Monday, March 27, 2006

Huh? And I need this file WHY?

It doesn't matter what operating system you use, there's always tons of flotsam and jetsam that comes with.

And true to the grand old Software Engineering tradition, the name of a file can have absolutely nothing to do with what the file contains or how useful it is.

So the next time you're wondering what a particular file is being used for and whether its safe to delete it, simply look it up here.

I'll take Jeopardy for a 1000 please Alex!

This is old news but if you'd like a shot at appearing on Jeopardy, for the first time, the qualifying examination is now being given online! There are only a couple more days left to register so hurry up!

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Smaller, faster, cheaper, better

What is 10 x 10 x 1.6 mm, only consumes 0.9mW of power and can connect you to a 802.11 b/g network?

Friday, March 17, 2006

(Caution - Blog in Progress) A short history of the Indian blogosphere

Happy St Patrick's Day!
Background reading -
  1. The history of blogs
  2. A timeline of blogging
  3. Another timeline from New York magazine
  4. The WikiPedia entry for a weblog
  5. Dina Mehta (one of the first Indian blogs I read) about the blogging scene in India circa 2005.
  6. Ohmynews on blogging in India
  7. The Indibloggies

Thursday, March 16, 2006

A short history of the Indian Blogosphere

DesiPundit has an interesting endeavor going on right now where they've asked for blogger contributions in 4 categories -
  • An intro to blogging
  • How to start blogging NOW!
  • Useful blog tools
  • State of the Indian Blogosphere
Now the first 3 (as has been pointed out in the many comments to the post) are more or less just-google-it- it-already-exists kind of things. The last one looks interesting for sure, though I was thinking more along the lines of doing a kinda-sorta short history of the Indian blogosphere as we now know it. So help me out here fellow bloggers and readers, just off the top of my head -
  • Which was the very first Indian blog you read?
  • If you blog, what (Indian) blog inspired you to start blogging yourself?
  • What were some of the popular Indian blogs you used to read that no longer exist?
  • When did the Blog Mela begin?
  • Anything else that's relevant

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Got stem cells?

Neither CNN nor the New York Times reported this particular piece of news. Japanese researchers have managed to extract stem cells from human menstrual blood. The stem cells originate in the endometrium (the lining of the human uterus) which yields about 30 times as many stem cells as human bone marrow. As with anything, the younger the donor, the longer the stem cells are likely to survive.

And here's another way of harvesting stem cells, right when you're born (donor age being zero?)!

Einstein's cat

Schrodinger's cat, we've all heard of. But did you know Einstein had a cat too (a real one)? The poor cat would get depressed whenever it rained and Straus once overheard Einstein telling it, "I know what's wrong, dear fellow, but I don't know how to turn it off."

You can read 9 more funny things about Einstein here.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Morning Walk

We both chose our present home probably because it is in close proximity of the college where we both had studied and where we both would have liked our both daughters to spend their pre-professional years before joining their respective professional colleges. However, I had to leave it before completing even my first year since I had to join the Defence Academy, and Mirchi's mother had left it after two years as some other college offered morning session for the subjects she had chosen for her graduate studies thereby enabling her to take up a full-time job elsewhere.


Didi, our first-born, had decided to join her Mom's second college since, surprisingly, by then it had become more sought after for the students aspiring to follow a career in medicine. Mirchi, however chose to spend her both pre-professional years at the first college that stood just across the road from our house and still talks about the great time that she had while she was at that college and that obviously, does not include academics.


The route for my morning walk goes through the campus of the first college and nothing or nothing much seems to have changed all these years. January and February are two great months in any college; festive mood that sets in with Diwali holidays seems to persist, and the exams, for most of the students, appear to be on a distant horizon if at all.



This is the time for holding all those exhibitions, events, socials, gatherings and annual days. As I went through the campus, I noticed many posters advertising various exhibitions/events that were stuck at various kattas or key-points by the respective departments of the college. It was either Physica 06 or Alchemy 06; a poster read Electronica 06 and the other read Flora 06. The Geology department had called their event/exhibition as Gems 06 but one poster did hold my attention and even made me wonder; it read ZOOVOLUTION 06. I reckoned it to be quite imaginative or rather, even perceptive…

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Pope's playlist

The Pope now has his very own iPod.
Its a white, 2 GB nano, presented to him by some Vatican Radio employees.

Now if he (and the Catholic Church) would only catch up with the rest of the world in other (more important) ways!

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Old is gold

You can find pre-Clean Slate archives here.
Also the new feed for the site is this.