Shiva rocks !

Shiva rocks !

Shiva: Favorite picture of the day from Flickr. Quite funny but well composed shot with a more of post-process. That kinda green tinge looks nice.

After having spicy desi lunch in Chillies near office, was listening to this soul stirring number of my favo Lucky Ali.

London weather is very unpredictable. God knows when drizzling ends to make a way for sun shine. It happens very randomly & that's the beauty of this month. Sometimes it's dusky, drizzling, or just cloudy, sometime it's warm sunshine.

I love to plug-in my music pod whenever I get to commute in tubes. The only place where phones don't work, words go silent, moods go dry, people immerse into day's paper or blackberries.

While walking on the lonely parks, long bridges, wet pavements of London Lucky Ali gives me a company with his warm ballads. It's transcending to hear husky voice of him. Sometimes I think he's humming feelings running inside me..

Anjaane raho mein tu kya
doond tha phire...
door jisko samjha woh tho
paas hai there

saas mein hawaa
jaan mein zameen
dil mein khulaaa
aaasmaan..

ooov! I go crazy with these rhythmic lines. There's nothing like listening to his songs & sipping chilled heineken beer in the calm, cool, windy balcony of my apartment looking at boats moving in Thames; fading into the evening of March.

A poem

A poem

While shuttling between office & home, I found an interesting stuff in London tubes; bunch of poems- worth reading & remembering. Every tube train has at least one poem besides their inside ads . I'm not sure if they're some kind of sonnets or what. Though the max journey lasts for about 10 minutes or so they made me to ponder over their meaningful words, thought provoking lines. Mostly they're hatched-around the themes of living, desire, hopes of London life.

Check this interesting poem I saw in one of the tubes between Waterloo & Canary wharf. It captures the true mascara of London & its fast paced life.

Optimistic Little Poem

Now and then it happens
that somebody shouts for help
and somebody else jumps in at once
and absolutely gratis.

Here in the thick of the grossest capitalism
round the corner comes the shining fire brigade
and extinguishes, or suddenly
there's silver in the beggar's hat.

Mornings the streets are full
of people hurrying here and there without
daggers in their hands, quite equably
after milk or radishes.

As though in a time of deepest peace.
A splendid sight.

This is what I found about these poems in internet:

"Poems on the Underground, founded in 1986, is supported by London Underground, Arts Council England and the British Council, which distributes the posters to its offices throughout the world. Poems are selected and the programme administered by the writer Judith Chernaik and poets Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert."

Gizmo de K800i

Gizmo de K800i

A new induction into my gizmo squad. I just upgraded from Nokia 6600 phone to Sony Ericsson K800i. I bought this cute piece in UK for 232£ (6£ more for Vodafone connection) Though there is no hard & fast reason to ignore N70 (Music edition) this time, what brought me back to SE is, benevolent service of my initial phone T610. I suppose, except for minor set-backs T610-is 'what the phone can be' even now. But times have changed & my preferences too...I think my inclination is more towards a ease-0f-use, easily accessible menu system, non-hanging intuitive space, uncluttered interface, ultra clarity, & not a symbian phone again please...

I had i-Mate or Dopod PDA in my mind. But me being the hard user, wear & tear of these smart phones in my hand is pretty fast ;) Still there's lot to go for me to become a blackberry user & use smart phones with stylus. For me using stylus- is certainly a difficult task than becoming a CEO to use Blackberry :) The final contender for this times cell phone selection was Moto Ming, the cutest phone on the block , but again the stylus came on the way!

Reloading in London

Reloading in London

It's like a dream come true: I'm in London. Have seen it in movies, have read & heard a lot about it in school days, media & publications. But there's nothing like being myself in London :) It's the place of wonders if you're here for the first time. It's my first trip to UK from my Indian office.

Got to experience this lovely place especially between- Feb to March- the perfect blend of sunshine, winter winds & romantic drizzling time. It's awesome experience being here in this lovely post-winter season. To add to the elegance, my home is just on the banks of river Thames, Dock land. The first view out of big window is mild waves, floating ducks on river Thames. There's a silent street just besides my bed room window: I hear no sound of traffic or heavy horn even though good number of vehicles move everyday. Rarely I here a roaring sound of suzuki hayabusa or honda 1000CC bikes slicing the wind & disappearing in just a minute.

Wet pavements say 'hi' to me in the morning; revealing their dawn romance with mild drizzling. I can feel the freezing wind gushing into my nostrils. It seems like inhaling cool air having menthol mint :)

Initially it was like 'waking up from a sweet dream & finding it in reality :), But life is slowly moving into calm pace between busy Canary wharf & Elephant Castle tube stations. This underground tube station is a big wonder for me when I keep hear: Devegowda making big noise about small metro project in Bangalore !

I remember desktopping dashing car wallpapers erstwhile. I'm seeing those cars live on the streets of London now a days. Wanna see best of the best cars? come to London. It's eye-treat watching a sexy Ferrari just besides you on the road. Open-top or double-decker buses are nearing extinction in Bangalore ? come to London, they are fad here.

I remember this phrase time & again here: ' People makes societies, not governments'

| More to come, more to write on this lovely place. |

Earn out of Flickr.

Earn out of Flickr.

When I meet my photographer friends, one topic is pretty common while we hang around. At least one among us wanna upgrade from point & shoot digital camera to DSLR. Someone wants to mount new macro or wide-angle or some other lens on existing gear. Point is same: more the addition, more the flexibility & power to photography thrust !

End of the day, hobby remains adept. But what do you earn out of these heavy priced gizmo's unless you use these gizmo's make some money out of it? At one point acquiring new gizmo's trend sooner or later turns out to be a tiresome spendthrift habit. one can argue, come on, when you intend to do anything for your own happiness- money is not a thing to count. Agreed. I believe, there should be certain source of income to feed the need to flex ones cam to mount lenses or to expand.

In midst of all these thoughts, I happen to see an interview with Kuwait based photographer Hamad Darwish, who was contacted by Microsoft viewing his photos in Flickr. It was interesting to note for me too, as we both share a common platform: Flickr.

Hamad Darwish might not be a household name, but if you use Windows Vista, then his work is on your computer. In fact, it might be even on your desktop right now! Assuming IDC’s predictions are accurate, then before the end of the year, up to 90 million people will have the chance to see Hamad’s work, and all he had to do was upload it to Flickr.

Funda behind Google

Funda behind Google

Google means inquisitive for many. Specially the spidering & crawling caliber of google search crawler Googlebot. Conventional seo people still believes that Google search & indexes pages on the basis of meta tags inserted on the header part of HTML. People from new school of seo thought have a point to make: 'page content plays a vital role in google searching, rather than meta tags.

But in plain words, google says:

you submit your site with some description & wait till we add your content to our mammoth indexing process. In few days google search to find your site on top our search results. You may also add comments or keywords that describe the content of your page. These are used only for our information and do not affect how your page is indexed or used by Google.

I see a rare level playground in search engine optimization battle; perse 'google v/s seo tweaking people'. To avoid rigging of meta tags & deliberate search tweaking capabilities of outside players, oflate google've made innumerable variations to their search crawler engine script.

I found this interesting read on 10 things you should know before submitting site to google. Though it's a generic information it's useful for novice seo operations.

1. If you have a splash page on your website, make sure you have a text link that allows you to pass it.
2. Make sure you have no broken links.
3. Check the TITLE tags.
4. Check the META tags.
5. Check your ALT tags.
6. Check your frames.
7. Do you have dynamically generated pages?
8. Update your content regularly.
9. The robots.txt
10. To cache or not to cache?

Beware orkut gals !

Beware orkut gals !

• Google-owned social networking site, Orkut, is in trouble again in India. This time, a Delhi court has ordered an investigation into the portal, over a complaint by an air hostess whose obscene profile was allegedly posted on the site by some unidentified Oorkut user.
• The air hostess says someone opened an account in her name and described her as a 'sex-struck woman'. She said the phone numbers given in the account belongs to one of her neighbors, an official at the Lok Sabha Secretariat, who has incidentally been receiving vulgar calls for sometime now. A case has been registered in this regard in Delhi, and authorities have directed its specialized cell to conduct investigations into the allegations and file a report by February 9.
• In her plea, the 23 year old air hostess claims the act has damaged her image and reputation in society and says she has written to the National Commission for Women and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry against her criminal defamation, but no action has been taken so far. The air hostess says she discovered her profile on Orkut with a photograph of her in her uniform, on December 26, 2006. The person who put her on Orkut also made her a member of online communities soliciting sex. Incidentally, the profile of the miscreant was also connected to communities of air hostesses, both national and international airlines, and multi-national companies.
• The malicious account had been been flooded with over 250 scrapss or messages by other members of Orkut, by the time she noticed it. Friends and family of the air hostess had immediately reported the matter to Orkut, which in turn had closed the account, but two days later, the profile was reopened.
• If the guilty can be convicted, he or she can be sentenced to a rigorous imprisonment of up to five years with a fine of Rs 2 lakh under various Sections of IT Act and IPC.
  

via | tech2.com

New dictionary word

New dictionary word

Heard about 'Bangalored' right ?

So one more ultimate neo-fad dictionary word is here.
Say if you wanna convert this sentence into one word usage:
“Tumhe laat marke beizzat karke bahar nikal diya gaya aur baadme vapas bulaya gaya …”

In general usage it's like this : “You have been Gangulized”

cool na ?