Day 2 @ Barcamp Bangalore 4

A few pictures (courtesy my N73) from Day2 of Barcamp Bangalore...












A session on - 'Podcasting Techniques For Your Blog' by Swaminathan. Quite interesting, which was then followed by a session called - "Protecting The Pictures In Your Blog". Though the interaction and comments from the audience was very entertaining, I can't say Vikram Aggarwal provided new insight in this direction.



And there was this session on Mo-Blog or Mobile Blogging by Arun Ram. Very interesting and it did ignite an interest in me to start my mo-blog. Watch out for that.




And then there was Thejesh who co-presented and continued the MoBlog sesssion from where Arun left. While Arun spoke on the technique of using GPRS for updating the blog, Thejesh showed how EMail & MMS are the other viable alternatives.

In all, it was a sunday well spent.

Why Only "Balle Balle" Always?

The other day I had lined out for myself to watch (as I always do when I am depressed) an awful sappy, mindless Bollywood caper. I might have surfed four to five channels watching bits and pieces of movies – Kal Ho Na Ho, DDLJ, Pyar Kiya Tho Darna Kya etc and none of which managed to hold my interest completely. More sadly, something kept hankering me, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth, and eventually ruined my enjoyment of the films entirely.

These has been an overdose of Punjabi in Bollywood and its been that way for quite sometime now. So long that its making me retch. No offense my dear Punjabi friends.
Punjabi is a fine language and with an equally memerising culture to back it. But there are surely more cultures and languages in India that can be showcased?

Heck! We are the most diverse country ever in the world with a shocking number of 415 living languages spoken in India and equal number of distinctly different cultures to showcase. But No, we are going to be stuck on to just Punjabi.

Think DDLJ, Kal Ho Na Ho, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham ..If your saying that these are just the Chopra’s and Johars”..how about Namastey London..Bhagban, Muhjse Shaadi Karoge, Bride and Prejudice, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom….The list is simply endless.


And it doesn’t stop simply at films, go on to music and almost all the popular songs are set to the Bhangra beat or the usual Balle Balle (read dhol) background score. Try and see Partner songs and you will realize what I mean.

Honestly I am sick and tired of watching Shah Rukh, Saif, Amitabh, and every other actor mouthing the - soniye, kudiye and maahi ve, words.

How about giving us a taste of rustic Bihari folk or Rajasthani panihari music or the local flavour of the pahadi’s, Bollywood?

And on top of this they dare want Bollywood to be called the ‘Indian Film Industry”.
Ya sure, first try and identify the four south Indian states correctly, will ya?

But who cares if a madrasi female sitting in the audience is shaking her head in disgust by the end of a film? We’re too sensitive, and we don’t matter anyway. And oh!, everyone knows racism is only when you use the caste-word and treat people differently based on their color.

I Love Bangalore...

There are not many such days with little or no traffic on Bangalore roads these days. So took them for posterity..







Can you identify any of these roads?

The Illustrated Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is considered by scholars across the world to be among the greatest spiritual books the world has ever known. Through Bhagvad Gita or the Divine Song, Lord Krishna explains the science of self realization and the simple steps to attain an eternal relationship with Him.

Many great thinkers from our times such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweizer as well as Madhvacarya, Sankara and Ramanuja from bygone ages have all contemplated and deliberated upon its timeless message. The spiritual knowledge and the intrinsic beauty of the Bhagavad Gita is incomparable as it applies to one and all irrespective the realms of other religions.

The Bhagavad Gita has never required any sort of marketing but Inspire Media, New Delhi have come up with this interesting Illustrated Bhagavad Gita, by A.P.M Raj Urs. I think its a brilliant idea as illustrations bring the story to life and can help the reader visualise a lot better.

Wish there are more such initiatives, for the wealth that our scriptures carry can be paralleled by none.

Humor: India 2020

Polar Bears and Business Intelligence

A wildlife organization has launched a project that combines business intelligence software and ancient tracking techniques of the Inuit people to study polar bear footprints. The organization's goal is to document a declining polar bear population, considered by environmentalists to be a sign of global warming.
More on that over here

So Is The Threat of Global Warming for Real?

Notwithstanding the hoopla over the Global Warming threat that supposedly looms large in front of us, there are few voices with a little more than plain skepticism to counter this theory.

We have heard a lot of the '8 years to apocalypse' story..so lets hear the other side who are crying this who issue as hogwash.

And this is what they are saying -

- The notion of 'man made' global warming is absolute unequivocal myth, led by agendas, lies and media propaganda...says Channel 4, UK in its documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle

- Sir Nicholas Stern report on the economics of climate change is "Completely divorced from scientific reality" says Prof.Richard Lindzen in a DailyMail article.
He says, "He (Stern) is guilty of misreading the data, of distorting the evidence to suit his political masters' dogma, of throwing numbers about with reckless abandon, of promoting alarmism in place of rational discussion, and of reinventing climate history"

- According to a host of historical accounts, Europe was far warmer in the Middle Ages than it is today, or that the 17th century was much colder, prompting what was known as 'The Little Ice Age', when the Thames was often frozen over for months at a time.

- Stern also refers to 'significant melting of and an acceleration of ice floes' near the coast of Greenland because of global warming.
Several reputable scientific studies have shown that the mass of the Greenland ice sheet is actually expanding, while Stern also fails to note that the temperature of Greenland is now lower than it was in 1940 and little changed from the first measurements in the 1780s.

- Environmentalists are fond of jerking heartstrings with pictures of polar bears struggling on supposedly melting icebergs, but it is estimated that there are now 22,000 polar bears compared with 5,000 in 1940.

To quote him again -

"What is so tragic is the way that this dubious ideology has achieved such dominance in our public life.
Politicians love the green agenda, of course, because it means more control, more regulation, more taxes, more summits, and more opportunities for displays of self-important zeal.
The tragedy is that the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern are using bogus science to push forward this agenda."

- Richard Lindzen is Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. * Source

My 2 cents:
Are there political units of power & control being formed which transcend national boundaries, who are unelected and undemocratic, and who might hold nations (and their people) to further their own specific agenda?

Well, I dont know. It could well be a possiblityOr, is this a smoke screen created by US and other countries who have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol since Kyoto can be ”devastating” to economic growth, because limiting emissions means limiting energy consumption, economic activity and technological progress

I’m not saying either of them is right. What I can say is that neither side could possibly know the real truth

I am reminded of the bumper sticker that says, "If you don't believe in HELL, you'd better be right" Just substitute "Global Warming" for "Hell."

Even if climate change isn’t an issue, acting on it will atleast solve other problems. By not acting on it, aren’t we taking quite a risk?

Deathly Hallows Leaked!

Pottermania reaches a never-before cresendo with the release of the final book hardly few days away. But looks like Potter fans can't seem to await any longer for the latest news is that the last installment - Harry Potter & Deathly Hallows has already been leaked on the internet.

Google around a little bit and one can find few thousand "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows" book in an array of formats - .rar, .pdf, .doc etc. Sadly none of them seem to me the original. It looks more like the work of wannabe Rowlings.

However I found these pics from one of the popular photosharing sites. Still not sure about their authenticity. Have a look..


The Cover Page


Table of Contents


Chapter 1


Chapter 16



The Epilogue - Nineteen Years Later.















Are they for real? I have no idea!

How Well Do You Know Your Potter?

Here is a set of questions for all Potter fans worth their salt. Enjoy maadi

#1 Of what use was Albus Dumbledore's silver cigarette lighter- the Put-Outer?

#2 With whom does Nymphadora Tonks fall in love with?

#3 Who headed Hogwarts before Albus Dumblebore?

#4 What is the family owl of Weasleys called?

#5 What is the Wronski Feint tactic?

#6 Where does Narcissa Malfoy take Draco to shop for robes, when she finds that Hermione also shops at Madam Malkin’s?

#7 What or Who is Ripper?

#8 How does one tame the book that bites?

#9 Who is the other unregistered Animagus apart from Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail?

#10 Who said this? – "Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

If you have answered them all then it would surely be fun to speculate with you on Dumbledore's "Gleam of Triumph" or the strange connection between Crookshanks and Sirius or what was it that Snape had done on Dumbledores orders, the night that Voldemort had returned?

The Japanese Pray to Goddess Saraswati Too...

An interesting article that I came across..

Japan's Hindu linkages still alive

One can also see the influence of the Indian epic Ramayana in the traditional Japanese dance forms of 'Bugaku' and 'Gigaku'.

By IANS, [RxPG] New Delhi, Feb 17 - Apart from the widely known fact that Buddhism in Japan has its origin in India, not many probably know that so many Hindu deities surround the life of a Japanese.

Speaking at a lecture titled 'Hindu Gods and Goddesses rooted to Japan' here Friday, Lokesh Chandra, the director of International Academy of Indian Culture, highlighted how deeply Indian religion and culture has influenced Japanese culture and tradition over the past centuries.

He said that many temples across Japan are full of Hindu deities.

Chandra said Japanese couples who desire to have a beautiful daughter pray to goddess 'Saraswati' even to this day. Saraswati is also believed as the patroness of writers and painters.

'In ancient times, Japanese generals prayed to Saraswati to be victorious in war,' Chandra told the gathering which was also attended by the Japanese Ambassador to India Yasukuni Enoki and his wife.

Year 2007 is being celebrated as Japan-India Friendship Year to commemorate the 50th year of the cultural agreement between the two countries.

According to Chandra, who has travelled to Japan many times to study the country's culture and tradition, Saraswati is also worshipped as the 'goddesses of kitchen'.

Many traditional Japanese plays are dedicated to the Indian deity.

Sharing a trivia he said how in 1934, a Japanese woman had a vision that she was the incarnation of goddess Saraswati and stared writing in Sanskrit, a language she never heard off.

There is a suburban district in Tokyo named Kichijo, which traces its roots to 'Lakshmi', the Hindu goddess of wealth. Lakshmi was propagated to China along with Buddhism in the ancient time, to be known as Kichijo in its Chinese form and then reached Japan as a Buddhist goddess.

Chandra also spoke extensively about how Sanskrit language has influenced traditional Japanese calligraphy.

The Indian text was introduced into Japanese society many centuries ago. Japanese monks had to study Sanskrit in order to master Buddhism from original Indian scriptures and textbooks.

Lord Ganesha in Japan symbolises the joy of life that arises from the power rooted in the virtues of wisdom and compassion.

Young Japanese worship Ganesha to win in love whereas the old worship the deity to get success in business.

There are roughly 100 temples dedicated to Ganesha in Japan, Chandra added. An 11th century Ganesha temple is the oldest among them.

Together with Hindu gods and goddess, ancient Japanese society was also introduced to Indian dance forms and musical instruments.

A typical example is the 'Biwa', which actually had its origin from the Indian 'Veena'. One of Japan's largest lake is also known as Lake Biwa.

One can also see the influence of the Indian epic Ramayana in the traditional Japanese dance forms of 'Bugaku' and 'Gigaku'.

The yearlong cultural celebration was kicked off here last week that was attended by former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori among others.

The Manhole Way To Money?

It all started with the dramatic fall and rescue operation of Prince, a five-year-old in Kurukshetra, who fell into a 60-ft hellhole last July. The massive rescue operation involving the Indian army culminated in a happy ending when Prince was fished out after spending 48 traumatic hours. This unfortunate event was well milked by all news-starved channels and received publicity equal to if not more than the wedding of AbhiAsh.

There were reports of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh having led the nation in praying for the safety of Prince whose travails was captured live by the television channels. Soon after the rescue, flashes of people rejoicing and distributing sweets were beamed. Haryana minister announced cash rewards and free education for the "brave child of Haryana".
Amidst all this instant adulation and loads of good luck, somewhere the trauma and tribulation of the child was forgotten. What however remained in the public memory was the fame and riches that came along his way.

Suddenly children in India seem to be falling into pits and manhole with alarming frequency. Are these a part of some strange coincidence or is it being seen as an easy shortcut to fame and money?

Here is a list of children fallen in such drains and pits since Prince.

Child falls into manhole, dies

Four-year-old falls into water tank, dies

Child falls into drain and is washed away

Boy falls into sewer, Army called in

Boy feared drowned in manhole at Musheerabad

And the latest seems to be little Suraj in Jaipur.
Hope fading for kid trapped in borewell

How do these kids manage to fall into holes and crevices that are so inaccessible by the rescue teams? While I am not implying that parents are pushing their children into manholes and open drains in the lure of quick money, fame and public sympathy, what’s worrying is the rate at which such incidents seem to be occurring.By airing this concern over careless parents, I am by no means trying to condone the civic authorities who don't seem to bother over open drains and coverless manholes.

Time our civic authorities are made answerable to such unfortunate incidents.

Prayers to little Suraj Banjara.

What Is Art Without A Frame?

Imagine this: You are rushing towards your office on a Monday morning with meetings in your mind. You hear mellifluous tunes coming from the street corner, would you care to stop, appreciate and possibly contribute a few rupees to his earnings? In all probability, No. However melodious the music might be to your ears, I don’t think anybody today has the time to spare for such trivialities of life such as street musicians. Right?
But what if you came to know it was actually Mandolin Srinivasan or A.R Rahman actually at the road bend? Ah! Now things are different, isn’t it?

Nope, I haven't gone bonkers. This was exactly what happened couple of months ago when Washington Post journo Gene Weingarten set out to discover if famous violinist Joshua Bell -- and his Stradivarius -- could stop busy commuters in their tracks.

This is what happened: On Friday, January 12, 2007 renowned violinist Joshua Bell performed six classical pieces in 43 minutes to 1,097 people at the L'Enfant Plaza Station standing next to trash basket. He collected $32.17 with just one person recognising him. The story in detail here

So much for the name and fame that people scamper after.

To be noted is that nearly 20 years ago, Bruce Springsteen did a similar thing in Copenhagen, where he joined a street musician to perform "The River." Not many people noticed him, either.

Things haven't changed much in all these years. So if you are one of those geniuses waiting to be discovered, wakeup and get yourself a good PR agency.