China at its best !
Forget everything you think you know about China and take a couple of minutes to ponder these spectacular images. China has just about everything you want to see.
Very clever photography indeed.
Photographer: Feng Jiang.
Forget everything you think you know about China and take a couple of minutes to ponder these spectacular images. China has just about everything you want to see.
Very clever photography indeed.
Photographer: Feng Jiang.
Foggy night in a Bangalore station...
On a dark and foggy night, a small figure lay huddled on the railway tracks leading to the Bangalore station. At once I was held back to see someone in that position during midnight with no one around. With curiosity taking the front seat, I went near the body and tried to investigate it. There was blood all over the body which was lying face down. It seemed that a ruthless blow by the last train could have caused the end of this body which seemed to be that of a guy of around my age. Amidst the gory blood flow, I could see a folded white envelope which was fluttering in the midnight wind. Carefully I took the blood stained envelope and was surprised to see the phrase "appraisal letter" on it. With curiosity rising every moment, I wasted no time in opening the envelope to see if I can find some details about the dead guy. The tag around the body's neck and the jazzy appraisal cover gave me the hint that he might be a software engineer. I opened the envelope to find a shining paper on which the appraisal details where typed in flying colours. Thunders broke into my ears and lightening struck my heart when I saw the appraisal amount of the dead guy!!!!! My God, it was not even, as much as the cost of the letter on which the appraisal details were printed.... My heart poured out for the guy and huge calls were heard inside my mind saying "no wonder, this guy died such a miserable death"... As a fellow worker in the same industry, I thought I should mourn for him for the sake of respect and stood there with a heavy heart thinking of the shock that he would have experienced when his manager had placed the appraisal letter in his hand. I am sure his heart would have stopped and eyes would have gone blank for few seconds looking at the near to nothing increment in his salary.While I mourned for him, for a second my hands froze to see the employee's name in the appraisal letter... hey, what a strange co-incidence, this guy's name is same as mine, including the initials. This was interesting. With some mental strength, I turned the body upside down and found myself fainted for a second. The guy not only had my name, but also looked exactly like me. Same looks, same built, same name.... it was me who was dead there!!!!!!!! While I was lost in that shock, I felt someone patting on my shoulders. My heart stopped completely, I could not breathe and sprung in fear to see who was behind.... splash!!! Went the glass of water on my laptop screen as I came out of my wild dream to see my manager standing behind my chair patting on my shoulder saying, "wake up man. Come to meeting room number two. I have your appraisal letter ready".
[ Forwarder : Ms. Sudha Venkatesan ]
It's submitted for a contest to write a fictional story for 500 words max which would start with the line "On a dark and foggy night, a small figure lay huddled on the railway tracks leading to the Bangalore station"
This is the award winning story !!!!!
What a unique design !
It's a convertible bed, sofa, chair, wrap-up..and even more.
Truely, comfort blend with design:
It's made of 120 soft balls covered with elastic fabric.
Firefox Gear !
It's a kinda range with non-superstitious-internet-geeks to flag a getfirefox banner in web pages, portfolios, support forums, RSS feeds etc.,. Seems they've taken a public oath to spread firefox like a wild fire ! It's true and agreeable in the era of Ajax & rapid Rich internet applications, where IE still sucks to the core in handling them. But surely there're loyal followers of IE. Most of the applications and web based UI's are preferably meant for IE only. Conventionals are those who're blessed ! ( Old is gold-proverb is strictly prohibited in the context of browsers ! ;)Since, web is under heavy metamorphosis both in presentation & speed, the need of the hour is updated version of IE in tandem with W3C recommendations. I'm still wondering, with such a tight & monopolistic business model, what cause MicroSoft to be stagnant in updating Internet Explorer. After loosing significant portion of user ratio to Mozilla FF, IE has finally woken up to update its version to beta 7 for xp service pack2 OS, it's out for developers review.CSS2 is a rage, and w3C is on anvil to roll out CSS3 recommendations in very short span of time. It's hightime for MS to come up with stable, secure & CSS supportive browser rendering engine since major ratio of conventional users still depend on it or atleast to counter the wildfire firefox !
Since the inception I'm kinda addicted to Firefox ( A compact, lithe browser available on planet ;) In less than 2 years it has seen 7 builds !. I think firefox experience is obsolete without extensions & themes attatched to strippped version. In the era of customization, Firefox surpassed its peers allowing user community in creation of extendable plugins which flexes FF to esteem level of browsing experience.
My favorite list of extensions for Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1 :
My current FF theme:
- Deli.cio.us (Open Source social bookmarking service)
- Web Developer (a toolbar with various web developer tools)
- IE Tab (Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox)
- SessionSaver (Restores browser -exactly- as you left , every startup)
- Downthemall ( Downloader, but i use IDM v5.2)
- Flashblock (Blocks swf in frames, iframes and standalone Flash swf files)
- Adblock ( content filtering plug-in )
- Aardvark (CSS Developer tool)
- stylish (To manage CSS rules to change the appearance of web sites)
- MyStickies (To place sticky notes all over the web and organize them)
- PDF Download (To view a PDF file inside the browser, as PDF or HTML)
- Sage ( For RSS feeds)
- Deepest Sender ( Blogging extension)
Whiteheart ( simple & clean: the way i like it !)
Ewww ! Don't touch that !
It's sensible, somewhat hysterical thought though!Often, most of us use common toilets, rest rooms in offices, public places, shopping malls, hotels. And most probably whenever the need arises finding a suitable place to go for it ! Even after having your hands pampered by handwash gel, don't u touch toilet handles and door knobs..?
Say, your colleague who suffers with chronic & infectious illness, calls for a help in his PC, benevolently you walk in and solve his problem touching his keyboard or mouse...and get back to your work station, as if everything is cool. Have you washed your hands after using their mouse ?
Guess what ?
More than 77 per cent of people were aware of the importance of washing hands, only 47.9 per cent actually bothered to wash them. The survey, carried out by the Korea Consumer Protection Board, found most of these commonly used mouse/public toilet handles spread of infectious diseases...Health concerned ? Try this link here.
The Dirty Half Dozen:
1. Shopping cart handles - 1100 CFU* per 10 sq cm
2. Internet café computer mouse - 690
3. Bush hand straps - 380
4. Public toilet handles and door knobs - 340.
5. Lift buttons at 130
6. Train hand straps - 86
*CFU-Colony Forming Units.
Cute Ruby !
Color, contrast, focus, smile, clothing, backdrops, skin tone, eye lashes, curvy lips, smooth hair, cute fingers..everything is adorable about Ruby..
PS: Ruby is a elder sister of Miro. Hope you've visited him in my previous blogs.
Kodachadri : the peak.
ನೇಸರ ನೇಪಥ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸರಿಯುವಾಗ...
ಹಸಿರು ಹೊದಿಕೆಯ ನಡುವೆ
ಝರಿ ನೀರಿನ ತನನ
ಕಾನನದ ಕಪ್ಪು ಮೌನದ ನಡುವೆ
ಸುಳಿರ್ಗಾಳಿಯ ಮರ್ಮರ
ಅದೆಲ್ಲೋ, ಕಣಿವೆಯೊಳಗೆ
ನಿಂತು ಹೋದ ಕ್ಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ
ತೋಳದ ಊಳಿಗೆ ಮಾರ್ದನಿ
ದಟ್ಟ ಕಾನನ
ಮುಂಗುರುಳ ಸವಿಯಾಗಿ
ಚುಂಬಿಸಿ ಸರಿಯುವ ತಿಳಿರ್ಗಾಳಿಗೆ
ಪೂರ್ವದೊಳಕ್ಕೆ ಸರಿಯುತ್ತಿರುವ
ಬೆಂಗದಿರನ ಕಿತ್ತಳೆ ರಂಗಿನ ಸಿಂಚನ
ಕೊಡಚಾದ್ರಿಯ ಶಿಖರ ಶೃಂಗದಲ್ಲಿ
ನೇಸರ ನೇಪಥ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸರಿಯುವಾಗ
ಧರಿತ್ರಿಯ-ದಿಗಂತದ ಅದ್ಬುತ ಮಿಲನ.
ನಿಶ್ಯೇಷ ನಿಶ್ಯಬ್ಧ ನಿರಂತರ ಮೌನ.
It's my small criss-cross write in Kannada after hearing a lot about the beauty of Kodachadri from my frenz, who had been to this peak recently.
And we're seriously planning for a excursion !
Kodachaadri:
This is the highest peak in Shimoga District, Karnataka/India. At the peak it's believed that 'Shankaracharya' did meditation. And to substantiate the same you will find a 'Sarvajna Peetha' at the top. En route to the peak you will also find a moderate sized water fall deep inside the evergreen forest of Kodachadri, which is called 'Agastya Teertha'. The peak presents a not to be missed life-time opportunity in the evening as the sun sets in the west. The sunset showcases the sexy orange tinged sky view on the peak ! You can also have a golden glimpse of the Arabian sea for a moment.
Why uglier the better?
It’s a tiny chip from my busy UI work station.
Telecom rocks everywhere, especially when it's wireless. True, it's a hot segment. Life is barren minus communication. Pardon granted to network jamming in
I'm delegated to understand, overhaul, redesign, refurbish, uplift the GUI of one of the successful application.I built a fair idea about the app from usability perspective. I pinged my architect to fathom the ratio of demographic application usage & web usage stats. His reply was simply astonishing. It's one of the most widely used application & is buzzing global wireless circuits in a macro sense. I was much keen on product user count, though it has less impact on my cubicle informtion architecturing & laboring !
Reason was simple. It looks like a legacy design with a marginal effort on styling & presentation. It resembles 3.1 window interface in a neo era of dynamic applications. It seems technology arrived prior to design in choked interface, aborted usability, hard coded xhtml & forbidden CSS ! Obviously, It was designed way back in '97, where UI designing has less prominence over functionality. Till date only functional updates are upfront. As a result usability & accessibility lacks to the core. But in P/L margins it's a best- of-the-breed in the par-applications segment. It's packed with tight application framework and vested with powerful technology available around.
Interestingly, it's built by one of the finest software firms of
In placid words, it's nothing new. It's a common phenomenon that applications very frequently undergo re-skining. Instantly, the query birthed like a tiny bug inside me and started nagging in 24/7 ishtyle*.
Why ? even the saddest looking applications do better business contrary to impressive ones. Why uglier the better? Why users hardly raise a flag against interface-less apps. What matters a most? The so-called 'Goodwill' factor Or the intelligent brand strategy? Comprimising nature for a good service or a strategic marketing of the company? Lack of know-how on clean UI or not bothering about it at-all? Why Slashdot rocks? Is it because of content or speed ? What matters most ?
Today, all these doubts're resolved with this nicety blog of Aaron. It's a must read simple post if you're using Gmail & Microsoft etc & STILL have queries about the sloppy interfaces.
* style, manner, in a way.
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