(muscle) Car collection

More pics here

Destruction (and creation of new) of jobs through globalization

Read the full NY Times article here.

"Globalization is said to create winners and losers. For the Sawants, it created both. And that duality reflects the furious pace at which entire professions are being invented and entire professions destroyed in the rush to modernize India.

There is, on one hand, a national quest under way to excise inefficiencies — to cut out middlemen. As go the letter writers, so go bank tellers as India adopts A.T.M.’s, phone-booth operators as cellphones spread, and rural moneylenders as new Western-style supermarket chains start trading directly with farmers."

Review for a pen

An innovative and funny review of a pen purchesed on Amazon.

$7.2million for a 10hp car

yes, thats the price paid for this antique (ancient) car - a 1905 Rolls Royce 2 seater. Still in working condition.
Link.

Lucky to survive

The driver of this car escaped with very minor injuries. Seems unbelievable if you look at the pics of the crash. More pics can be found here.

Website design technologies

It can also be done using precious stones (Pe(a)rl and Ruby), maybe a big snake (python), etc.

interesting 'paintbrush'

"Magic" Digital Video Brush - video powered by Metacafe


the brush has integrated LEDs, touch sensors, and a camera. This gadget basically captures the texture and video and reproduces that in the drawing. The painting, of course, is done on a special display screen.

Ten commandments of Black Friday shopping

Source: http://gradmoneymatters.com/2007/11/ten-commandments-of-black-friday.html

1. Thou shalt be prepared. Do your research.
2. Thou shalt make a prioritized list.
3. Thou shalt know the store layout.
4. Thou shalt know the sale hours.
5. Thou shalt know the store policies.
6. Thou shalt shop in tag teams.
7. Thou shalt make sure that your cell phones are fully charged.
8. Thou shalt wear comfortable clothes and preferably running shoes.
9. Thou shalt keep some water and snacks in the car.
10. Thou shalt not buy junk just because it is on sale.

Is the dollar safe?

Recently I had some thoughts on money: What does it mean when you say "the economy grew by 3%".... where did this 3% appear from? Is there something like the principle of conservation of money, similar to the principle of conservation of energy? If you are making a profit then somebody is making a loss. Or does the 3% represent the transformation of raw material, resources from nature in to goods that can be measured in currency?

I came across this article which is somewhat related: "http://www.mondovista.com/money.html" . DISCLAIMER: I have no idea regarding the authenticity of the information in this article. And, I have my doubts about all these "conspiracy theories".



The article explains the origin of the currency,paper money, the recent process of 'printing as much money as you want'. It also explains how the US is able to withstand such huge trade deficits (another question that was on my mind). See the following graph:



The article also talks about why the US dollar is in so much demand world-wide: basically the dollar is a currency for oil.

From the article: "Oil and dollars have become the blood of our present civilization. A collapse of this fiat dollar system will not only destroy America's economy and lifestyle but it will have devastating impact throughout the entire planet. Since virtually all wealth is based on this dollar-for-oil scheme, a collapse of the system will send the entire world into an economic depression. This is what the politicians and decision makers are trying to avert. But the collapse is predictable and inevitable."


If the article is indeed true and given the uncertain future of oil, what does the future hold for the dollar and the US economy?

Context aware image resizing & editing

A very interesting take on image resizing. From SIGGRAPH presentation. Watch the last few seconds of the video and see how to make people disappear.

missed connection?

Here's an interesting story: Patrick Moberg was riding the NYC subway last Sunday when he saw the girl of his dreams, but before he got a chance to talk to her, she disappeared into the crowd. Instead of walking away from his missed connection, he created a website: http://www.nygirlofmydreams.com/

It worked! He's got in touch with the girl of his dreams.

The power of the Internet and social networking.

Rubik's cube feats

With one hand in 20 seconds.



in less than 20 seconds, using feet!


By a 3 year old in less than 2 minutes.

"I've done my bit for the environment"

The Toyota Prius has become a symbol of going green and saving the world from global warming effects. I recently saw a woman on TV saying "I've done my bit for the environment" pointing to her new Prius.
That is the wrong attitude/impression to have. First, it is laudable that she has started to think about the environment and global warming, etc. Thinking about the problem, learning more about it is the right direction before actually 'doing your bit'. But buying a Prius is not the end of the story. Its just the start. I would also like to point out that the 'tone' of her statement indicated that driving the Prius was somewhat of a compromise. Let me just say the Prius is a good car in its own right and need not be seen as a step down from your favorite sedan. (although its not comparable to a top-of-the-line luxury car or a sport(y) car .

That aside, the more important point of doing your bit continues beyond the purchase of a Prius. There are many simple things in daily life to follow that can reduce your energy consumption and carbon footprint. (It'll even save you a few dollars as well). A few of the things I do differently now i.e. ever since I became environmentally conscious are these:

• Turn off lights / air-conditioning when not you are leaving the room.
• Turn off the monitor of your PC at work/home when I leave for more than 15 minutes (lunch, dinner, end of the day, meetings, etc)
• During winters, set the temperature to 2-3 degrees below my usual level - I never notice the difference. Saves a lot of heating cost. If your house has temperature controls for individual rooms, make the fullest use of it: heating the bedroom only when you are asleep.
  
• Try to combine my shopping chores in to a single trip: it is better to drive once with a full trunk rather than driving many times with a near-empty car. (Driving to the grocery store to buy a one tomato/onion/a bottle of water is an absolute crime. I knew a couple of people who did this.)
• Carpooling: Not always easy. Use of public transport is also a good option.
  

flights

Simulation of 24 hours of flights over europe. Fascinating. I wonder if there is anything similar for the US or the whole world.

Housing bubble

The graph plots the price of a standard home since 1890 (adjusted for inflation). Obviously, incomes have not increased at the same rate. It is self explanatory as to whats happened over the last few years and why the housing market has become unsustainable.

India's answer to Bruce Lee (or is it Li?)

Bruce Li is no match for our very own Dharmendra in a kurta-pyjama. very funny

Source: here and here

Smallest Wifi device?

Eye-Fi today announced a 2GB SD memory card that includes wifi. The advertized application is to upload photos from your digital camera to the internet. Presumably it works with other devices such as handhelds also. But
the more interesting aspect is the size of the wifi radio. Arguably it is the smallest form-factor for a 802.11 device (at least the commercially available ones). I can imagine that we can come up with many more uses for such radios e.g. a home network, wifi-enabled cellphones, etc. The spec says the range of the radio is a modest 90ft outdoors and 45ft indoors.

11 weird cricket dismissals

Tipping a postman

The full details of the experiment are found here. Surprisingly the mail was delivered!

Low minimum mutual funds

Recently I started exploring options for investing the (little) amount of money that I have. Mutual funds seem to be a reasonable option - no hassle of tracking individual stocks and trading etc. However the better (and the best) funds usually have high minimum investment requirements - high for someone like me: limited risk taking ability.

There are some funds that have a more affordable (again for people like me) minimum investment requirements.
A couple of articles that talk about this are here and here.

I wonder if we can list mutual funds sorted by their minimum investment requirements.

Resourcefulness

What do you do when you are short of a few digits ? Turn to math :)

Noise canceling headphones

I had a set noise canceling headphones (Creative HN 505) and mainly used them at my workplace to drown the hum of computers. Recently I took them during a flight and then realized their true value - the experience was amazing. I know they are not as good as expensive noise canceling headphones from, say, Bose or Sony. In fact, the cheapest Bose headphones cost 20 times what I paid for my creative headphones. Anyway, all the engine noise was gone and it was as if I was travelling in a quiet car. The noise cancellation works even if you turn off music from your ipod.

Today I saw a Kensington product that looks just like the ones I have. And Creative apparently has stopped making the ones I have. Maybe they sold their technology to Kensington.

Parasites

Heres a cool flash-based animation/simulation:
"http://www.footloosemoose.com/michael_wp/2007/04/12/experiment-parasites/"

The simulation starts with all these bugs of different random colors and sizes. The bugs move around in a random direction and when they encounter each other one of them takes a bite off the other and grows. After reaching a certain size, the bug splits into two smaller ones. The most surprising part of it is that eventtually there is only one type of bug left in the whole screen.

Internet is the new TV

After several years of fighting P2P networks and trying to prevent online circulation of TV shows, TV networks have started to provide their own offering. They have finally realized that the Internet is not a threat to their revenue, but instead it is a source of a new stream of viewers and revenue. A few networks that have started to offer full episodes online include CBS, NBC. These episodes do include ad-clips - different from the live broadcast version. (However I suspect most people wouldn't mind a couple of ads.) Such an offering may actually reduce the P2P distribution of TV series episodes.

TV shows are different from music and even movies in terms of the online audience. Putting up TV shows on the web helps people who normally wouldn't watch the show because the airing time is inconvenient can now watch it. In addition, there may be viewers who are impressed with what they see and tune in to see it on regular TV. So it might actually lead to increased viewership for a show.

Height of joblessness: from an IRC chatroom

tag> Ouroboros- lets play Pong
Ouroboros> Ok.
tag> | .
Ouroboros> . |
tag> | .
Ouroboros> . |
tag> | .
Ouroboros> | .
Ouroboros> Whoops

Source: http://www.opendonor.org/kwotes.pl?action=list&s=0&ss=&minr=2000&maxr=10000&o=random&so=forward&m=25&mr=100

perils of a password

Until recently, I had a method of creating passwords for different websites: one for accounts that have sensitive financial information: banks, credit cards etc, one for websites with my credit card information, address information, one for my Gmail account, one for my Yahoo account and one for accounts with no sensitive information. Now the stupid thing that I used to do was this: many websites use my email address as the login handle. To keep things simple, I used the same password as the email account for the website as well. E.g: accounts with my gmail Id had the same password as my Gmail account. (I felt so stupid when I realized what I'd been doing all these years.) The fundamental issue here is that I put this information in the hands of third-party people, who I don't necessarily trust to the same degree as I trust Google. Gmail login initially was just for an email service. Now the same ID is used for all Google services including Checkout, AdSense , etc which contain sensitive information.

Since this realization, I've revamped my password strategy: different passwords for different accounts, except for those without sensitive information. I'm prepared for the additional headache of millions of passwords. But I've definitely become paranoid.

Time to rethink the login-password paradigm? biometrics?

evaluating competitors in a startup

From Paul Graham's essay on Lisp and hacking: Beating the averages

If you ever do find yourself working for a startup, here's a handy tip for evaluating competitors. Read their job listings. Everything else on their site may be stock photos or the prose equivalent, but the job listings have to be specific about what they want, or they'll get the wrong candidates.

During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of job descriptions. A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork every month or so. The first thing I would do, after checking to see if they had a live online demo, was look at their job listings. After a couple years of this I could tell which companies to worry about and which not to. The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting to sound like a company where the technical side, at least, is run by real hackers. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried.

I just had a "D-Uh" moment when I read this.

The main focus of the essay is Lisp and the regard hackers have for it. Lisp was something I learnt in my undergrad for a few weeks (/days?) and wasn't very enthusiastic about. May be it was because the instructor gave the impression that it was a dead language and just a quirky little way of doing things. Maybe I should give it a shot again.

Personalized craigslist RSS feeds

Here's a less known feature of craiglist. Say you are looking to buy a car and are looking for a particular type/price-range etc. The url for honda civics costing less than $5000 in Los Angeles looks like this "http://losangeles.craigslist.org/search/car?query=honda+civic&minAsk=&maxAsk=5000". All you need to do to convert this into an RSS feed is add "&format=rss" at the end of the url. This gives the listings in a RSS feed format and can be read by a feed reader. So, you can stay on top of the listings and be notified within minutes of a relevant posting.


This works for other craigslist searches as well: e.g. the following provides a feed for rental listings for a 1BR apartment in Mountain View costing less than 1500 per month:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sby/35?query=&minAsk=min&maxAsk=1500&bedrooms=1&neighborhood=35&format=rss

Perl one-liner for testing prime numbers!

perl -wle 'print "Prime" if (1 x shift) !~ /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/' [number]

See http://montreal.pm.org/tech/neil_kandalgaonkar.shtml for an explanation
of how it works.  It basically involves backtracking.

Wireless problems

stock markets and 9/11

Stumbled upon a very interesting piece of news today.....
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2007/270807_market_crash.htm.
Allegedly someone is betting a lot of money (almost a billion USD) on a stock market crash within the next month. A more interesting bit of information from the article was that similar activities were observed a few days before 9/11.

I'm not sure of the authenticity of any of these information. They might just be another angle to 9/11 conspiracy theories. But sure enough, makes for interesting reading.

recursion....... with photoshop

Woman spotted yesterday reading today's paper.

Need for speed..... in Paris.

Source: http://ironruby.org/traceway.html

"On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit."

Visit the original page for a neat video+maps mashup.

Confident of your software?

20 CEOs board an airplane and are told that the flight they are about to take is the first-ever to feature pilotless technology. It is an uncrewed aircraft. Each one of the CEO’s is then told, privately, that their company’s software is running the aircraft’s automatic pilot system. Nineteen of the CEOs promptly leave the aircraft, each offering a different type of excuse.

One CEO alone remains on board the jet, seeming very calm indeed. Asked why he is so confident in this first uncrewed flight, he replies : “If it is the same software that runs my company’s IT systems, this plane won’t even take off.” !!!!

That is called Confidence!!!

Source: http://www.fortunewatch.com/category/humor/

don't mess with grandma

awesome photo

Google local referral

http://www.google.com/services/local-business-referrals/about.html
Just read about google's local business referral scheme. Its a brilliant marketing idea. The idea is to get the public to contribute information to their database and the public get paid for it. The beauty of it is, Google, now has access to information that wasn't previously on the internet... essentially they are creating content on the web. Of course, Google will try to sell AdWords to all the shops and increase their customer base and, thereby add to their already overflowing bank account. Obviously somebody has done the math and figured out that a one time payment of 10$ per business can still make the whole thing profitable. This whole exercise goes to show the power of money and "it takes money to make more money".

The Monty Hall problem

Read this interesting math problem with a very counter-intuitive solution: For full details refer to wikipedia

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Because there is no way for the player to know which of the two unopened doors is the winning door, many people assume that each door has an equal probability and conclude that switching does not matter. However, as long as the host knows what is behind each door, always opens a door revealing a goat, and always makes the offer to switch, opening a losing door does not change the probability of 1/3 that the car is behind the player's initially chosen door. As there is only one other unopened door, the probability that this door conceals the car must be 2/3.

6-bit binary adder: wood and marbles.

A neat little contraption - a binary adder. Would make a great gift for kids inlclined toward a computer science/engineering career. Read more at http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/.

go green by going black

I've changed the template of the blog to use a black background. Just my $0.02 to conserve energy.
See here and check out Blackle. The energy savings are not much on a LCD monitor... but there are still many CRT monitors out there.

I personally prefer black backgrounds, especially for my shell,console and vi windows. They cause less strain on the eyes.

cloud formation

Amazing half-time show

glumbert.com - Samsung Dance

supposedly Samsung sponsored this show.

A job well done - almost!!

This may take a while ... but once you get it, its quite funny.

group photos

group photos of a different kind.

advertizing rivalry

everybody's heard of pepsi-cocacola rivalry in marketing and ads. now, take a look at a different one - this one's about cars. The first is by VW. The second is a response by Nissan.

hat out of a rabbit!

Men in coats.

Aussies!

Peter Nyugen's essays

Well-Known Sayings

Source: http://www.ccng.uwaterloo.ca/~pasward/Opinions/sayings.shtml

A selection of well-known sayings. The original forms are listed below.

1. It is fruitless to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated canine with innovated maneuvers.
2. Scintillate, scintillate, asteroids minified.
3. Members of an avian species of an identical plumage congregate.
4. Surveillance should precede saltation.
5. Pulchritude possesses sole cutaneous profundity.
6. It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitantly departed lacteal fluid.
7. Freedom from incrustation of grime is continguous to rectitude.
8. The stylus is more potent than the claymore.
9. Eschew the implement of correction and vititae the scion.
10. The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled saucepan does not reach 212 degrees.
11. All articles that coruscate with resplendance are not truly suritorous.
12. Where there are visible vapors having their prevalence in ignited carbonaceous material, there is conflagration.
13. Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
14. Eleemonsynary deeds have their incipience intramurally.
15. Male cadavers are incapable of yielding any testimony.
16. Neophyte's serendipity.
17. A revolving lithic conglomerae accumulates no congeries of a small bryophtic plant.
18. The male presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the optimal cachinnation.
19. Abstention from any aleatory undertaking precludes a potential escalation of a lucrative nature.
20. Persons of imbecilic mentality divagate inparameter which cherubic entities approach with trepidation.
21. Elementary sartorial techniques initially applied preclude repetitious actions to the squares of three.
    

The original, simplified forms are:

1. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
2. Twinkle, twinkle little star.
3. Birds of a feather flock together.
4. Look before you leap.
5. Beauty is but skin deep.
6. Don't cry over split milk.
7. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
8. The pen is mightier than the sword.
9. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
10. A watched pot never boils.
11. All that glitters is not gold.
12. Where there's smoke, there's fire
13. Beggers can't be choosers.
14. Charity begings as home.
15. Dead men tell no tales.
16. Beginner's luck.
17. A rolling stone gathers no moss.
18. He who laughs last, laughs best.
19. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
20. Fools go where angels fear to tread.
21. A stitch in time saves nine.

---

Mysteries of the earth!

"On the morning of August 22, 1986, a man hopped onto his bicycle and began riding from Wum, a village in Cameroon, towards the village of Nyos. On the way he noticed an antelope lying dead next to the road. Why let it go to waste? The man tied the antelope onto his bicycle and continued on. A short distance later he noticed two dead rats, and further on, a dead dog and other dead animals. He wondered if they’d all been killed by a lightning strike – when lightning hits the ground it’s not unusual for animals nearby to be killed by the shock.

Soon the man came upon a group of huts. He decided to see if anyone there knew what had happened to the animals. But as he walked up to the huts he was stunned to see dead bodies strewn everywhere. He didn’t find a single person still alive—everyone in the huts was dead. The man threw down his bicycle and ran all the way back to Wum."

For a detailed explanation, see Strangest disaster of 20th century

Shadow magic

Excellent illustrations to show the importance of the third dimension.
http://www.boredstop.com/shadow.htm

Top 10 worst cars of 20th century

From http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/Worst-Cars/results1.html

10. VW Bus
"If everyone had to own one of these as a first car as I did, there would be no traffic jams anywhere. At least half of us would be so turned off by the experience of owning a car, that we would seek alternate means of transportation."

"There was no heat--unless, that is, the auxiliary gas heater caught fire."

"The flower stickers were the only things that held the car together."

"The bus had no heat, blew over in the wind and used the driver's legs as its first line of defense in an accident."

"It was a death trap on the highway-you could never go fast enough. The chances were good that you'd be hit from the rear."

9. Renault Dauphine
"Truly unencumbered by the engineering process."

"At the time, it cost about half the price of a Volkswagen... which was half the price of everything else. How could Renault do this? Simple. It had half as many parts."

"This car topped out at 45 mph. Since the minimum speed on the Florida Turnpike is 40, patrol cars would follow me, waiting for me to hit a hill so they could ticket me."

"From a historical perspective, it's a shame that the French spent their Marshall Plan dollars on automaking."

"A side impact by a bicycle totaled my Dauphine after only one year."

8. Cadillac Cimarron
"GM thought they could take a Chevy Cavalier, slap some Cadillac stuff on it, add an extra $5,000.00 and sell a bundle. Tragically enough, they pulled it off-for a while."

"Hands down, worst car for the money spent. Yugos were junk, but at least they were cheap. This heap had a Caddy price tag!"

"A stupid marketing ploy. Nothing more than a Chevrolet Cavalier, which Roger Smith gussied up and called a Cadillac."

"When we traded it in my wife was upset because we didn't keep it long enough for her to buy a gun and shoot it."

7. Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare
"This car began to rust while it was still in the showroom."

"The stalling problem was so bad that I had to take a clockwise route to work so I could make all right turns, and not risk stalling on a left turn in front of oncoming traffic."

"After the floor boards rusted out in the rear, they would fill up with water and freeze. I ended up putting soda crates on the floor in the back to keep people from falling under the car."

"The only useful purpose this car served was as the model for the car used in National Lampoon's Vacation."

"Owning a Volare was total ego death--the theme song, the vinyl Landau roof, the inability to pass another car on the highway."

6. Renault Le Car
"I'm convinced that the body metal for this car was supplied by Reynold's Aluminum."

"Like any French restaurant in America, it was overpriced, noisy, moody, and would put you in mortal danger if you had an accident with anything larger than a croissant."

"Our Le Car couldn't climb a hill fully loaded, so the passengers had to get out and walk up."

"I left it unlocked overnight, and it was finally stolen. The insurance check paid for a textbook."

5. Chevy Chevette
"An engine surrounded by 4 pieces of drywall!"

"The Chevette just reeked of dinky-even the ad shouted that this was the dinky little car for you. The ad didn't show the car going anywhere fast... because it couldn't."

"Plywood floor, printed circuit 'wiring' and no redeeming qualities. It was a throw away, 'Saturday Night Special' from the word go."

"If I got on the Interstate without being run over, the car would creep towards 55. About an hour later, I'd reach it. Then, the shaking would begin."

"The big winter of 82-83 froze all the Chevettes in my town like dumb ducks on an icy lake."

4. AMC Gremlin
"Calling it a pregnant roller skate would be kind."

"It was entirely possible to read a Russian novel during the pause between stepping on the gas and feeling any semblance of forward motion."

"The car had all the quality and safety of a cheap garden tractor."

3. Ford Pinto
"Dad had a baby-poop-orange Pinto the year that car thieves hit our street. Although a dozen cars were stolen in one night, ours was there the next morning, on a strangely empty block."

"Remember that great Pinto bumper sticker, 'Hit Me and We Blow Up Together?'"

"The car would do 75 mph in 2nd gear, shaking apart and sounding like a bat out of hell. In fourth gear, the top speed was 70 mph. What's wrong with this picture? You do the math."

"I took this car to a high-crime shopping mall and left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. I came back several days later and, much to my disgust, it was still there."

2. Chevy Vega
"When the rear end went on my Vega, the Chevy dealer accused me of racing it. Racing who? My grandfather in his wheelchair?"

"As near as I could tell, the car was built from compressed rust.

"My Chevy Vega actually broke in half going over railroad tracks. The whole rear end came around slightly to the front, sort of like a dog wagging its tail."

"Burned so much oil, it was single handedly responsible for the formation of OPEC."

1. Yugo
"I once test drove a Yugo, during which the radio fell out, the gear shift knob came off in my hand, and I saw daylight through the strip around the windshield."

"The Yugo's first stop after the showroom was the service department: 'Fill 'er up and replace the engine!'"

"Any time we made a right hand turn, we all had to lean to the right to prevent the driver's side rear tire from scraping against the wheel well."

"At least it had heated rear windows--so your hands would stay warm while you pushed."

"The only car with a last name: Yugo .. sometimes."

More space-saving furniture

The importance of a well composed email

Dilbert by Scott Adams.

The difference between you and me

http://rvincoletto.multiply.com/journal/item/554

For all you Seinfeld fans

You can actually buy 'nothing' and its just $6.
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/nothing/index.html

Planet Earth

Recently, I saw several episodes of Planet Earth on Discovery. It was originally produced by BBC. The whole filming took 5 years of several photographers and cameramen. The footage, as you expect from such a huge project, is breathtaking. Here's a sample that was voted as the viewers' favorite:

Super cooled water

http://www.influks.com/post1121.html

Summer of sequels

Summer 2007 seems to be a season for movie sequels ... well make that sequel to a sequel. And in some cases its the n+1'th sequel. Hows this for a list of movies releasing this summer:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
   
2. Spider-Man 3
   
3. Shrek the Third
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
   
5. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
   
6. Live Free or Die Hard
   
7. The Bourne Ultimatum
8. Ocean’s Thirteen
9. Rush Hour 3
   

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/04/24/053843.php

Cycle of life

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for High School. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last 9 months floating… then you finish off as an orgasm! Amen.”

- George Costanza
Seinfeld

Logistical creativity

See more of such pictures here

Want to be labelled poor!

"At a time when financial honchos are sweating it out to accelerate Karnataka's growth rate, here comes a shocker: Nearly 16 lakh people in the state want to be labelled 'poor'. Reason: They do not want to miss out on the populist schemes that below-povertyline (BPL) families are being bombarded with."


Read the full story here.

The belt-flip trick

Click Here for more great videos and pictures!


Looks very cool! I can imagine several ways this trick can go wrong, so don't try this yourself unless you know what you're doing.

Space saving furniture

For the bookworms: bookshelf/chair

Table/Shelf/ (Step-ladder ?)

Chair/Stove top

Coffee Table/ Bed

Find more of such items at http://www.americaninventorspot.com/_7_furniture

Pics from an era long gone!

See more pics at http://www.shorpy.com

A trans-atlantic journey!

This has been on every news site, but its still funny. Google Maps asks you to swim 3000+ miles in 28 days for a trans-Atlantic journey from New York to London. Whats more, it first takes you to France and then to London! Perhaps a case for Google to have flight ticket system (like orbitz,kayak etc). A fully integrated solution : Flight tickets, Car rental and driving directions as a bonus!.

Art movies

I was talking to a friend recently about "Dor" and he said something strange "isn't that an art movie?". That got me thinking 'how do you classify a movie to be art movie'? I think the general perception of a movie in India is the following storyline (or its umpteen variations) : "boy meets girl, fall in love, fight for love, marry and live happily ever after", spiced with generous sprinklings of song and dance sequences. Other aspects of the story such as corruption, oppression are woven around this main thread. Of late, this definition of a movie has been relaxed a bit to include movies that have a big star listed in the credits. (Just imagine how much impact Rang de Basanti would have without Amir Khan.) Any movie that doesn't follow this 'formula' is an art-movie.

I was actually very impressed with Dor. Two things that worked in favor of this movie were the strong storyline (bought from a Malayam movie) and Nagesh Kukunoor's direction. The cinematography was rich (as rich as any mainstream movie!). Some of the locations were stunning. Despite all this, it was still considered an art movie because a) it didn't follow the accepted storyline b) it didn't have any big stars.


I also saw "The Namesake" a couple of days ago. Again, the story was what made the movie good. Strong performances from the lead characters made it even better. The episodic style of direction gave a feeling that we were being rushed through the story. I guess I'll have to read the book to actually get the nuances of the story. Now, if only I could find enough time for that!!

wierd pics!