February 2005 Archives

We all dream about a lot of things. Sometimes its about becoming a huge millionnaire spending useful time in the world's luxurious hotel Al-Arab... sometimes about being an influencial person with all the airs... and sometimes about living happily with a beautifuly girl friend.. (or boy friend if you happened to be female.. if you are a beautiful female, probably we should email).

If you are a software geek like i call myself, we probably dream about going to office sleepily answering emails, carefully reading spam, actively looking at the clocks, making a busy presence at the workdesk, ... hey, all that is a dream, atleast that's how I remember.

Which dream is important, which is not and what dreams are to be believed are questions that can't be answered honestly. Its never like dreaming about a partner is a bad dream, or dreaming about your career alone is good.

If you are dreaming, you actually forget your environment and your mind thinks of something that interests you. Your mind has reason to select an item at a point of time, because its programmed that way. Only when you prioritize an interest, you feel good thinking about fulfilling that, and that's when you start imagining, and that's the instant your brain switches to dream mode.

Dreaming is an extension of imagination. People with good imagination are generally good dreamers, and creative imagination leads to creative dreams.

You dream about building a house only when you have the capability to close your eyes and think of a house. Dreams are popularly mistaken as just fictious content, but they are non-existent happenings arising out of knowledge about the happening. Quite obviously, without knowing how a house would be like or what its made-up of, one cannot dream about a house. Also, imagination level increases as knowledge increases. Acquiring knowledge thus increases your creative dreams hugely. Irony is, the reverse is also true. So, its a cycle.

That explains how much valuable knowledge goes to make up our dreams. If we thought, dreams are fiction, laughed about them, and kept them aside, we would never be able to grow our capacity. Thought leaders are good at imagination and good at dreaming, and very good at applying their dreams to build something.

Dreaming is often linked to sleeping. Dreaming while sleeping is only a dumb way of dreaming that occurs to every human as if by default. Extending it to useful thoughts through imagination, helps us foresee things.

Dreams are important outside of the sleep. Dreams that occur while sleeping have to be interpreted before adding it to knowledge.

Dream till its time, and make use of it till its fine.

A friend of mine had a dream when he was asleep. The next day morning he was quite upset that he forgot his dream. Another friend who was with him got worried and started telling him what he saw in the room when this friend was sleeping.. "You were giggling, shyly smiling, making smileys and sad faces now and then, and moving your hands often in the air.. now do you remember something!". "No" said my friend and went away. After a while I saw my friend at his desk, quite happy. I got curious and asked him whether he remembered the dream.
"It was nothing worrying, I must have been chatting like I do at office", and turned away typing something on his keybord and giggled at the monitor. May be this wasnt an interesting dream, but I didnt wan't to bother him for all that importance of a dream, asking 'what were you chatting and with whom?'.

Picture copyrights:http://www.gmg.com.au/articles/illustration/portraits-a-0003.html
http://www.ruthvilmi.net/art/oil/artwork/dreaming.jpg

More Reading:
The biology of dreaming -Maury M. Breecher
Lucid dreaming -Learn to dream

For the first time in my life, I read movie reviews rating a movie the highest rank. And categorizing the movie as a "MUST SEE". Yes, its all reviews of the movie 'Black'.

For those non-indians who were questioning the quality and capacity of bollywood, and for those indians who thought good highly express-ive movies are made in south or east of india, here's BLACK.

B L A C K
Well that's how the title of the movie is pronounced and I have just tried to be putting it straight like it is. To brief, the movie is about a deaf and dumb girl's plight in understanding life, and understanding relationships, love, despair, hope and quite a few things. To my knowledge, the director Sanjay leela bhansali has expressed the black world that one can experience by trying keep eyes closed while we carry on with our everyday work.

The film's title itself expresses a lot, and every act and every scene has detail and an expression, which one might notice only if glued to the film's presentation.

People call it a copy of many similar themes in many english movies, but my opinion would be... Y bother? If the film is good, the idea good, the quality and expression outstanding, the storyline and performance of actors heart sinking, ... do you want to let go yourself from seeing black's expression.

For me, it was a wonderful experience and I felt like I come out of the theatre and email every contact I knew in the world to see this movie.. but then I waited till the experience subsided. and I will remember black and the education it has given me on deaf and dumb people, for years to come.

For Reviews:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/films/bollywood/2004/12/black_preview.shtml
http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/05/feb/06black.asp
http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/hindi/article/13066.html

For Images:
http://www.indiatarget.com/cgi-bin/piclist.cgi?id=840&gallery=1

The Great Indian Tamasha

If you vibe well with happenings in India(especially politics), and if you haven't yet seen it, you should try watching NDTV channel's show every sunday "The Great Indian Tamasha". It is one good hilarious show of depicting(actually digging) some tight-corner's that India's celebrities get into.

More details on the show here..
The show's online message board here..


About NDTV

NDTV, The NewDelhi Television Network stands out as one comparable television network with quality in the world Media arena. Finally, India's search for a professional media television news group is arrived.

Actually, I would say AAJ TAK, the india Today magazine's television was all poised to be a proffessional news channel but for a few misgivings in its presentations to commercialize the presentation with more advertizing revenue focus.

You may feel its little exaggeration to call NDTV the one channel. But you wouldn't agree any less with me, if you had watched NDTV's news presentations a few times.

And you would agree more for the fact that AAJ TAK won the best news channel in india award in successive years (quite a few years- i exactly dont remember how many years they had their hands on the award), until recently as NDTV took possession of this award... and NDTV also got the "outstanding Journalism award 2004" from International Press Institute (India).

Got that Fast internet connection; then you sure had this problem

If you had the experience of browsing the web through first-use of a new high-speed internet connection, then you might agree with having got irritated of being hijacked online.
"The browser hijacking problem".

For the case of non-technical users of the internet, they would wonder what happened when a new browser window pops open, while they didn't intend to do so. It irritates, it disturbs the browsing activity. Its more disturbing when something unethical pops-up asking for permisssion to download adult material or worser, already open a window with disturbing content.

"Browser hijackers" as they are popularly (and irritatingly) called, could be ad pop-ups or unintended redirection of the browser web address by malicious code.

Very often these are simply changes made to the user's system settings. Especially, systems running the windows operating system (Malicious script writers target windows for obvious reasons -Causing more damage since more users use only windows).

The malicious changes could be triggered by code on websites or code on downloads and software installations, 99% of time through unpaid ad-based software installations.

If you do a reading on these softwares, you would come across terms like spyware, adware, malware, etc., While malware are written for simply causing damage and irritation, adware could try open unintended pop-ups with advertising content, and spyware is worser, it would spy in the background as you work on your system, and send information to some website on your browsing pattern and stuff like that (Marketing material for some stupid unofficial companies).

Why does someone write malicious scripts? and whats so funny about getting people irritated, u ask. If you had been a programmer at school or college, you would have had some interest in malicious code yourself, trying to shutdown your pal's system while he works, or lock a system setting from being changed and seeing the red on your friend's face.

But people who write malicious script and pass it on the web are obvious enough having more fun than tolerable levels. The law has its way on these fellas for misusing useful and sensitive technology. Almost all countries have cyber laws to caution and if found beyond limits, arrest these script writers for the economical and emotional damages caused.

But you cant get every malicious script writer arrested since that would mean arresting a huge lot of people (Really! a huge lot).

Only huge economical damages are dealt by the law. For others, we better handle it with anti-malicious scripts, and to be much better use virus scanners and protection software as neccessary.

I have had quite a few experiences(actually irritations) on such malicious scripts running on my computers at home or office, and it does take quite a few hours or sometimes days to fix problems and avoid the same problem in the future.

Some help here and there could save a lot of time for people, and better-of save lot of people from getting irritated.

I recently got a new high-speed connection from a provider Tata Indicom, at home here in India. And the instant I started browsing, the browser hijackers started working. Then I did the below mentioned 2 steps, and now I am comfortably using my internet connection. Though the below steps might not stop irritations 100%, they would get you into some tolerable zone. :o)

Happy browsing!

Steps to stop browser hijackers!
> First and foremost, add/change your "hosts" file and secure it "read-only"
Download this file, hosts.zip, extract it, and put it in the proper directory as below. **Importantly, right-click to properties on this file and set the 'Read-only flag' to ensure that no malicious script changes this file without your notice.

Put file in applicable locations based on your windows version.
Windows XP = C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Windows 2K = C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
Win 98\ME = C:\WINDOWS

If a hosts file already exists, you can rename it safely and put this file.
I got this file and more information at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Now that important protection is done (most hijackers modify the 'hosts' file only and work from there), lets us install a protection software.

> Secondly, install a protector to avoid spyware, adware, malware, etc.,.
I have been using "Spybot" for almost three years now, and its good and safe to install. (For the record, I even once or twice made a few dollars as donation to the developer of this software. Just thought it might add a little to support his work and keep the software free longer.)
SpyBot Search & Destroy download site.

(With all illustration credits to its respective owners)
Illustration by:
Steve Oerding (Black & White caricature)
Rico Schacherl (color caricature)

Popular Singer of India, someone hailed "Swami of Melody", Adnan Sami, is not a new person in the music world... atleast for Indian Viewers. He seems to have a passion for different sounds, tones, and music from thought, more than the passion he is known to have.. for playing The Piano.

As a boy, he caught everyone's attention when he performed the piano, for the speed at which he moved his fingers on the piano, and the clarity with which he could manage the speed. He was hailed the fasted piano player in the world.. and if I am right, this is recorded by the Limca book of world records.. after which adnan's popularity index grew steeply.

While "fastest" didn't leave him though.. he has received that appreciation in almost anything he did.. related to music. Be it his fast rise to an achiever and one of the top music composers in India, or be it his fast selling albums.

This day, he is well recognized in the music world as one of the best musicians. His obese look though explains how many hours days and year, he would have spent sitting at the piano practizing without burning much calories.

I enjoyed hearing adnan play at a Tsunami fund raiser show today (though I heard it on a TV), pulling out a good song for the show. I enjoyed more so, watching him dance and express himself on the stage with his hands and legs kind of anecdoting every sound just a fraction before it was played.

I admire adnan as some kind of a distant motivation for me to learn to play guitar that I got myself almost an year back but a'int able to make any useful sound of it still. I am motivated adanan. Thanks! :o)