Prabhakar Kasi's Raptor.in

It was an interesting coincidence that I came to know about the Bio-Inspirated Engineering at Yahoo! Tech Pulse 2011 just before I watched MI4. The presentation was done by Professor Robert Full who is the “Principle Investigator and Director” of CiBER-IGERT at UC Berkeley. The theme for his presentation was about “How Engineering innovation is possible by the inspiration taken from nature!”. He terms this as “Bio-Inspired Engineering”. It was a very interesting presentation. He has studied the movement of cockroaches a lot and the findings help in building better robots. Had I known about these things before few years (4 or 5 years back) my career choices might have been different (I mean! It was so inspiring!). I would recommend this engineering to all those young-guns who are interested in building robots. During the presentation, he was talking about a reptile, Gecko Lizard. This science behind this lizards toe is the technology behind the MI4 claimed “Magic Glove”. Gecko has amazingly sticky toe that can adhere to any surface (without the use of liquids or surface tension).

The following video will explain what I trying to explain.

Stanford’s StickBot in 2006

Stanford’s StickyBot in 2007

Lyn Verinsky is know as Gecko Woman since she was the first one to try Gecko Glove

For More eager reader (a lengthy video)

Professor Robert Full at TED Talk

For more of this better search in yahoo/bing/google!

Popularity: 1% [?]

After the announcement of Indian Rupee symbol one of the 1st question that came to the minds of many was which key will be used to insert the Rupee symbol. A font named Rupee Foradian has been released. The latest version is 3.0.

Their Official Blog is http://blog.foradian.com/. The blog claims that “We have made the first font with support for Indian currency symbol.”

You can find wallpaper, updated foradian font version and how to use the symbol in different office versions.

Usage

1) Download the font (version 3.0)

2) Install the font

3) Open office and select rupee foradian font
Type the Rupees Symbol in Microsoft Word through the grave acent symbol (`)
(the key just above “tab” button in your keyboard. Below Esc button).

4) If you keyboard does not have the specified key then press “Alt” and type “0096″ (zero-zero-nine-six) on your keyboard.

More details about usage can be found here

http://blog.foradian.com/

Jithin Jayanath

Popularity: 100% [?]

The Corporation is a canadian documentary film released in 2003. The documentary movie shows how business corporation evolved and associates it’s identity with different topics or themes (book-like chapter).

The list is as follows

• What is a corporation?
• Birth
• A Legal Person
• Case History
  • Harm to workers – layoffs
  • Harm to workers – union busting
  • Harm to workers – factory fires
  • Harm to workers – sweatshops
  • Harm to animals – Habitat destruction
  • Harm to animals – factory farming
  • Harm to animals – experimentation
  • Harm to animals – rBGB / rBST / Posilac
  • Harm to biosphere – clearcuts
  • Harm to biosphere – CO2 emissions
  • Harm to biosphere – Nuclear waste
  • Harm to biosphere – Corporate paradigm
• Personality Diagnosis
  • Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
  • Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
  • Reckless disregard for the safety of others
  • Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit
  • Incapacity to experience guilt
  • Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours
• The pathology of commerce
• Monstrous Obligations
• Mindset
• Boundary Issues
• Basic Training
• Perception Management
• A Private Celebration
• Advancing the front
• Unsettling Accounts
• Expansion Plan
• Hostile Takeover
• Democracy LTD
• Psycho Therapies
• Prognosis

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Experts believed and documented the fact that African Grey Parrots one of the most intelligent animal species capable of imitating other species. Dr. Irene Pepperbergs have researched for many years and says  that they posses the ability to associate human words with meanings and intelligently apply the abstract comcepts of shape, color, number, etc. They are also claimed to perform cognitive tasks at the level of dolphins, chimpanzees, and even human toddler. In 2004 a bird named N’kisi had a vocabulary of 900 words and was noted for creative use of language. For example, when Jane Goodall visited N’kisi in his New York home, he greeted her with “Got a Chimp?” as he’d seen pictures of her with chimpanzees in Africa. Because of their social interest Grey Parrots are considered excellent pets.

About Specific Gery Parrots

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Orange is very interesting…. This article is intended to annoy the readers. The last section is the “annoying” section but before that….

Orange County(not country) is a county in California(Google Maps) known as city of orange is located 376 miles away from SJSU at Santa Ana. It is the second most populous county in CA. Los Angeles County and San Diego County have notable population. Orange County is famous for tourism attractions like Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm and few beaches. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 65% [?]

If you into web development you must know about the favicon which is known as website icon. Below in the image you can understand what is website icon and where it is useful.

When you own a website and if you need to get this icon you need to create a “favicon.ico” file and put in your root folder. Do remember to clear you temp file in IE and Chrome (not required in Opera, Firefox, and safari). To create .ico files Photoshop is not sufficient. You need a icon editing software. IconFx is a free icon editing software which I thought I should share.

Read more about How to Display Your Website Logo on the Address Bar?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Dhoni cooly said that if Superstar Rajini bats he can score 10 runs in 1 ball. This article was posted in Dina Malar, a tamil daily newspaper on January 2009.

When Dhoni visited Haryana state he had an opportunity to talk with few National Security Gaurds. One of the Comando’s asked Dhoni, “Whether it possible to hit 10 runs in one ball?”. Dhoni was puzzled for a second, then he with a cool head said, “Actor Rajinikant bats with a style. He smacks the ball. The balls splits into two. One half goes over the boundary for a Six and another rolls over the boundary for a four. So ten runs in 1 ball is a definite possiblity”. This was said with humour and fans of Rajini should not take this in the wrong sense.

People in Nothern parts of India believe Rajini as someone who can do impossible things. Dhoni’s comments is a reflection of this image of Rajini. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 26% [?]

Players leave tours for plenty of reasons, a common one being the birth of a child, but Kevin Pietersen had a novel one for wanting to leave the Caribbean during the Test series against West Indies. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Pietersen had asked for permission to return home between the third and fourth Tests in order to watch his wife Jessica Taylor, a former Liberty X singer, take part in the television show Dancing on Ice.

He only wanted to go home for 48 hours but his request was refused by the team management. “It was deemed best that he stayed on tour,” said an ECB spokesman. Perhaps it contributed to Pietersen being at the “end of his tether” by the time the ODIs arrived. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

Gautam Gambhir is someone who is impulsive and aggressive enough to elbow a bowler and miss the next match as punishment wouldn’t usually be associated with a task that requires intense levels of patience and discipline over long periods. Especially when the job starts on the third evening, and certainly not when there is a spell where a batsman scores one run in an hour.

The Napier Test has not yet been saved, but Gambhir has been instrumental in India taking that big step towards doing it, and he has made sure he is there to try and take the final steps as well. That, after having batted more than seven hours for only 102 runs, scoring 88 runs in 242 balls today, and only 19 in the final session.

Gambir was on 83 and to move on to 84 took an hour’s time after tea! Sachin was doing all the scoring. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

Oscar award for Original Song for Slumdog Millionaire “Jai Ho” was infact shared between AR Rahman and Sampooran Singh Gulzar.

After 26 years, Gulzar is once again teaming up with Ilayaraja for Shah Ruk Khan’s movie directed by Ajay Varma. The Lyricist Gulzar and Music Maestro Ilayaraja have worked together in 1983 for Balu Mahendra’s movie Sadma.

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Popularity: 7% [?]