographs. All 5 of us took a snap in front of the cruise. Then we boarded the boat and waited till 3:30 PM. At 3:30 we left and as we were going there was a guide who was explaining all the buildings & houses on the shore. To be frank none of us knew how the cruise would be and it was a first time experience for all of us. As the boat started cursing we all were very busy taking pictures. At that moment we thought of the person who made the digital camera. If he would not have made this marvelous device we would have been spending more money on the camera rolls and taking limited pictures.

All of us had our camera and everyone would have taken unlimited pictures in different pose and different angles. For the first one hour we were just going around and the guide was explaining all the areas. After an hour we reached the main attraction of the cruise. It’s the Locks Bridge. The specialty of this place was that there was a bridge which divides the sea water and the fresh water. The barricade was preventing the fresh water and sea water to mix. So since we were coming in the sea water we were on the lower side and the fresh water was on the higher side. When I say higher side the level of water was almost to the height of the boat. There were many people outside the boat who were waiting to watch the boat float. We were first made to fit between two wooden wall structures and front was a gate again made of wood. So we were now covered by three sides. Once we entered this enclosure a gate from behind was closed and we were fully covered from all side.

Then the gate from front was slowing opened and the water gushed towards us. The water was only opened at the bottom so that the water would make the boat to float. As the water flowed in the boat began to float and we reach the height of the fresh water. After we reached the required height the gate at the front was opened and we sailed ahead. After we went a little distance the gate was again closed and the fresh water was pushed back in. This way all the boats were moved from the sea water to the fresh water. There was always priority for the boats that come. The fire service & emergency boats were giving the highest priority followed by the daily cruise like the one we were on followed by the private leisure boat followed by private owned boats.

As we moved forward we went through places were the boats and ships are repaired. It was good to see real costly yachts parked and waiting to be serviced. As we were approaching the end of the cruise we came across a place where we could see the seaplanes take off and land. The takeoff and landing at sea must be a real good experience. This is something that I am planning to do next.
So next time you are in Seattle don’t miss the locks cruise. It’s an engineering marvel to watch.

Contribute to UID project

Everyone has been hearing about the UID project. Now there is a opportunity for you to contribute to the most ambitious project of the Indian govt. The UID project is going to go into a collaborative mode. Those experienced in open source technologies can try their luck.

You can involve yourself on the client side software development of UID. Since the magnitude of the project is huge without the active support and involvement of people it will not be easy to accomplish. There is an invitation to community developers to contribute to this national mission and develop client software. Currently the authority is seeking client software developed in any operating system and any standard development language like C, C++, java etc. Developers can also develop some key modules like address normalization, transliteration modules etc. that can be integrated with the client software through well defined APIs. The APIs will be defined and a set of standards will be released soon.

Well not that you can just develop any software and give, there are set of rules that you will need to follow. The rules that are proposed at this stage and are not finalized yet. The finalization will happen based on the input from the development community.

Below are some of the rules proposed at this stage:

1. Any Company or an existing open source project and even individual developers (each of these categories will, henceforth, be described as Developer) may volunteer to undertake the development of the entire Client Software or a module of it.

2. When a Developer undertakes to develop the Client Software or a module of it, the Developer should inform the Authority. The Authority will give the Developer a registration number(Registered Developer). This will, however, be given only to those who, in the opinion of the Authority, demonstrate a potential for positive contribution to the achievement of the objective.

3. The Registered Developers may seek answers and participate in discussions among other registered developers and/or with UIDAI regarding the software specifications and requirements using the collaboration environment setup by the Authority during the course of software development cycle.

4. Authority is under no obligation to accept the ideas and codes developed. Acceptance and evaluation of the codes submitted is at the sole discretion of the Authority. Further, the Authority does not make any guarantees with respect to answering questions within a prescribed time.

5. When a Registered Developer feels that the software or a module is fit for trials by the Authority, the source-code may be submitted to the Authority along with the Manual and other documentation using the code submission tools and procedures setup by the Authority. If the Authority is of the view (in its sole discretion and assessment) that the code developed could be useful to the UID project, the Authority may ask for further help from the concerned Registered Developer in improving the functionality or any other aspect as deemed necessary. The Registered Developer may be invited by the Authority to give the final shape to the product.

6. If the Client Software or a module developed by any Developer is accepted by the Authority for implementation in the field for enrolment, the contribution of the Registered Developer will be recognized. However, the source code, documentation and IPR will belong to the Authority. Accordingly, the Registered Developer will be required to enter into appropriate agreements transferring all rights and intellectual property to the Authority for their product and contribution.

7. This effort for creation of the enrollment software is completely voluntary and the Authority is under no obligation to provide any financial incentive or consideration to the concerned Registered Developer for the product.

8. The use of design / drawings/ or any other material by the developer in writing the enrollment software shall be fully at the risk and liability of the developer. UIDAI shall not be liable for IPRviolation on this account and shall not be made a party to any court proceeding on this account.

9. The Authority reserves the right to open source any part or in full, any of these components and contributions in the future for the betterment of the community.

10. The Authority reserves the right to change/ cancel any specification, requirement, change tools, architecture, or any part of the system as required.

11. During the development of the software component, a Developer will have the discretion to share/ not share the source code with other developer. However, once the code is submitted and accepted by the Authority, the Authority can make the source code available to with a view to further enhancements/improvements or additions for any additional features.

All interested Developers may send their intentions to participate in this collaborative effort to enrolmentsw@uidai.gov.in. They should send the details of the developers who will work on this project and their brief resume and their proposal of work. They should also send their contact details (email and phone numbers etc. so that they may be contacted if required.

You can read more details from the official site here

You can climb walls like Spiderman

It may soon be possible to walk on walls like Spiderman with American researchers claiming to have invented a device that could lead to development of shoes or gloves which would stick and unstick to walls and also bear load.

Researchers at Cornell University have created a palm-sized device that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond, journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported on Wednesday.

According to lead researcher Paul Steen, the device, using rapid adhesion mechanism, could lead to such development of the shoes or gloves that stick and unstick to walls, or postit-like notes that can bear loads.

The team took inspiration from a beetle native to Florida, which can adhere to a leaf with a force 100 times its own weight, yet also instantly unstick itself. The device consists of a flat plate patterned with holes, each on the order of a micron (one-millionth of a meter).

A bottom plate holds a liquid reservoir, and in the middle is another porous layer. An electric field applied by a common 9-volt battery pumps water through the device and causes droplets to squeeze through the top layer. The surface tension of the exposed droplets makes the device grip another surface — much the way two wet glass slides stick together [more...]

Will Matrix be a reality?

We can see next real MATRIX PART with real imagination, someone insert a wire into our brain and wooooosh we are off to another world where we can learn anything by just click of button, any art such as Kung-Fu or Fly a Helicopter. I am not joking but this is becoming reality.

An indian start up company has started working on that and soon we can see our brain information copied to computer.

An IT startup in Technopark, Kerala will be working on the Blue Brain Project, the world's first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain. The cost of the project is $3 billion and is expected to complete by 2018. It is an international project, propelled by Swiss Federal Institute, and involves several countries and ethics monitoring by UN bodies.

The whole idea for this project is that mental illness, memory and perception triggered by neurons and electric signals could be soon treated with a supercomputer that models all the 1,000,000 million synapses of brain.

Innovation not taken seriously in India

Innovation are not taken seriously in India. We have lakhs and lakhs of students passing out every year and every student is supposed to make a project for completing the course. Are all the innovation recognized? This is something we should be thinking about and the colleges/Universities should start realizing the dreams.
Here is an example of not getting recognized in India:
Projects like the 'black box' system installed in cars in U.S. and UK to detect a genuine accident is also done by a group of students from Latur-based Women Polytechnic Institute in Maharashtra but was not recognized, reports Times of India.

Recently i heard that there is a contest for engineering students, All India Engineering Project Innovation Contest (AIEPIC, pronounced as eye-pic) contest like this will promote many innovations and idea from students. This contest should not be limited only to engineering students it should be open at national level. Well school students are not be left behind in innovation.

Recently Kerala government had started this contest at school level.Really amazing to see the kind of innovation these kids have.

Wish this contest is open at national level irrespective of the age limit.

Baby cry translator

Ever wondered what a child is trying to say when he/she is crying..

Well to find that out there is a new Application called the Cry Translator. This is a brain child of a spanish doctor.

Anyhow, this all works because researchers have pretty much figured out what a baby’s crying means. Turns out there’s five types of cries—and these cries are the same across all of humanity, from Texas to Japan, from Portugal to Indonesia—and they indicate whether or not the baby is hungry, tired, stressed, bored, or annoyed. I did not know that ;-)

The App just costs $17.99. The App claims to be 96 percent accurate.

next time your child cries, try your luck with this app.. :-)[more...]

Own The Coolest Jet On Your Block

This is not a joke. Yes you can buy a jet and that too not a simple on but a fighter jet SU-27. Sukhoi is selling their SU-27 with a price tag of 5 M.. Well if i had one i would have got and parked at my house :-)

Read more abt this .....[More...]

80legs Crawling

80legs is a web crawling service running on a distributed grid of 50,000 computers, spidering the web at a rate of 2 billion pages/day, and analyzing the content found.

The service can be accessed on demand by setting up a job and executing it. As any crawling process, the job needs a seed list which can be contained by a text file up to 1 GB in size. Other job parameters are:

o Outgoing links – used to specify which links to crawl of those resulting from a seed

o Depth level – the URL level measured to a seed

o Crawling type – multiple depths in the same time or only one depth at a time

o Number of URLs – specifies the maximum number of URLs to crawl

o MIME types – specifies the page types to crawl

o Analyze options – there are several analysis options like keyword matching, regular expressions, running custom code

When a job runs, the crawler starts reading web pages starting with the seed ones and considering the outgoing links options, and analyzes the content of the pages. Simple analysis is available by specifying keywords to match or by selecting information based on regular expressions, but complex analysis can be performed on the data by using a custom application or a pre-built 80legs application. The analysis application needs to be written in Java. 80legs plans to open an application store where developers can sell their applications at their desired price and will collect all the revenue. 80legs has launched a contest to attract developers.

Paid subscriptions offer access to a Python API to interact with the crawling engine. Plans are for a Perl API. Free subscribers can create and control their jobs through the 80legs Portal.

There is a free plan with some limitations: 1 job at a time, 100k pages of max 100KB each, a 10MB analysis application (Java JAR), no API, 1 hit per second for the domain searched. There are two paid subscriptions, the top one offering 5 concurrent repeatable jobs with 10M pages/job, 10 MB/page, a 10 MB JAR, and 10 hits/sec/domain for $2/million pages crawled and 3 cents for CPU-hour utilized

Has GDrive come back?

Have you ever had thoughts that it will be great to store huge files over the internet for free?

Well now Google has the answer to solve your problem. Google has come with google docs. It has recently opened up all file type for upload. You can upload any file with huge size. Currently google limit users to 500KB for Microsoft Word documents, and 10MB for PowerPoint presentations and PDFs, the new limit for all other files that cannot be converted into a Google Docs format is 250MB. This is 10 times the size of what's allowed as an attachment in the company's Web mail service Gmail.

That said, the amount of space for non-Google Docs files that are stored within Docs will only be 1GB. Users can upgrade though, and Google is planning on that

Enjoy the free space. :-)

Tax time - HRA Tax exemption

Tax time is here. !!!

Every company starts with collecting tax proof in January. And that’s when everyone start thinking about tax saving. Most of us don’t know how those taxes are applied. I was surfing the internet to find out on how the HRA are applied. Then I came across this information. This is from one of my friend Sarajit Datta who is also investment consultant. Below is some extract from his recent blog.

HRA Exemption in Non-Metro Cities:

For example let’s say
• Yearly HRA = Rs 1,20,000
• Yearly Basic = Rs 2,00,000
• Yearly Rent = Rs 1,20,000

As per the HRA formula -
1. Yearly HRA = Rs 1,20,000
2. Yearly Basic X 40% = 2,00,000 X 40% = Rs 80,000
3. Yearly Rent - (Yearly Basic) X 10% = 1,20,000 – 2,00,000 X 10% = Rs 1,00,000..[more]

Why do we wear marks (tilak, pottu and the like) on the forehead?

The tilak or pottu invokes a feeling of sanctity in the wearer and others. It is recognized as a religious mark. Its form and colour vary according to one’s caste, religious sect or the form of the Lord worshipped.
In earlier times, the four castes (based on varna or colour) - Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra - applied marks differently. The brahmin applied a white chandan mark signifying purity, as his profession was of a priestly or academic nature. The kshatriya applied a red kumkum mark signifying valour as he belonged to warrior races. The vaishya wore a yellow kesar or turmeric mark signifying prosperity as he was a businessman or trader devoted to creation of wealth. The sudra applied a black bhasma, kasturi or charcoal mark signifying service as he supported the work of the other three divisions.
Also Vishnu worshippers apply a chandan tilak of the shape of "U,” Shiva worshippers a tripundra of bhasma, Devi worshippers a red dot of kumkum and so on).
The tilak cover the spot between the eyebrows, which is the seat of memory and thinking. It is known as the Aajna Chakra in the language of Yoga. The tilak is applied with the prayer - "May I remember the Lord. May this pious feeling pervade all my activities. May I be righteous in my deeds.” Even when we temporarily forget this prayerful attitude the mark on another reminds us of our resolve. The tilak is thus a blessing of the Lord and a protection against wrong tendencies and forces.
The entire body emanates energy in the form of electromagnetic waves - the forehead and the subtle spot between the eyebrows especially so. That is why worry generates heat and causes a headache. The tilak and pottu cools the forehead, protects us and prevents energy loss. Sometimes the entire forehead is covered with chandan or bhasma. Using plastic reusable "stick bindis" is not very beneficial, even though it serves the purpose of decoration.