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The technology behind Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol’s claimed “Magic Glove” or “Electronic glove”

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:23:18 +0000

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!

Indian Rupee Symbol Font – “Rupee Foradian” Download

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:20:18 +0000

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

Credits

http://blog.foradian.com/

Jithin Jayanath

The Corporation

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:54:48 +0000

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

Surprising facts

Birthday song is copyrighted and movie makers have to pay more than $10000 if there a scene where actors sing “Happy birthday”.
Rain water can be privatized. By 2025 2/3 of world will not have access to fresh drinking water.
First thought when 9/11 attack happened was “How much was Gold up?”
In 1991 the price of oil increased from 13$ to 40$ when US bombed Iraq which gives rise to a thought that with devastation there is opportunity.
Price attached to pollute Earth (air pollution, noise pollution, water pollution)
Research on how nagging’s Kids help improve sales
and more….

Movie Review

The movie was pretty much one side mainly targeting and portraying the negative influence that Corporation has on humans, nature and economy. This movie is a result of 7 years of research and hence the information provided gives a good insight to different aspects of how corporations act and react to circumstances. On a final note this documentary shows the “Other side of the coin” which is generally hidden from public. Always it is good to know the other side of the coin but one should not form a biased opinion just by knowing the other side.

African Grey Parrots & A Parrot named Einstein

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:14:36 +0000

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

Alex has a yahoo group with 1400 hits. Sadly it passed at the age of 31.
About Alex. http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/926071

Another parrot named Einstein is, a younger bird, aged 13 as of Jun 15th 2010. It is not birthday for them it is called hatchday. Einstein has a website, blog and a facebook profile

Alex, Griffin, & Einstein

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Fpad20Zbk

Einstein at TED Talk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAp6X0zZfx0

Orange Orange – Annoying Orange

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:47:24 +0000

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.

Orange (telecommunications) is a France Telecom brand used for mobile network operator and internet service provider. It is the fifth largest telecom operator in the world. This brand was created for Hutchison Telecom, UK for its mobile phone network which later was acquired by France Telecom in 2000.

Orange (India) brand was launched in Mumbai, India 2000. This brand was under Hutchison Essar and Orange but was not part of Orange France Telecom company. In 2006 Hutchison ended using Orange as brand and started using Hutch Brand. In 2007 Hutch became Vodafone.

Orange Color – This color occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum. This color was named after the fruit “Orange”. In web CSS colors can be specified either by name or hexadecimal value. For e.g. black or 000000, white or ffffff. Orange is the only named color which is not defined in HTML 4.01 and hence to use orange color only its equivalent hexadecimal value (FFA500) can be used and not its name.

Orange Fruit – is the citrus fruit which originally originated in parts of Southeast Asia. Orange always refers to sweet orange because there is another kind named bitter orange. Surprisingly in Dutch and in few other languages orange is referred as “Chinese Apple”. Orange come in different varieties like blood orange, navel orange, persian orange and valencia orange. India produces 3.1 million tonnes of oranges as of 2006 survey which is the fourth highest. Top 3 producers are Brazil, United States and Mexico in the same order.

Finally its time for the annoying part….

Annoying Orange – Calls an apple —-> Hhhey….. hhhey Apple….. Hhhey Apple…. hhey!! Annoying Orange(Chinese Apple) tires to be a friend with an Apple. Check Annoying Orange in action @ youtube channel. New episodes will be posted in this youtube channel every friday.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5PoW7_kdA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdBCeUdAmI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCNRGrHMY8c

It is a cool annoying fun pack.

Hey…. Hey Apple!!!!.

IcoFX – The Free Icon Editor

admin — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:47:47 +0000

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.

10 runs in 1 Ball!!! – Indian Captain Dhoni on Superstar Rajinikant

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:50:36 +0000

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.

An Internet User Ganesh Says:

Chennai IPL Team’s Captain, MS Dhoni, was quoted saying the following about rajini during the IPL 2008 matches ”It would be a good thing. Here, he’s like a god. He’s a good person and a fine individual. He is amazing! If he’s in our team, it would be wonderful.”

I hope he has lot of respect for Rajini. I certainly don’t doubt his intentions.

Another interesting quote

“Learning Tamil to watch Sivaji, the boss” – M S Dhoni
When the IPL started in Chennai, MS Dhoni said in an interview that he is awestruck to see thepopularity that Superstar commands here and also said that Tamil Nadu sees him as a demi god. Now again in an interview to a local paper, he has said, “I am a big fan of Superstar. I am planning to watch Sivaji soon. To understand the dialogues, i am now learning Tamil. For that i have to watch tamil films continuously.”

He also added that Actor Vijay has invited him to watch his Kuruvi.
(Note that it is only Vijay invited him to watch. But Dhoni himself expressed his wish to watch Sivaji)

On the whole it seems Captain MS Dhoni seems to like our one and only Superstar Rajinikant.

Credits – onlysuperstar.com

KP’s dance show request

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:50:08 +0000

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.

Wedding Secret Revealed, a rewind back to 30th December 2007

The flamboyant batsman had tried to keep details of his wedding to Liberty X star Jessica Taylor a secret.

But news leaked out as teammates, including England captain Michael Vaughan and his wife Nichola, and celebrity friends began showing up at St Andrews Church in Castle Combe, Wiltshire, while villagers hung sparkling lights from windows nearby.

1 run in 1 hour – A tough little kid – Gautam Gambir

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:40:06 +0000

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.

What is often not seen when people look at Gambhir’s “natural” batting in the one-dayers, and even in Tests, is that he is a tough character. “A tough little kid,” Dravid calls him. His friends remember how he cheats while playing videogames, because he hates to lose. It wasn’t really surprising that he was prepared for the battle of the mind.

“There were phases when both of us were challenging each other,” Dravid said. “There are periods when you are batting a long day – it is mentally draining – when your concentration does waver a bit. Hats off to Gautam. He stuck it out. He batted the whole day. Lots of character and temperament. He will learn a lot from this innings, probably more than any he has played in his career.”

The rest of the Test world will learn a lot about Gambhir from this innings, more than they have done from any he has played in his career.

Credits – cricinfo.com

Jai Ho Lyricist Gulzar and Ilayaraja join hands after 26 years

admin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:37:36 +0000

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.

Gulzar says the music maestro’s ability to create “perfect harmony” is still intact. Ilayaraja is one of his kinds. I wish he was heard more often in Hindi cinema.”

SRK is being directed by Ajay Varma, a descendant of the legendary painter Raja Ravi Varma. “It’s interesting that Ajay Varma has made a film at just about the same time a film on the life of Raja Ravi Varma by Ketan Mehta is ready for release,” said Gulzar.

The poet is not too fond of the title though.”The film is at the moment called SRK. Hopefully, it will change. What the film most certainly changes is the idiom of expression for film music. I feel Shaad Ali’s ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and Anurag Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ gave me a chance to experiment with words in a way that film music generally doesn’t. Now I feel the same way about my poetry in ‘SRK’.”