Tamilnadu Relief Operations

Tamilnadu Relief Operations Wiki Page

Though a lot of help is coming through social media, there is not one single central repository for all those information. I have created this wiki page mainly for that objective. Please share and spread the word. Feel free to restructure this page as required. If any links, details are outdated, please update them too. Maintaining this page is an enormous task. All Tamilnadu folks, please help update this and keep it current. User: tnro Password: strongTN

Yoga

Many people think that Yoga means the postures or exercises performed.
But in reality these exercises or postures are just one step in Yoga, called Asana (literal meaning 'posture'), which consists of eight steps or limbs.

Let me try to write about them in layman terms.

The following are the 8 sequential steps mentioned in the system of Yoga to attain liberation or enlightenment.

1. Yama: Universal moral and ethical code. What every one should do and should not do and how we should behave with others.
2. Niyama: Personal moral and ethical code. What we should and should not do and how we should behave ourselves.
3. Asana: This is what most of us call as yoga, the postures. Contrary to what many believe, this is an optional step, done mainly to enable a person to sit for long hours during meditation without any problems. It is this along with observing animals in nature, which later transformed into Kung Fu and its derivative martial arts.
4. Pranayama: This is the breathing exercise to start the process of conditioning the mind.
5. Pratyahara: This is the control of the 5 senses namely sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste.
6. Dharana: This is concentration. Looking at a candle flame or repeating or mantra or observing the breath.
7. Dhyana: This is meditation, where one can keep the mind blank, free of all thoughts.
8. Samadhi: This is the final state in Yoga. Liberation or Enlightenment, whatever you want to call this. No one can tell what this is. This is something that needs to be experienced by each individual on their own and cannot be described. If anyone describes this, you may very well get out of there as it is not going to be true :)

 It is all this together called as Yoga.

In my next post, I will try to write about the different types of meditation :)

Watermelon to lower BP

Researchers have claimed that watermelon could significantly reduce blood pressure in overweight individuals both at rest and while under stress.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/diet/Chomping-watermelon-lowers-your-BP/articleshow/33231868.cms

Data Portal of India data.gov.in

Indian government has launched a data portal (like in USA).

http://data.gov.in/

This is really a good initiative.

Electronics World

Once upon a time the biggest challenge in the electronics world was to make things smaller and affordable. Today the biggest challenge is to make things larger and affordable. What a world :)

USA NTSC HDTV Sony Bravia works in India

Many including myself had some concern on US TVs working in India. USA uses NTSC signal and India has PAL. After doing some research in Internet found that Dish TruHD MAY work for US based TVs. I decided to try it. Called Dish and the technician came and installed Dish. Once the output was set to 1080 standard in the STB the video came perfect in my Sony TV. So its confirmed that it will work. I have my TV connected through HDMI cable. I also bought a step down transformer to convert 220v(India standard) to 110v(USA standard) as my TV manual said it will only work at 110v.

TV model: (LCD) Sony Bravia KDL46Z4100

Top 10 Airlines and Airport 2008

The rise of Asia...



Top 10 Airlines 2008
Top 10 Airports 2008

Fixing housing mortage crisis and the economy

Read the last para below. Click the images for a bigger picture so it is easy to read the super tiny fonts.

1959 Opel gets over 350 mpg

...the car is efficient because it's extremely light. In fact, there's nothing inside it. One tiny plastic seat, no dashboard, no passenger seat, no back seat, no trunk. There aren't even headlights. The rear wheels have been replaced by a single, ultra-hard wheel and the drive-train is just a bicycle chain....

http://green.yahoo.com

What's our world worth? Financially...

Marketwatch reminds us that the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is about $15 trillion. The GDP of all nations combined is approximately $50 trillion. The total value of all the real estate in the world is estimated at $75 trillion and the total value of all the world's stocks and bonds is about $100 trillion. But there's a $500 trillion market in derivatives!

When does life begin?

Sometime back in August when Obama and McCain were talking various issues at pastor Rev. Rick Warren forum, they both were asked, when life begins.

Obama answered that it is above his pay scale to say exactly when life begins.Means, he really doesn't know.
McCain answered life begins at conception.

In my opinion Obama gave an honest and correct answer.
McCain, on the other hand, gave a politically correct answer.

I believe that no one can really tell when life begins exactly.

Lets say, like McCain, we say life begins at conception. Then do we really know our own date of birth and place of birth?

It's not the date and place where we were delivered, but its the date and time and place where we were conceived.
Now, seriously, how many can answer that question?

All our birth certificate, and legal papers should have the date, time and place where we were conceived because that's when our life actually began and not when we were delivered.

Sounds complicated right ?
It does.

Google Chrome

Google came up with the announcement that they are coming up with a new product called Chrome, a web-browser.

Everyone is surprised.

I was telling about this to some friends of mine few years ago.
I told them not only Google's browser will just be a web-browser but lot more than that.

This is my prediction. Or this is how I would develop Chrome if I was running the project.

Chrome, will be more than just a browser. It will be a mini-OS.
It will have pretty much all the capabilities of an operating system and few basic applications all in-built.

So for an ordinary computer user, who just uses the computer for, just say,

browsing,
chatting,
emailing,
sharing pictures, videos,
webcam,
text editing,
e.t.c

they will not need an OS like Windows, or OS X, orLinux.

Chrome will evolve to be a mini-OS.

I will be designing Chrome in such a way that in future, ordinary users who use computers for basic functions like listed above, will only need to buy a LCD monitor(or even use TVs) and a keyboard and of course an Internet connection. They will be able to use a USB flash drive loaded with Chrome and plug-in the USB in the keyboard and start browsing/chatting/emailing e.t.c

Google Search bug

I found a bug in google search. There are no 'O' s in 'Google'.

Sarah Palin - McCain's VP choice

McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his VP.

I wonder if the move is to get the women votes, mainly Hillary Clinton supporters and feminists.
Many Clinton supporters who wanted to see a women in the ticket was disappointed when Obama chose Biden as his VP.
Sarah Palin may give them a chance to see a women in the ticket.

But what if it backfires for the hardcore Clinton supporters?

By electing McCain they will make history that Sarah Palin is the first women VP. And who knows maybe making way for the first women President in the future (2012, 2016) and deny Hillary that fame.

Barack Obama and 8

The Chinese consider 8 as a lucky number. That we all know.

How about this.

Barack Obama was born on the 8th month of 1961 (year adds to 8 too).
He entered Harvard Law School in 88.
He is running for office in the year 08.
Hillary Clinton officially declared support at DNC on 08/26/08 (day adds to 8)
He got officially nominated for president on the 8th month, August.
If he becomes president he will be the 44 th president (adds to 8).

By Numerology the name 'Barack Obama' adds to 8

What else I wonder!

How often does this happen?
3 crashes in one day and making the CNN home page.
And this just after few days of a huge crash in Spain.
Lots of crashes these days!!!

Earthquakes and causes

"This great earth, Ananda, is established upon liquid, the liquid upon the atmosphere, and the atmosphere upon space. And when, Ananda, mighty atmospheric disturbances take place, the liquid is agitated. And with the agitation of the liquid, tremors of the earth arise. This is the first reason, the first cause for the arising of mighty earthquakes."

-Buddha,
Maha-parinibbana Sutta 3:14

"Nasa scientists have said they could be on the verge of a breakthrough in their efforts to forecast earthquakes.

Researchers say they have found a close link between electrical disturbances on the edge of our atmosphere and impending quakes on the ground below. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7435324.stm

What the hell is top secret?

IB report sees Cong, allies slide in early polls, key with BSP

In the event of a midterm Lok Sabha poll, the Congress will not gain seats, says a top secret Intelligence Bureau report prepared for the prime minister's eyes only.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/01polls.htm

What the hell is Top Secret, for the eyes of prime minister only. Its out in Rediff, you dumbos. Half the world now knows it.

I made Sushi

So after cooking many Indian Cuisines, I wanted to try something very different.
So, inspired by my buddy Dave, who already tried and succeeded, I decided to try Sushi for myself.

I went to World Market and Tan A Plaza and got the necessary kit to make the Sushi.
I purchased a recipe book Sushi, by Ryuichi Yoshii, even though the recipe is quite simple and could be downloaded from the Internet.

And I tried Sushi using Tilapia, and a custom recipe of my own, deriving from the traditional Japanese recipe, and to my surprise, it came out pretty descent :)

The Sushi didn't come out in perfect round shape, but hey, Iam trying this for the first time :)

Attached are the pictures of the Sushi I made. Click to see the enlarged version.

Recycling

Often when I do some cleaning (yeah right...) in my apartment I see so many wires, cables, power cords, used cells and electronics accessories, I used to wonder if there was a place to recycle it instead of trash it.

I came across this website, which provides locations where they can be recycled in the United States.

http://www.mygreenelectronics.org/

Movie again

Last evening Jo and I went to the movie 'War'.

Devon Aoki was hot.

Also the next Batman movie trailer is out. Christian Bale has become one of my all time favorite movie actor.

The Dark Knight

A website I designed...

I designed a website for Uma aunty, who is an excellent dancer, so are their daughters Ranjini and Sarini.

http://www.umaettigi.com

Movies, Movies & more Movies...

Ok...lets see what all movies I have seen recently.

Rush Hour 3, The Invasion, Superbad.

Iam not going to write anything about these movies, Iam too tired. Go see yourselves.

Media War - Sun TV versus Kalaignar TV

Now that DMK has started its own television channel, Kalaignar TV, what will Sun TV do?

I never used to watch political news in Sun TV as I know for a fact that it will be biased towards DMK and against any other party which is in the opposite camp.
There is no denying that.

Now that DMK is on its own, it will be interesting to watch how Sun responds.

I was watching Sun TV 8.00pm News last night, one of the reports was on Jayalalitha giving some land to each of 174 party volunteers from Virudhunagar district for participating in agitations announced by the party and courting arrest recently.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070827/54/6jz96.html

The report also mentioned that Jaya condemned the party leaders for causing some inconvenience to public and they were asked to explain their actions.

Going by the nature of the report, it looked like Sun was portraying Jaya in a good light. hehe.

Welcome to politics :)

Move away 'Google', Brand 'God' is the new 'Google'

Gold-coated temple near Vellore

Vatican airline takes to the skies

What's India Watching ?

or better

How's India killing time !

http://www.indiantelevision.com/tvr/

Go Sun TV Go.
Make more people watch Mega Serials like Kolangal and Arasi.

May the Men Cook for Themselves and the Family.

Tattva - Understanding the Rituals and Traditions

I started a new website "Tattva" (http://tattva.planetvimal.com/)

Please make use of it.

I went to the movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum' Saturday. I thought the movie was awesome. Very good thriller right from the beginning. I wish I had read the books before as some of my friends said that that books were even more elaborate.

For all fans who like spy thrillers, The Bourne series is a must watch.

Image Courtesy : Yahoo Movies

Rescue Dawn

Last evening I went to see the movie 'Rescue Dawn' starring Christian Bale.
I loved the movie.
I am a big fan of Christian Bale.

He is an excellent actor. He puts so much hard work into acting.

Take some of his movies for example.
He acted in a picture called 'The Machinist'.
He was so lean; actually skin and bones.
See the picture and you will understand what Iam talking about.
This was in year 2004.


The next year, in 2005, he acted in 'Batman Begins'. See the picture from that movie. He built his body.



In this movie 'Rescue Dawn' he makes a similar transformation.
Form this...


To this...



Image Courtesy : Yahoo Movies

Hula

Hula.

This is the project that I've been working on for a while now and keeping me extremely busy.

http://hula.planetvimal.com/

Iam currently busy with the post production work.
I hope to complete them soon.
That's the logo. Yep, I designed the logo ;)

Proposed Chennai airport

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/23/stories/2007052307200100.htm

Global Warming - "Wakeup you skeptics"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6676775.stm

Hundreds of Hindus in Nepal are flocking to see a statue of a deity which is said to be "sweating".

At least now, the skeptics should start doing something about global warming.

Analyzing 2007 +2 results in TN

I just analyzed the +2 results that came in TN.

The list contains the cities from where the Top 3 scorers from each subject came from and the count of Top 3 scores they made.

Interestingly...many of the toppers came from small towns and villages and not big cities where they have 'excellent' schools with 'super-awesome' coaching/tuition facilities hehehe.

I have a feeling that Chennai, Coimbatore students are involving in lots of extra-curricular activities than curricular activities :)

Tamil Wikipedia

http://ta.wikipedia.org

Cricket, ICC and BCCI

Gone are the days where commercials were shown between cricket.
Now, cricket is shown between commercials.

I was visiting India when the World Cup was going on.
I was watching Sony.
How many commercials!
Oh Gosh.

As soon as the ball released from the bowler's hand they cut to commercials. And when they come back the first ball of next over is almost over. I got a doubt whether Sony was doing the viewers a 'Great' favor by showing cricket in between their commercials.

But after my India vacation I came back to US and was watching the same World Cup here in Dish.
What a way to watch.
Hardly any commercials.
No interruption of the match or commentary.

I understand I paid $200 for this World Cup and its free in India.
So showing commercials is a necessity in India. But there is a limit to that.

These things clearly show that the game of cricket is now mostly under the control of big sponsors.

BCCI - Board of Cricket Controversy in India
BCCI - Board of Cricket Commercials in India
ICC - International Commercial Council

Sachin Tendulkar's coach at school, Ramakant Achrekar, used to place a one-rupee coin on the stumps as bails and used to challenge the net bowlers that if they got Tendulkar out, they could keep the coin. Needless to say, not many succeeded.

If he does same thing today... he will go bankrupt.

Nothing Changes

Buddha said "Everything Changes".

Apparently during the times of Buddha there was no BCCI.

"At his press conference soon after picking the 30 probables for the World Cup, Vengsarkar was asked why no legspinner had been included. "Can you name one legspinner?" Vengsarkar snapped back to the journalist."


Not much chance of change

What the heck?

If the journalist has to give names, what in the world is Vengaya Sarkar's, sorry Vengsarkar's job is!!!

Like i said already here in worldcup blog, nothing much will change.

Cricket World Cup 2007 & Fantasy Team

Created a new blog for worldcup and also bought a Fantasy Team.

http://worldcupinwindies.blogspot.com

Tony Jaa - Jackie Chan, the next generation

Last night I saw the movie Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior. I saw the movie for Tony Jaa. I heard about his stunts from someone I know and decided to check it out myself.

Waw.
This guy was amazing.

He is like the next Jackie Chan. His stunts were authentic and no strings attached (literally).

For any Jackie Chan fans and Martial arts fans, Tony Jaa movies are a must to see.

I have his second movie The Protector in my Netflix Q. Hopefully I can see it next week.

Women cannot be punished for adultery

http://www.rediff.com/

"The section provides expressly that the wife shall not be punishable even as an abettor based on the reasoning that the wife, who is involved in an illicit relationship with another man, is a victim and not the author of the crime."

What kinda logic is that!

hmmm...so much for equal rights for men and women.

In Saturn's Shadow - Saturn and Earth - By JPL, NASA's Cassini

"With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness and sheltering Cassini from the sun's blinding glare, the spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing its home world.

This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006."

Can you spot our earth?

You might want to click the image to see in its original size and see how small our earth is!

And how small and insignificant are we within our own Solar System !!!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=2314

Courtesy : JPL, CIT, NASA

My blog got Snap ped ;)

Yes...You can see a preview of the website links in my blog, by just placing your mouse over the links.

My blog's 2-D code - Semacode & Shotcode

Apocalypto and Blood Diamond

Last Friday my friends and I went to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. I thought the movie was very well directed. It was a thriller from the beginning till the end. The story is about a man and his family's survival from human sacrifice in the ancient Mayan civilization. It has nothing to do with the end of Mayan calendar in the year 2012. I thought it must have something to do with that, but no.

The heroine was a very pretty girl. She looked like an Indian girl. But Mel Gibson in Jay Leno's Tonight show, mentioned that she was a local girl. Nevertheless she was very pretty and her kid son was also so cute.

This movie is definitely not for the faint hearted.
There are scenes where people are killed alive and their beating hearts ripped out and offered as sacrifice :)
Yes, that's right. Beating heart.
And also, their heads chopped and rolled from the top of the Mayan Pyramid all in the name of sacrificing to satisfy some Gods.


Fast forwarding to last night...
Went to the movie Blood Diamond with my 'Movie Gang' again . hehe. I thought this movie was an awesome movie.
Leonardo DiCaprio's acting was very good.
Djimon Hounsou looked handsome too.

The story is about how poor Africans are made to kill each other while the west loots their natural resource, Diamond.

Maybe girls will stop being crazy about diamonds after seeing the movie.

Wait...Am I crazy or what!!!
No... I don't think girls will stop being crazy about Diamonds :)


Images : Courtesy Yahoo.com

VVS Laxman - India's new Defense Minister

India tour of South Africa
Tour Match: Rest of South Africa v Indians at Potchefstroom, Dec 7-10, 2006

Day -2

VVS Laxman 31 runs / 103 balls.
He scored 4- 4's.

So technically he scored 15 runs / 99 balls.

Chennai, Tamilnadu Cops get police cars - First in India

Chennai police gets police cars like USA.
First in India.



Courtesy : Sun Network

Pakistan
Afghanistan
China
Nepal
Bhutan
Burma(Myanmar)
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka

What's common with the above countries!

These countries are either unstable or unfriendly with India.
And they all are our neighboring countries :)

World of Warcraft

It's been ages since I played any video game. Last time I tried any video game was when I bought Sony Playstation 2 couple of years ago, but really never played for more than a week.

Now after a long break and after much hype and publicity from Todd and Alex, I decided to try out the latest hot game 'World of Warcraft'.

So last weekend, I downloaded a 10 day trial version of the game.
Gone are the days when games were just few kilobytes and maybe megabytes and came in a floppy disk. This game, which I downloaded was like 2.5 GB. But with a broadband connection, all I had to do was schedule a download overnight and the next day morning it was all downloaded.

This was just a 10 day trial version.
Yes, after 10 days if I want to continue playing I have to buy the game which is like $50 and here is the interesting part...if I have to continue playing I have to subscribe to the game, and it costs about $15 every month.

Yes, World of Warcraft, also called as WoW, is a MMORPG.

So I created some characters and tried out the game.

Iam in.

Stop blaming Indian cricketers

It has started all again.

You know every time Indian cricket team performs very badly, protestors take it to the players home and streets and burn effigies and things of that nature.

This has to stop.

Our cricketers are human beings.

They have a life, they have a job to do. Day and night they work in Ad shootings, and attending functions and events and may be partying and doing some side business, and we should be glad that they agreed to play for our cricket team even though the monetary benefits from the salary is not much. We should be grateful for that.

The reason for us losing the matches is coach Greg Chappell.

Are you asking me Why!

I don't know, I thought that's what we usually do!
Blame on the coach and sack him. I thought its a SOP - Standard Operating Procedure.

Ghajini and Asin

Ha... a different weekend after a long time.
I rented 3 Tamil DVDs. Watching tamil movies after long time. After seeing the movies...I realized I haven't missed much, movies have not changed.

Emtan Magan, Maanavan(yeah, don't ask anything more about this movie, this is for Reema Sen) and at last...Ghajini.

Ghajini was little different, but still I don't know if this was a hit back home, but I thought the movie had lots of flaws.
But I liked Asin's character and her acting. Asin looked very beatiful. Her character was 'living' in the movie. All her scenes, were so full of life and fun. She reminded me of someone.

hmmm...I've done 'A movie a day week', I guess I should now do a 'Book week' and read some books this week.