Some of the comparisons are quite interesting and mind boggling. But it is unfair in many cases due to the fact that the results are not normalized based on available land area and/or total population. I mean literacy rate, murder rate and beer drinking capita seem way off, just to name a few. No but seriously, the results are informative and if truly factual, gives a nice overview of avenues for India to improve.

Link via India Vs United States: Economy, People, Environment & Military.

I am very proud on how far we have come and maintained the stability and growth with more than a billion people in a land that’s only twice the size of Texas. And all that, without leaving behind much of the cultural heritage and the vagaries of languages and religion omnipresent in every corner. There is so much I want to do for her, but so little time, before I go to sleep…

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And yes, all that rant does lead to something sensible. I stumbled on to this video with a description by the assistant editor of Popular Science Magazine. He lists a few of these kooky professions and what it takes in a honest day’s work. Watch it below.

And I remembered, during one of my tours of a nuclear power plant, someone mentioned how they had a problem in one of their spent nuclear pools and a nuclear pool diver came to the rescue to set things straight. I was of course, baffled by this whole idea of a human being submerged in such a hostile environment but later realized, this was another one of those “on a need to do” professional occupations. Here’s are couple of sites that gives more information about the the nuclear divers.

1) Life of a Nuclear Diver.
2) Nuclear Divers, A Definite Breed
3) And to end this post, another great video of a dive walk through inside the Phenix nuclear plant, in France. The audio is in French but the video is worth a thousand words.

Very interesting and that is just way too cool for words !

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Original link via Fubiz.

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Kudos to Team Hoyt.

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Whoever he is, I am so damn jealous. Photo via PROTO-JP TUMBLER.

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“Is there a God,” and said machine answers, “There is now.”

via Dark Roasted Blend: Most Powerful Supercomputers: Brains and Beauty.

PS: On a side note, I stumbled upon a list of the fastest supercomputers in India.

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Here are some nice photos and details about the fantastic 747 jumbo-jet hostel !

The Jumbo Hostel | Oddity Central.

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Yes. I would like to think that I am probably one of those weird offsprings in the evolution of nature, adapted to live quite contended during the night while needing adequate amounts of caffeine to keep myself awake during the day. And hence, productivity suffers as a function of my clock.

Sadly, most people around me are quite happy working during the day, causing me great distress. If only everyone didn’t evolve individually, they’d all be just like me, loving their wonderful nocturnal life. But then, where will the vagary in nature come from

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Some might argue that when somebody has 40b $ as assets, it should be easy to give away 32b $. But in my opinion, that is one of the best philanthropic action i’ve seen in my short life till now. I personally respect Gates for the huge effort and involvement in the foundation and all the support he has provided to eradicate diseases in the different third world countries. I am glad to see that someone is willing to spend time, money and effort to accomplish this when even the respective governments are having a hard time to stay afloat.

Kudos to Buffet for the thought and i pray that the Gates foundation will make an impact and improve the overall human lifestyle, all over the world !

Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles i’ve read on the news. Read on.

Warren Buffett, 75, known as the Oracle of Omaha for his stock-picking ability, is a quintessential capitalist and the world’s second-richest man. He’s also no fan of greed, or of inherited wealth.

Rather than pass on his $44 billion fortune to his adult children, whom he notes are already quite well-off, Buffett announced Sunday that he is giving away the bulk of his assets to a foundation run by his friends, Bill and Melinda Gates. This will double the $1.5 billion that the world’s richest foundation spends annually — mostly on health and education programs.

The gift is notable in several ways.

First, its sheer size. The donation makes industrialist benefactors such as John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie look almost stingy and is rivaled only by the Gateses’ own gifts of $25.9 billion. Calculating the impact that money might have is impossible, but neither Buffett nor the Gateses think small. “There’s no reason we can’t cure the world’s 20 deadliest illnesses,” Bill Gates said Monday.

They might.

The gift also underscores a little-noticed trend: a renaissance in philanthropy. In 2004, the latest year for which data exist, the USA had 70,000 foundations — double the number a decade earlier. They gave away $33 billion.

But perhaps most striking is the way Buffett’s decision stands out in this greed-is-good era, in which, to cite one example of gross excess, the average pay for top hedge-fund managers last year exceeded $360 million.

To a large degree, of course, wealth-building — if not outright greed — is good. Before they gave away a dime, Buffett and Gates created jobs and raised people’s living standards by building spectacularly successful companies. But when should the wealth-building stop?

“I don’t believe in dynastic wealth,” Buffett has said, likening inherited wealth to choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold medal winners in the 2000 Olympics. That’s why he opposes efforts to repeal the estate tax, saying that without it, America would have an aristocracy based on inherited wealth instead of a meritocracy that rewards ability and drive.

As Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, said in 1759 of generous capitalists, Buffett feels it’s in his self-interest to help others “though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” Here’s hoping others heed the message.

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Now, accidentally, i came upon an article that solves the puzzle. The article answers the reason on why do the British drive on the left ?

Here’s the excerpt from the article that was relevant to the discussion i went through.

In the Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you’d meet on the road in those days. You wanted to make sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly. This custom was given official sanction in 1300 AD, when Pope Boniface VIII invented the modern science of traffic control by declaring that pilgrims headed to Rome should keep left.

The papal system prevailed until the late 1700s, when teamsters in the United States and France began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat. Instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since you were sitting on the left, naturally you wanted everybody to pass on the left so you could look down and make sure you kept clear of the other guy’s wheels. Ergo, you kept to the right side of the road. The first known keep-right law in the U.S. was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1792, and in the ensuing years many states and Canadian provinces followed suit.

Cool isn’t it ?!

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Experiment 1

In 1997, the same polygraph expert supevised an experiment held in front of a live audience for a programme in Carlton TV’s Paranormal World of Paul McKenna series shown on 24th June. The subjects on this occasion were two very lively teenagers, Elaine and Evelyn Dove.

Elaine sat in the studio in front of a large pyramid put together by the special effects wizards, while Evelyn and Jeremy Barrett were in a separate room. When Elaine was nicely relaxed after some skilful light hypnosis from Paul McKenna, the pyramid exploded in a burst of sparks, flashes and coloured smoke, giving her a considerable shock. This showed up on Evelyn’s polygraph as a huge deflection – one pen running off the top of the paper, causing Barrett to comment over the intercom that “Evelyn certainly picked up something from somewhere.”

“There certainly was something coming,” he added, “and it looks to me like shock or surprise”. Interestingly, neither Evelyn Dove nor Richard Powles had any conscious awareness of the shocks their twins were being given although they were both unmistakably aware of them unconsciously.

Experiment 2

On January 10th 2003, 8-year-old Richard Powles sat in a soundproof room in a London television studio in front of a table on which there was a cardboard box and a plastic bucket filled with ice-cold water. On command, he rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into the near-freezing water, giving a gasp as he did so. In another studio well out of sight or earshot, his identical twin brother Damien was wired up to a four-channel polygraph (lie-detector) which, under the expert supervision of polygrapher Jeremy Barrett, was monitoring his respiration, abdominal muscles, pulse and galvanic skin response (sweat on the hands).

Neither he nor Barrett had any idea what was going on in the other room, although both knew they were taking part in a telepathy experiment to be shown later that day on Channel 4’s Richard and Judy chat show. All Damien had to do was sit quietly and “tune in” to his brother, while Barrett’s job was to watch the four pens as they woibbled along the paper chart and look out for something that shouldn’t be there.

He soon found it. At the exact moment of Richard’s sharp intake of breath caused by the freezing water, there was a sudden blip on the line monitoring Damien’s respiration rate. It was as though he too had gasped – which he hadn’t. The effect was so obvious that Barrett pointed to it with his thumb to indicate that he knew something had happened to Richard.

In another experiment, Richard was asked to open a cardboard box, which he did, hoping to find something nice – preferably eatable – in it. Instead, a huge rubber snake shot out of it at him, giving him a fright. This, too, was instantly picked up by his twin as the pulse line on the chart clearly indicated.

Was this visible proof of telepathy? Although this was not a rigidly controlled scientific experiment, it looked very much like it.

–Although the evidence for telepathy has been coming in regularly since the founding in 1882 of the Society for Psychical Research -overall probability of chance in all of the published controlled experiments being of the order of one in billions – many remain unconvinced. Some refuse to admit even the possibility of telepathy, while more reasonable sceptics prefer to suspend judgment until there is not only unmistakable evidence for it and a theory explaining how it works.

I am still trying to find out the original source of this article but haven’t got my hands on that yet. Will see if i can dig more info by googling

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Anyway, here are the Game cheats

FreeCell

Secret – Instant Win
Instructions – Hold down Ctrl + Shift + F10 during game play. Then you will be asked if you want to Abort, Retry or Ignore. Choose Abort, then move any card to instantly win.

Secret – Hidden Game Modes
Instructions – In the “Game” menu choose “Select Game”. Enter -1 or -2 to activate the hidden game modes.

Minesweeper

Secret – Reveal Mines
Instructions – Minimize or close all running applications. Launch Minesweeper, then type xyzzy. Next hold down either shift key for one second. Now when you move the mouse cursor over a Minesweeper square you will see a tiny white pixel in the top left corner of your desktop screen. This pixel will change to black when your mouse moves over a mine. You may need to change you desktop background to a solid color other then white or black to see the pixel.

Pinball

Secret – Extra Balls
Instructions – Type 1max at the start of a new ball to get extra balls.

Secret – Gravity Well
Instructions – Type gmax at the start of a new game to activate the Gravity Well.

Secret – Instant Promotion
Instructions – Type rmax at the start of a new game to go up in ranks.

Secret – Skill Shot
Instructions – Launch the ball partially up the chute past the third yellow light bar so it falls back down to get 75,000 points. There are six yellow light bars that are worth a varying amount of points:

First: 15,000 points
Second: 30,000 points
Third: 75,000 points
Fourth: 30,000 points
Fifth: 15,000 points
Sixth: 7,500 points

Secret – Test Mode
Instructions – Type hidden test at the start of a new ball to activate Test Mode. No notification will be given that this is activated but you can now left-click the mouse button and drag the ball around.

Secret – Unlimited Balls
Instructions – Type bmax at the start of a new ball. No notification will be given that this is activated but when a ball is lost a new ball will appear from the yellow wormhole indefinitely. Once this is activated you will be unable to activate other secrets without restarting the game.

Solitaire

Secret – Instant Win
Instructions – Press Alt + Shift + 2 during game play to instantly win.

Secret – Draw single cards in a Draw Three game
Instructions – Hold down CTRL + ALT + SHIFT while drawing a new card. Instead of drawing three cards you will only draw one.

– And there you have it. The info is not worth a dime but maybe you could use it to impress the nerdy girlfriend of yours !

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This card would make mp3 players like iPod history and most PDA’s and cell phones look bulky and old. It is called “All-in-One Card” or AIO Card” (or Advanced Input Output Card) It has almost everything you need in a modern gadget and more.

AIO card is a thin client. It is like a remote display on a card over wireless. It means all its processing, and storage remains on a powerful server. It uses the same thin client technology found in Sun Rays. It only needs a small processor that does nothing but send the touch and other inputs to a server, and the server sends the display and sound back. Since all the storage is on a server, it gives you virtually unlimited storage for your data, pictures and songs. (unlikes iPods and mp3 players which have a limited memory)

– I think the idea is bloody cool and i might very definitely get one of these, if they become ubiquitous in the market. But then again, thinking about the current technological development, i am not really sure if such an advancement will ‘lift off’ from the ground. You need a strong wifi, a good bluetooth network, a stable server and a lot more to make this feasible, which make most of the comments in the post sensible. Amongst all these odds, if this guy’s idea does work, then Kudos to him and hello ‘All-in-One’ card !

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Our most clicked story of 2005. The placebo effect, cold fusion, dark energy, the “wow” signal and bizarre homeopathy results – these were just a few of the mysteries that fascinated you.

2. Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons

The chemical “sex-bomb” designed to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other, thus destroying an enemy’s morale.

3. 11 steps to a better brain

Like a personal trainer for the brain, without the strain. We expect the IQ of our readers to be much greater now than at the start of 2005.

4. US military sets laser PHASRs to stun

The PHASR is an impressive looking beast, larger than Captain Kirk’s trusted phaser, but the risk of blinding innocent bystanders shrouded this prototype weapon in controversy.

5. Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed

The US military raised temperatures further in 2005 by trying their new microwave weapons on a test crowd – with mixed results.

6. Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

In a year dominated by climate-change fear and greenhouse gas emissions targets, the news of a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream sounded a loud note of alarm.

7. Antarctic ice sheet is an ‘awakened giant’

A slumbering giant, the massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, started to collapse noticeably in 2005, adding extra heat to the climate debate.

8. Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength

Many kids dream of growing into a bionic adult, able to perform superhuman deeds. This dream moved one mechanical step closer to reality this year.

9. Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions

Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars, said a top-level panel of US researchers. Their recommendation for NASA – more study of the issue.

10. Centrifugal weapon could deliver stealth firepower

Another weapon, this time a gun that spits out ball bearings after spinning them to extreme speeds – and there’s a video of the beast in action.

– My 2 cents : Do not miss to read each of the stories. All of them are very interesting. After all, they did make it to the top 10 stories of the year !

Link

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	Power supply switched on.		The power supply performs a self-test – When all voltages and current levels are acceptable, the supply indicates that the power is stable and sends the Power Good signal to the processor. The time from switch-on to Power Good is usually between .1 and .5 seconds.
	The microprocessor timer chip receives the Power Good signal.		With the arrival of the Power Good signal the timer chip stops sending reset signals to the processor allowing the CPU to begin operations.
	The CPU starts executing the ROM BIOS code.		The CPU loads the ROM BIOS starting at ROM memory address FFFF:0000 which is only 16 bytes from the top of ROM memory. As such it contains only a JMP (jump) instruction that points to the actual address of the ROM BIOS code.
	The ROM BIOS performs a basic test of central hardware to verify basic functionality.		Any errors that occur at this point in the boot process will be reported by means of ‘beep-codes’ because the video subsystem has not yet been initialized.
	The BIOS searches for adapters that may need to load their own ROM BIOS routines.		Video adapters provide the most common source of adapter ROM BIOS. The start-up BIOS routines scan memory addresses C000:0000 through C780:0000 to find video ROM. An error loading any adapter ROM generates an error such as: XXXX ROM Error where XXXX represents the segment address of the failed module.
	The ROM BIOS checks to see if this is a ‘cold-start’ or a ‘warm-start’		To determine whether this is a warm-start or a cold start the ROM BIOS startup routines check the value of two bytes located at memory location 0000:0472. Any value other than 1234h indicates that this is a cold-start.
	If this is a cold-start the ROM BIOS executes a full POST (Power On Self Test). If this is a warm-start the memory test portion of the POST is switched off.		The POST can be broken down into three components: The Video Test initializes the video adapter, tests the video card and video memory, and displays configuration information or any errors. The BIOS Identification displays the BIOS version, manufacturer, and date. The Memory Test tests the memory chips and displays a running sum of installed memory.
			Errors the occur during the POST can be classified as either ‘fatal’ or ‘non-fatal’. A non-fatal error will typically display an error message on screen and allow the system to continue the boot process. A fatal error, on the other hand, stops the process of booting the computer and is generally signaled by a series of beep-codes.
	The BIOS locates and reads the configuration information stored in CMOS.		CMOS (which stands for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) is a small area of memory (64 bytes) which is maintained by the current of a small battery attached to the motherboard. Most importantly for the ROM BIOS startup routines CMOS indicates the order in which drives should be examined for an operating systems – floppy first, CD-Rom first, or fixed disk first.
Fixed Disk
	If the first bootable disk is a fixed disk the BIOS examines the very first sector of the disk for a Master Boot Record (MBR). For a floppy the BIOS looks for a Boot Record in the very first sector.		On a fixed disk the Master Boot Record occupies the very first sector at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1. It is 512 bytes in size. If this sector is found it is loaded into memory at address 0000:7C00 and tested for a valid signature. A valid signature would be the value 55AAh in the last two bytes. Lacking an MBR or a valid signature the boot process halts with an error message which might read: NO ROM BASIC – SYSTEM HALTED A Master Boot Record is made up of two parts – the partition table which describes the layout of the fixed disk and the partition loader code which includes instructions for continuing the boot process.
MBR	With a valid MBR loaded into memory the BIOS transfers control of the boot process to the partition loader code that takes up most of the 512 bytes of the MBR.		The process of installing multiple operating systems on a single PC usually involves replacing the original partition loader code with a Boot Loader program that allows the user to select the specific fixed disk to load in the next step of the process
Partition Table	The partition loader (or Boot Loader) examines the partition table for a partition marked as active. The partition loader then searches the very first sector of that partition for a Boot Record.		The Boot Record is also 512 bytes and contains a table that describes the characteristics of the partition (number of bytes per sectors, number of sectors per cluster, etc.) and also the jump code that locates the first of the operating system files (IO.SYS in DOS).
Operating System
Boot Record	The active partition’s boot record is checked for a valid boot signature and if found the boot sector code is executed as a program.		The loading of Windows XP is controlled by the file NTLDR which is a hidden, system file that resides in the root directory of the system partition. NTLDR will load XP in four stages: 1) Initial Boot Loader Phase 2) Operating System selection 3) Hardware Detection 4) Configuration Selection
NTLDR Initial Phase	During the initial phase NTLDR switches the processor from real-mode to protected mode which places the processor in 32-bit memory mode and turns memory paging on. It then loads the appropriate mini-file system drivers to allow NTLDR to load files from a partition formatted with any of the files systems supported by XP.		Windows XP supports partitions formatted with either the FAT-16, FAT-32, or NTFS file system.
NTLDR OS Selection BOOT.INI	If the file BOOT.INI is located in the root directory NTLDR will read it’s contents into memory. If BOOT.INI contains entries for more than one operating system NTLDR will stop the boot sequence at this point, display a menu of choices, and wait for a specified period of time for the user to make a selection.		If the file BOOT.INI is not found in the root directory NTLDR will continue the boot sequence and attempt to load XP from the first partition of the first disk, typically C:\.
F8	Assuming that the operating system being loaded is Windows NT, 2000, or XP pressing F8 at this stage of the boot sequence to display various boot options including “Safe Mode” and “Last Known Good Configuration”		After each successful boot sequence XP makes a copy of the current combination of driver and system settings and stores it as the Last Known Good Configuration. This collection of settings can be used to boot the system subsequently if the installation of some new device has caused a boot failure.
NTLDR Hardware Detection	If the selected operating system is XP, NTLDR will continue the boot process by locating and loading the DOS based NTDETECT.COM program to perform hardware detection.		NTDETECT.COM collects a list of currently installed hardware components and returns this list for later inclusion in the registry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEHARDWARE key.
NTLDR Configuration Selection	If this computer has more than one defined Hardware Profile the NTLDR program will stop at this point and display the Hardware Profiles/Configuration Recovery menu.		Lacking more than one Hardware Profile NTLDR will skip this step and not display this menu.
Kernel Load	After selecting a hardware configuration (if necessary) NTLDR begins loading the XP kernel (NTOSKRNL.EXE).		During the loading of the kernel (but before it is initialized) NTLDR remains in control of the computer. The screen is cleared and a series of white rectangles progress across the bottom of the screen. NTLDR also loads the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.DLL) at this time which will insulate the kernel from hardware. Both files are located in the \system32 directory.
NTLDR Boot Device Drivers	NTLDR now loads device drivers that are marked as boot devices. With the loading of these drivers NTLDR relinquishes control of the computer.		Every driver has a registry subkey entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM\Services. Any driver that has a Start value of SERVICE_BOOT_START is considered a device to start at boot up. A period is printed to the screen for each loaded file (unless the /SOS switch is used in which case file names are printed.
Kernel Initialization	NTOSKRNL goes through two phases in its boot process – phase 0 and phase 1. Phase 0 initializes just enough of the microkernel and Executive subsystems so that basic services required for the completion of initialization become available.. At this point, the system display a graphical screen with a status bar indicating load status.		XP disables interrupts during phase 0 and enables them before phase 1. The HAL is called to prepare the interrupt controller; the Memory Manager, Object Manager, Security Reference Monitor, and Process Manager are initialized. Phase 1 begins when the HAL is called to prepare the system to accept interrupts from devices. If more than one processor is present the additional processors are initialized at this point. All Executive subsystems are reinitialized in the following order: 1) Object Manager 2) Executive 3) Microkernel 4) Security Reference Monitor 5) Memory Manager 6) Cache Manager 7) LPCS I/O Manager 9) Process Manager
I/O Manager	The initialization of I/O Manager begins the process of loading all the systems driver files. Picking up where NTLDR left off, it first finishes the loading of boot devices. Next it assembles a prioritized list of drivers and attempts to load each in turn.		The failure of a driver to load may prompt NT to reboot and try to start the system using the values stored in the Last Known Good Configuration.
SMSS	The last task for phase 1 initialization of the kernel is to launch the Session Manager Subsystem (SMSS). SMSS is responsible for creating the user-mode environment that provides the visible interface to NT.		SMSS runs in user-mode but unlike other user-mode applications SMSS is considered a trusted part of the operating system and is also a native application (it uses only core Executive functions). These two features allow SMSS to start the graphics subsystem and login processes.
win32k.sys	SMSS loads the win32k.sys device driver which implements the Win32 graphics subsystem.		Shortly after win32k.sys starts it switches the screen into graphics mode. The Services Subsystem now starts all services mark as Auto Start. Once all devices and services are started the boot is deemed successful and this configuration is saved as the Last Known Good Configuration.
Logon	The XP boot process is not considered complete until a user has successfully logged onto the system. The process is begun by the WINLOGON.EXE file which is loaded as a service by the kernel and continued by the Local Security Authority (LSASS.EXE) which displays the logon dialog box.		This dialog box appears at approximately the time that the Services Subsystem starts the network service.

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My final words

Remember security starts at the keyboard in front of you:

A 6 character password has about fifty six billion (56,800,235,584) possibilities and the average computer (the G5 is even faster) can try all combinations (crack them) in 2.5 hours.

A 7 character password has about three and a half trillion (3,521,614,606,208) possibilities and a computer can try all combinations in about 1 week.

An 8 character password has about two hundred trillion (218,340,105,584,896) possibilities and a computer can try all its combinations in about a year.

A 9 character password would take about 70 years for a computer to try all combinations.

They say the chips coming in about a year could half these times! Now if you do not want to wait for next year’s chip, you can always put 2 computers in parallel and half the time. In theory you could put 365 computers in parallel and break 8 character passwords in just over a day (Virginia Tech just put 1100 G5s in parallel). Do you think hackers have friends?

Computers have a lot more time on their hands than we do and most of the bad guys don’t have jobs. The next person asking for your social security number could be just a few clicks away from your stock options.

If you just got a chill down your back or just got a little paranoid; good, my work is done.

Use an 8 character password (9 characters is better)… You would make this security professional very happy if you would change your passwords after you read this e-mail : )

You can learn more about choosing good Passwords. And hey, do follow them !

On a sidenote, I remember learning to code during the under grad years just for the thrill of cracking passwords. I can still feel how beautiful it was when i did manage to do it. Sheer bliss. I understood then, on why people take so much effort to hack into classified sites and just play around with files until they make one stupid mistake and get caught.

It is the sheer satisfaction of the EGO … The Ego Trail that keeps us going.

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Here’s a 4-D visualization of the cube in a raytraced Povray version of the picture.

A 4D visualization of a cube

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If you want to see it, open up the command line on your computer(Terminal on OS X, or “CMD” from the run option of your Windows PC) and type “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl”. Hit enter a few times and sit back with some popcorn to enjoy the show.

Now to push it up a notch and if you are using IP V6, you get the entire movie in color too !

Here’s a sampler.

PS : If you do not want to muck around with telnet, go over here to watch the same movie as a Java applet.

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It is such a great illustration of the empathy (if not outright identification) of the sports fan with the athlete, all the more evident in English soccer because of the unique proximity of the stands to the fields.

Disbelief all round as Owen fails to score(11 September 1999 - Liverpool v Man Utd)

How ironic would it be if he ended up in the photo of the decade …

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2. Micro and Macro – Is there a difference ? I have been meditating for a few years now and...

Now if only i can just create a blackhole and get a computer with a mega huge cpu power to solve a billion variables accurately, i will be done …

Now read on about “A User’s Guide to Time Travel” – All it takes is a grasp of theoretical physics, control of the space-time continuum, and maybe a ball of cosmic string.

A very interesting and captivating article about some of the theories and concepts you need to know before trying to even talk about time travel to anyone ! Definitely a nice lay-man’s intro to the subject …

Also, here is the author’s site. Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of String Field Theory. If you have never had the chance to read anything on Field theory, then believe me, after the basic reading i’ve done, i’d salute him a 100 times ! He’s got a great site going on, full of technical information. A nice site if you like theoretical physics and many other scientific phenomena.

Update : Saw this article “Realistic Time Machine? New design could forgo exotic ingredient” and found it interesting and relevant to the topic. While all the suggested theories seem good, nothing can be commented about them until a practical model is developed.

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An excerpt :

Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can’t drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.

I mean, the first look at the article amazed me because like the article says, no one has ever explained on how they are able to do calculations in the mind, fast or slow, because it is all intuitive and it just comes. He talks about seeing numbers as shapes, and calculations meld these shapes together to create new shapes that represent new numbers – that sounds fascinating; it would be great to be able to do that. There is no way you can associate words with what is happening inside your head. But this genius wonder, explains it all, in terms of patterns, colours and shapes. Beautiful !

Another excerpt :

“I do love numbers,” he says. “It isn’t only an intellectual or aloof thing that I do. I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing – in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends.”

I can exactly understand what he says. Probably every coder can understand that perfectly too. The way you see the design in your head and you just code it without having to think again about variable names or the patterns or the abstraction. It just flows !

Maybe this is what the next evolution of man should look like. Humans, independent of machines, performing zillions of calculations per sec and able to communicate across continents with just the mind. That just might be the right time to throw away all your computers but until then, if you are not a born genius, code on …

There are some more links and views about Dan Tammet. Read on …

@ Wikipedia
@ Spear’s Grotto
@ Digital Antichrist
@ Past Peak
@ MultipleSclerosis
And here’s a good picture of him

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• Each image taken at 39MP is atleast 117MB in size ! WoW ! You better start buying lots of extra memory cards if you are into this game
• Expected price for this wonderful gadget is 30000 USD ! God. Now i have to flush my dream of buying 2 of these down the drain …

Here is a picture of the gorgeous machinery.

I was actually pretty happy with the camera(Nikon Coolpix 4800) i had, albeit for a short time. I could manage to take some clear shots, of some great landscapes, and undistorted pictures with a good zoom. But if the miniscule 4MP cam can churn out such good pictures, i can’t even begin to imagine how perfect the image from Phase One’s P45 39 megapixel will be …

via Engadget. Also checkout the Photography Blog.

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Anyway, as our quest for a free .NET IDE continues, here’s one to quench that ! Check out Eclipse for .NET ! Infact, i think i picked up this link from one of the replies, but not sure though… Eclipse as most of you would have heard is an awesome product which was developed by IBM and then later opensourced. I have heard quite a lot from fellow Java devs that the IDE is powerful compared to IntelliJ‘s IDE. Well i’m not the judge in either case but i definitely think that the plugin will help all those cribbing for a good IDE with C# support.

Again, #develop as many of you already know, is a very flexible IDE completely written in C# which is opensource and freely available. There is rarely something extra needed apart from #develop and ASP.NET Webmatrix for developing WinForm and WebForm code in .NET. What more do you want ?

And apart from all that, for the most hardcore developer who doesn’t care for IDE features, there is one really cool app to write code in C#. Ofcourse it will not work at all for enterprise level apps but for smaller projects, definitely useful. Check out Textpad. FYI, its got syntax highlighting functionality for C# too .. Download the file here.

Code on …

I guess, this is a pretty decent list of free IDEs to work on .NET right now. I might have missed a lot of other ones here but these are the ones that stand out quite prominently, i should say

Update : Just found out that the Notepad2 free utility provided at Flo’s freeware site also supports syntax highlighting for C# ! And the best part is that the whole thing is customizable, just like Textpad’s syntax highlight feature Cool.

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