August 2007 Archives

The 1 2 3 agreement as it is called, is trying to layout a system of mutual cooperation between the two countries India and United state of America, on the nuclear energy business front.

My reasoning on why it is called 1 2 3:

While India is trying to safeguard its supply of nuclear material for use in generating energy, the Americans are willing to do business based on a lot of terms that they want to put forefront just to ensure 3 things..
> they profit from the business,
> ensure india is a long term client by making it mandatory that india cannot buy nuclear raw material from anybody else unless they buy enough from Americans that will keep the Americans happy,
> and also do this trade the secure way ensuring that India uses the material only and only for generating power.

While India could buy the material for probably cheaper prices from other countries like China, and Russia, they still want to do this with America, for basically 3 reasons.
> so that they make an important trade partnership with the Americans which could garner more support and goodwill with Americans in areas like software outsourcing laws in America, and other trade laws.
> so that they don't create a friction with the Americans by doing the big business with other countries.
> so that Americans consider India a little more important than its neighbours Pakistan and China.. because for Americans China as a rising power is considerably important, and pakistan as a "war on terror" partner is also equally important.

Though all this, and the name 1 2 3 itself looks simple and gives obvious expectations, the deal has been and will be complex... again for 3 reasons
> considering it is a nuclear one,
> considering that the American laws of trade in weapons-capable products or weapons are too many and it is too complex to find a way to work in obeyance of all those laws,
> and further that both the countries know that they are always trying to take advantage of each other and so things have to be carefully worked up.

Amidst all this, with months of negotiations between the two countries, and with almost all top brass of both the governments visiting each other including the president of America and the Prime Minister of India over a period, the 1 2 3 deal finally was worked out.

But, then... they all woke up.. whoever was not in the know that this deal could be a major major trade partnership between India and America. The deal being so sensitive, how can they not talk about it. So they talked and talked to the extent of one side saying 'The American government have sold off their nuclear capacity to India for nothing much in return', while the other side said 'It puts the sovereignty of India in question'.

Whatever they did-doing-will do, they have made the 1 2 3 look a very very odd name.. and my suggestion is changing the name of the deal should help.... (like they do here very often with Tamil movies, changing the name of film, if the censors are too sceptic of giving a go-ahead :o).

And,
Everyone in India knows the fact that those who are fighting against the nuke deal in the parliament, saying things about protecting india's sovereignty and all that, I mean some Members of the Parliament, just don't seem to know what the deal is about..blame it on politics or on their levels of IQ.

Here's a funny take on CNN-IBN channel on how much the MP's understand the deal.

Cyrus broacha's show "The week that wasn't" (also on CNN-IBN) hijacked a karan thapar interview of CPI(M) party's sitaram yechury to make fun.. (It wasn't online at this time of posting, since the show was just published on TV.... but may be it is now updated. Check below link)
http://features.ibnlive.com/show/the-week-that-wasnt.html

If you are also one of those who hate the idea of the chicken business because they put the birds in very small, packed cages.

And the chickens almost live their entire adult life without movement, without seeing any green, without anything to do except mentally get stressed up being in the cage and actively using only their neck to ponder around and make that noise all the time.

Their only purpose, lay eggs during adulthood, and once their adult time is over, they are sold off as live stock for the butcher processing finally ending up at dinner tables. Is this any life? Horrible but has to be it... nothing anybody can do. Both eggs and chicken are way way ahead of the no-return mark in peoples diet charts. Yes, I have eaten chicken and eggs, but doesn't mean I approve of such treatment.

Anyways, the good part is ..

Trade in the west have started a brand 'Cage-Free Eggs' which is very successful though not anywhere close to replacing normal eggs.

What are cage-free eggs: Eggs hatched by chickens in poultry farms which dont put them in cages.. but put them on the floor permanently, like it is usually until adulthood even in normal poultry farms.

The brand has made sense with people, and caught up support from organizations like People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.

New york times has the story here

And for the question that I used to have having very often during my childhood, "Do chickens just lay eggs on their own, or do they need a rooster?" I found this at: Dreamcrossed Twilight

Yes and no. Being that chickens are not asexual critters, they do need the rooster's assistance in the area of reproduction. But here's the deal. Chickens lay two different kinds of eggs: fertilized and unfertilized. The average chicken lays one egg every 25 hours. If there is rooster sperm inside her, it will fertilize the egg. If fertilized eggs are cared for, they will hatch into baby chicks. If the rooster hasn't been around for a while, then the eggs will remain unfertilzed. These are what we buy at the grocery store. (Actually, one site said, "Many [italics mine] of the eggs we purchase from the local supermarket are unfertilised eggs." I found this a tad disturbing.)

Accidentally found a link and landed up on aamir khan's blog.

Actor Aamir khan's

Feels very out of the box reading some celebrity's box, the celebrity/page 3 view of things... because I have always been only reading blogs which have posts and posts and posts.. some short, some long, some too very long(like mine)..also kind of monotonous to always read posts...thought that's what any blog becomes end of day.

So reading different people's blogs helps, and if the blogs are very different in their content it is easier. For example, probably aamir is a chatterbox and has a blog that just fits into the 3rd category (long posts).. while jackie chan's posts are one line messages.

Actor Jackie Chan's diary

Later found a link which listed a lot of celebrity blogs.. not sure whether the list is updated or not, neither know whether the blogs have RSS feeds for subscribing and all that.. but if you find your favorite celebrity's blog, be it a TV anchor, an actor, or a marketing /business guru then it should be nice isn't .. Try this below link if you like the idea.

List of Celebrity blogs

Firstly, I shouldn't be tagging this under movies, because it didn't feel anything like a movie, but watching real life happening up front.

Milla Jovovich, I think, has become my inspiration for kind of act in these two films that I believe no one else could have helped make.. Joan of Arc, and, Resident Evil.

Joan of Arc
The film(i have to call it though) was so much of real life. Having read about Joan of Arc's bravery and having known nothing else about why she fought and how she lived and all that, milla was every bit joan of arc for me and I was looking at what joanne(as she is called in the movie) was going to do next or what people are going to do to her next.

Milla was just marvelously living the life rather than acting the life of joanne. Yes.. I don't mind saying good about milla's act one more time because this credit is nothing for what she as joanne deserves.

The other interestingly shown character in the movie was none other than God... yes, "God himself" as if we all have seen God to be male... this is also another movie where god is male and has a very cracking, slow, loud, and thick low frequency voice. (Don't imagine what.. its the usual god voice you would know)

The God part of depiction is very free flowing, I can't believe a human director and a cast and crew of humans visualized how will God do this if he were to do it. The disappearance, the appearance, the questions, the small but on-target sentences, alongwith milla's expressions while listening to god, were all.. .. .should be felt, can't be expressed. (The only other movie where I liked God's depiction before is 'Bruce Almighty')

After the movie, I realized that Joan of Arc had died .. (not that I am expecting her to live even today)... my school history books never spoke about where she was born, what she fought for, that she claimed herself god's messenger, that she, at an age between 17 and 19 had become the heroine of France, and that the english (the villians always) executed her after successfully trying her for heresy(act of going against officials and teaching people to go against them too)...

A diplomatic eye-wash trial that is (as always with the english)..

And how did they execute her.. by burning her alive, to death, in front of people, while she cries the name of jesus loud, and with agony.

After this, I started loving wikipedia even more than before.. because I went there and read here about Joan of Arc.. wikipedia is obviously doing a favour to the world, allowing people to savour and share all this history.. sometimes with an eyewitness account of things. Happy we have it today, unhappy I only got to read my history book's lesson on joan of arc at school.

Joan of Arc the movie

Was reading through my old stored collection of important mails and got to this.. How did I forget to put it on my blog before.

Location: Tata Museum, Jamshedpur.

Its an interesting painting.

It reveals itself when you keep a steel cylindrical rod on the board.

Click below image for a better(1024x768) picture:

The steel part symbolically represents JRD Tata's referrence in business circles as a steel man

JRD Tata was the chairman of TataSteel (and TataGroup later until current chairman Ratan Tata took over), and was very successful with bringing up the steel empire of the Tata's in Jamshedpur.

Tata's had set up the steel plant in Jamshedpur well before India even had independence and had almost adopted the town.. It is even today often referred to as 'Tata nagar', which is highly regarded as the other name for Jamshedpur (You can send a snail mail marking TataNagar in place of Jamshedpur and it will reach there).

The ironically real story is:
The painting was a gift to JRD Tata on his Birthday by a street artist. Nobody was able to understand his art. Unfortunately, only the painting was given to JRD and the artist had promised to reveal the secret later (almost an year). And by the time the artist revealed about the steel rod, JRD Tata passed away.

Look at China. No wonder they call it the dragon.

Chinese have been making every possible reform, and changing their country every day since they got the nod to host 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The international Olympics association chairman himself said in an interview after reviewing preparations in china, that he has never come across such large scale, long-term preparation for any event before, and that he is sure china is going to give the world the best Olympics so far.

Beijing has about 3 million cars or more (WOW so much infrastructure to support), and has identified that cars are the major reason for the Beijing's bad air.. due to pollution it is always fogged. This has always created a serious doubt whether the Olympics in Beijing will be anything at all under such climate.

This week, China has pulled down more than 4 million cars in and around Beijing, approx. 1 million cars each day for 4 days, for experimenting pollution improvements.. obviously against people convenience.

How did they do that.. ordered on first day that no even number plated car with numbers between a range shall not be seen on the road on first day, if seen the owner will be fined for not obeying orders... similarly more cars were to be off the next days.

The four day test is over, and this is what Xinhua news agency reports:

Beijing's overall air quality improved during the four-day test period ahead of next August's Olympic Games in which more than a million cars each day were barred from the roads, according to the Beijing Environment Protection Monitoring Center.

The test resulted in the removal of five million cars from roads in downtown Beijing and the air quality was classified as "fairly good" for the duration of the four days.

Chinese government seems to have got the people their side in this, and the attitude is that they do anything to make Olympics a very successful event for china, because such a global event, and global attention was long long craved for... which they obviously understand would be the best opportunity ever to market themselves as a great country to do business with.

I remember reading news a few months back that a lot of people are taking english classes in china to cope up with international business expectations, and even courses to improve their communication levels with businesses in the west. One of the reports had a photograph of what seemed like at least 3000 people in one of such big open air course sessions.

I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese go ahead and announce the entire period of Olympics a holiday in Beijing and may be even surrounding areas, ban 90% of cars and encourage Chinese people to walk in Beijing during Olympics to keep all pollution minimum.

If you wouldn't think they would do that... they are at it already.. news is that around 50,000 bicycles are going to be made available for rent in Beijing during Olympics.

My most favorite part of Beijing's preparation for Olympics is the bird's nest. Dubbed the bird's nest stadium, below pictures show the design of Beijing's National stadium specifically prepared for hosting the 2008 Olympics.

By the way, when is the Olympics in 2008: August 8 – 24
Yes, same time next year we will be busy not talking but seeing Beijing's biggest marketing jig along with by all probablity I think the best Olympics ever.

All indian politicians today, be it the ruling lot, or opposition, or the alliance partners of the ruling lot, seem to have real bad communication skills.

Not to mention our current indian prime minister Dr.Manmohan singh who never ever speaks one full sentence looking at the people he is taking to.. he just reads a story from his write up head down. So is the leader of the ruling coalition Mrs. Sonia Gandhi (difference being she looks at the people speaks it and then ducks).

Recent problems because of the lack of communication skills: Miscommunication or lack of any clarity on the Indo - US nuclear agreement simply called 1-2-3...

Read these interesting blog posts at 6amPacific which goes on to highlight this.
http://6ampacific.com/2007/08/19/sound-and-fury-the-123-agreement/
http://6ampacific.com/2007/06/10/leadership-challenges-the-fog-of-economics/

Velacheri, Luz, and Mandaveli are areas of the chennai city, India.. most happening and economically active areas. People from these areas woke up on the 61st independence day morning on the 15th of August 2007 (yesterday) and aghast.. where have all of it gone.. oh how will i have my jolly, bumpy ride through these roads anymore.. who the heck did all this... all such kind of expressions and questions... but no answers...

Reason for the shock: All potholes in the roads in these areas were missing.. and nobody knows how.
"it was there last night .. i even saw it at 11pm", says a petrol bunk incharge referring to the pothole in the road in front of the bunk, which has been there for many days until this morning that it disappeared.

While people in those areas of the city are investigating, somebody said, "Wait.. they left a clue"..there was some tricky clue the hackers left behind.. something is written with chalk next to every pothole.. (see photo)

While the investigations are on for the hackers, I will stop showcasing my story writing skills here and let you know what this post is about.

Pothole fixing drive:
It seems like a few thoughtful and energitic guys planned their celebrations for the independence day by fixing potholes on the roads in Velacheri, Luz, and Mandaveli areas on the night of 14th August...after prime hours (rather than doing it the government way in prime time, when the traffic is heavy, so many people know that the government is doing a lot of work)

The good guys even got access to tar, cement and the raw for filling the potholes professionally (rather than just dumping some irregular stone blocks in and leaving it to the vehicels that drive over to set the pothole...like how the government does it most.. most often).

All volunteers were asked to bring their IDs, to help them identify themselves if some cop or somebody finds it disturbing to see so many young men and women on the road late night who would say they are fixing potholes if asked...imagine.. i would ask even letters signed by their parents if i was a cop...(he he)

They met at velachery bus stop at the strike of 9pm, shaked hands, introduced themselves had their ice-breaking on the road (not in some 5 star hotel with all the glittering lights, good food, and jazz... they had the sounds of horns by vehicles though)

By 11pm, when the traffic had subseded, they were on their heels filling potholes that were registered on their website(yes they have one for that.. after the drive they even stroke off completed potholes on the list to update the website). Around 4 or 5am in the morning of the independence day, they were are all stretching and waving everyone a happy independence day after a hard workout and fixing around 60+ potholes.

Read about the pothole fixing drive, first blogged here.

The makeshift website for this drive is here.. you can register as a volunteer (if you are in chennai), or register potholes that you found today on some road (in chennai) on your way to work.

And thanks to jayan's blog.. i read it first there.

Its been 60 years since british ran away, covering up whatever they spoiled, taking off everything that they could handle within their luggage space, on their way out of India. It was past midnight at the end of the day on 14th August 1947, the expatriates a.k.a the british officially declared indians independent in their own country. Since it was after midnight, indian independence is marked on 15th of August though much of work happened on the 14th... and the sun dawned on that day the 15th, on an independent nation.

So, much happened on the 14th,
> Partition on Pakistan from India, its official handover to the muslim community and hence pakistan's independence, muslims migrating in large numbers into the new country pakistan, which was until that morning a territory of india, much of it making for a bigger Punjab province.

> While the preparations and discussions/documentation were under way, for winding up the british occupation and aggreement of independence to india, the seeds of hatred between hindus and muslims, the spark of the division of a pakistan nation from an indian nation were all happening leaving around confusion within the minds of the people of both the new nations. It delayed, delayed until midnight on the 14th, for the british to settle down and officially complete the process of agreeing to india's demand of independence.

It was not a time were we had so many new channels or television or even any proper or known recording of that event or whatever struggle lead to that midnight. So much of it is lost in memory of the adults of those days who are now old or mostly dead, that indians today really have to make an effort to understand what independence meant... and how much struggle was foregone in the run-up to independence.

Today, we have TV channels promoting the independence day as a big bang government holiday for watching programmes on TV, or shoppers extending summer offers asking people to go shop-lifting on this day, and enjoy every minute of this holiday caused by the indendence struggle.

Getting independence after midnight, as far as I have heard/read, indians or even the people there through the official sign-off, didn't celebrate like having a late-night party, no fire crackers, no week-long celebrations, because people were aware of the huge task ahead after independence.. and so people must have just laughed, shouted jai-hind and sang jan-gana-mana all night, and hugged each other exchanging happiness and tears to be living to see the fruits of all their struggle.

How brave should have been people of india after the 15th of August 1947, to be ready(if there was time),

To take care at one-nights turn to take on all their country's needs themselves through the new indian government which was not yet there,
> through indian law which was not constituted then(constitution of india was created and the indian republic happened 3 years later on jan 26th 1950 only),
> through the minds of people who suddenly didn't have jobs because the british were a major employer,
> and not to forget schools, colleges and many many institutions including the railways had to be funded, managed and governed by the new government (until then the british were funding them, managing them, and governed them through taxes they collected, through trade they forced on indians costing everything at a higher price.. imagine selling clothes and stuff manufactured in better developed and invention-filled countries like britain being sold for a profit in a non-independent 99% poor country like india).

So much pressure that Sir Pandit Nehru accepted to handle in being india's first prime minister, at such a time the post would have hardly been anything close to having the richness of being any privileged position.

Today, in 1947, the 14th of August was a hectic and confusing day for the mostly illiterate indians, and probably most of them at least down south in south india probably knew that they had independence only weeks later than 15th August.

The fact that india got its independence slightly past midnight, is often critiqued as the reason why india still remained a developing nation past 30 or 50 years of independence. Now, on the eve of 60th independence in india, we can be more proud today because we have seen india transform really well economically (thanks to software industry for triggering it and maintaining it), that in the past decade a lot has changed in india, not just with bridges, buildings, or government policies alone, but importantly in the attitude of the people in the country.

May the Force be with us. Happy independence day.

Below is a video interview of the Mahatma, that got me humbled at the way a barrister who could have given up to the colorful riches he could have made by practising law in england,... but just came back to fight for his nation and underwent a struggle which has made him more skin-and-bone, more feeble.

It was nice for me to opportunistically stumble on this video right today.

Its the first time I see the real gandhi speak.. thanks to fox news of those days for this interview and savouring it.. and importantly thanks to whoever posted it on youtube.com

See more such interesting videos listed at:
http://aidindia.org/main/content/view/467/182/

If you are humbled too, and wish to, may be you can donate a buck or two at the below websites which are not-for-profit organizations that are helping the india's poor, and in general helping india itself be and grow more stronger.
http://www.aidindia.org
http://www.cry.org

Thanks for your time on this post. May the force be with you.

Regards,
Harish.

Saw this first through Digg.com at http://www.voltier.com/stereo/ and have been analyzing the interesting part of the illusion. The below image or animation is generated from two 2D images.

You should be able to easily see it in 3D perspective especially with the water splashed up.
If you don't see it please wait, it must be loading.. the image is 180kb

My understanding:
The effect is created by fastly swapping images taken at 2 angles from the subject.. or two perspectives of the view. Because your vision can remember an image seen for a fraction of a second, by the time the image is swapped.. your brain overlaps the new image with the image still in memory and gives you a feel of two sides of some portions on the image.. like the water droplets splashed up.

In effect you see more of a droplet than what you would see if you were seeing one of the 2D photos. So, it gives you a 3D feel. The 3D effect is not because of the shake.. the shake is just because it is an animation with more than required time between slides.

3D is about being able to see the 3rd dimension or the depth of an object to visualize it separate from the rest of what is seen.

The above concept is probably how our eye sight works, and so having two eyes may be too important for vision. With one of the eyes closed, we may be seeing things in 2D but still not realize the loss much.

I think I have heard about this concept long back... I can remember reading something similar in some journal about a 3D system being developed which could allow delivering 3D images on a normal LCD monitor itself, and probably technologists are at it already in using this same concept to create future 3D television and cameras.

I can imagine cameras having two lenses instead of one as it is now, and the images streamed properly to a monitor with both perspectives swapped at an optimum speed, to produce clean, non-shaky 3D for TV. What do you think?

If your computer supports UNICODE, it can.

What is Unicode?
Unicode is an industry standard of characters, or, more correctly, character encodings.

It is like saying 1202240 means the character 'k' in small case. Computers understand only 1's and 0's so we keep numeric codes which are then easily converted to a big string of 1's and 0's. The equivalent for 1202240 in 1's and 0's would be a long code.. I will allow myself not take that trouble of converting it.

ASCII, EBCDIC, and many others you would have learnt or come across when you read computer books are all number codes(encodings) for language or symbols. So there are many different standard encodings, some companies even use organization specific encodings to keep information just understandable by their computers, some users also do something similar by inventing their own encodings and interpreting it.

I remember playing a spy-game with friends when I was a kid. We used to have charts of symbols we all put up together for each character in the English alphabet.. and for any text in English we translated it into our new written language. Hardly 26 characters but it could cover any English text and so it was fun though we took at least 3 minutes to read a word back into English.

The thing is Unicode has the largest set of characters, 100,000 of them, and when this is a standard for computers it means most language characters can be processed by a computer directly without internally being translated to something that the computer understands.

Fonts are different..
Not to confuse with unicode, remember that fonts are different, fonts are for displaying some text or symbol on screen.. not useful for anything other than displaying.

Fonts will be necessary and separately installed or used in computers to display or draw the unicode character or any character at all. So when we talk unicode, we are talking about text that is processed by a computer rather than text displayed on the screen.

For example, Windows latest Operating systems are UNICODE based for understanding characters and text, and they all ship with a font called Latha. So, in case I type a word in the Tamil language, I can setup windows such that it understands my keystrokes in unicode rather than what the keyboard sends (ASCII usually), and display the characters on screen using the Tamil font Latha.
How can I set it up? Not yet.. but we will discuss that.

Why Unicode?
Being an Indian, I can imagine how it is essential to know at least a couple of languages to be able to converse with different people rather than making mute actions with hands. We have many languages in India, forget the numbers, we have Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, ... and so on.

Does Unicode have character sets to cover all of them. No. Possibly the 'Unicode consortium' a non-profit organization handling the standard took only languages which where known to be used by a population greater than a threshold that they had in mind. While Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc., are there, Assamese isn't included...and so are a few other languages I suppose. Likewise, I am not sure whether if they have included Tamil they have all characters in Tamil or just the most most commonly used ones or ones that classify as modern Tamil.

How they classify or why they have this but not that, and whether they have all characters or not, etc., are questions we will have when we start using software based on Unicode.

Like I mentioned earlier, it helps a lot to know more than one or two languages.. and so Unicode becoming a standard and getting widespread application into all computer technologies means we can use software in any language comfortable rather than making Computers that can only understand English...which is the big problem we already have.

If you are a programmer this question must have occurred to you "Why am I always typing software programs or code in english like 'for', 'if', 'then', etc., why not in Thai or chinese?". Because internally, ASCII based computers understand only English, since only English is part of ASCII encoding.. also program compilers have to understand unicode based instructions.

The effects of this is like,
> give up your language for English because you use technology in your business,
>give up more processing power of your brain reading, writing, typing in english..while your elders trained your brain in your baby years with your mother tongue most possibly.
>And, if you want to control technology, you want to communicate with the computer in the language or character set it understands.

Evolution and Transformation of systems to support Unicode
Unicode didn't happen from nowhere. People understood well before Unicode that a universal standard with more characters was neccessary than the 255 supported by Computers because ASCII code was the standard.

So came in a lot of U for universal standards. UCS-2, UTF-8, UTF-16, windows-2525,.. or many things like that are all character encodings which are all now superseded by unicode. You can look at it like stepping stones towards UNICODE.

Many technologies started adopting UNICODE. Operating Systems of today are all mostly UNICODE based. Like Windows NT and above use UNICODE for all internal processing. Doesn't mean ASCII is not understood.. UNICODE is carefully derived from earlier systems such that all major previous standards also are part of UNICODE and there isn't a translation requirement at all most often.

It is not just the operating system that needs to become UNICODE based or Unicode compliant.. its an entire group of software technologies, protocols and standards that have to change into this. And we are not there yet...that is why programmers still type code in english, though anybody might be using Windows XP which is very much Unicode based.

All Email software, servers and clients, have to deal with encoding/decoding text in unicode for transmission and reception.

All web-based software, or web browsers should start understanding unicode, and servers should send unicode encoded content to the browsers. This transition has almost happened. If a webpage has unicode characters browsers search for appropriate fonts and display the character. This is why sometimes you might see the actual language text on some pages, while on some other language pages you might not see because the appropriate font was not mapped or unicode support itself is not there.

Here's a live sample of tamil font
முல்லை மலருக்கு ஆந்கிலதில் ஜாஸ்மீந எண்று பெர
(if you see only boxes your browser doesn't support unicode or it is not windows NT or above, or the Latha font is not there)..
(if you can read Tamil and find mistakes in above sentence forgive me i have just typed what i immediately understood with the keys... and you might like to read an entire Tamil blog here)

All programming language compilers should be able to understand unicode based instructions and be able to convert them into machine code.

Until now, I don't think there is any, not one, computer programming language compiler that can understand unicode.. they all understand only ASCII, and they may not for ever because, keyboards need to be small and can handle only ASCII english.

Yes, like you know we do have bilingual keyboards popularly used in Japan, china, etc., So, conversion to unicode also involves hardware industry and technologies. So, the conversion is taking time.

If that much didn't cover your apetite to know about unicode, below links might help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_Consortium
http://unicode.org/

India and UNICODE
I was surprised, but proud to see an indian flag, and even a tamilnadu state government logo on the Unicode official website unicode.org. The site listed the indian government and tamilnadu state government as members of the consortium.

I was surprised because I am one of those critics on, India and its growth alongwith politics and development within the country, so I didn't expect to see the indian government understand importance of unicode or be a member of the consortium. I was proud for obvious reasons you will know.. I am an Indian.. and I didn't see flags of other countries or logos of governments.

And, regarding Tamilnadu, a state in India (where I live), happens to be one of the few states (outside the english speaking club) where there's a "government standard" for the regional Tamil language fonts and related tamil software standards.

Aksharmala
unicode.org had a link in the 'Useful Resources' link... to this software called Aksharmala.

http://www.aksharamala.com/

I downloaded (freeware) Aksharmala, which it seems can convert your keystrokes to an indian language font on the application you are typing the text on...provided the application is built with unicode support. For example, notepad.exe doesn't understand unicode (even if you use aksharmala), while outlook or thunderbird do.

How to type in Tamil:
To type emails in Tamil language, I install aksharmala, set the Tamil keymap, and set Latha (shipped with windows) as the tamil font it should translate my keystrokes to. I then open Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird, press Ctrl+Alt+T (Hotkey) to enable aksharmala, and go ahead type away tamil into my email.

Few things here:
1. The above can be done even without aksharmala in a unicode supported windows. Windows NT or above. Windows itself can do this conversion mechanism if you do the proper settings in the 'Regional / Language settings' under 'Control Panel' (details below). But, yes not as easy as enabling/disabling conversion with a hotkey i think.

2. If I use aksharmala, I can use the font conversion feature even in Windows 98 which is not unicode based. But then, the font 'Latha' won't be there on Windows98 and so I will have to find, download and install some tamil font and tell aksharmala to use that.

Similar software like Aksharmala should be very much available for non-indian languages also. or, at least it will be very easy to configure support for a regional language if the operating system understands unicode.

'Regional / Language settings' under 'Control Panel' in Windows
You can find information on how to make your keystrokes mean languages other than english, on windows NT or above version computers, here: http://www.geocities.com/csd_one/keyboard/KBD_inst.htm

Note: To do settings mentioned in above link, you might need Windows installation CD if multilingual support was not enabled during installation (appropriate language fonts might not have been copied).

3. The recipient of my email should read it in Thunderbird or outlook or a browser that can understand unicode, and appropriately display correct language fonts.. otherwise the recipient would just see boxes in place of text.

Unicode Resources:
The website unicode.org has many links to useful resources here.

Typing in Tamil, Hindi or other indian languages.. is easy through below links.
All you do is type the equivalent of the language word in english.. and the applications below translate that into the language text in unicode. You can then copy the language text and paste in your web blog or email or any unicode supported software (like in any latest browsers).

www.quillpad.com
http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic

What a name for a movie of this genre I thought at the opening scenes of the movie.

Where do causalities of war end up.. in war cemeteries.
What do you find in war cemeteries.. stones arranged in a file like soldiers standing equidistances to long lengths.

And so the concept of looking at it as a garden of stones. Wonderful naming. (I later found out from Google that 'Gardens of Stone' seem to be used sometimes like a phrase in the west to refer to war cemeteries.)

So, i continued watching the movie..

After the hour and 50 minutes...

Ok. the film had a very light story about the soldier spirit of things without the action part. So, none of the cast fired any guns much.. except notably 3 shots fired saluting soldiers who die in action...so much they avoid the action part.. Like in old Indian movies, they show black-and-white real war footage in bits here and there to compensate for the action part.

I liked two things about the movie.. one, as already mentioned the name 'Gardens of stone', the second, was a character sgt.genrl.Goody...who does a supporting role to the main character of the film.

If you got a sleepy 2 hrs to spend, and you want to watch a light movie but still war based, then this might fit the bill.

The movie is an old one, probably released sometime during the ending days of the Vietnam war (which the Americans still debate whether they lost or won). This movie probably tried to make for lost motivation with soldiers then... or so i seem to believe.

If you earn in India through salary, or your business or services in india, which are taxable, you can pay taxes, file income tax returns, everything online through below links.

Prerequisites are:
1. You should have a PAN number. or you can e-apply for one through http://incometaxindia.gov.in

2. You should have a digital signature to submit all filled up forms(if any) online. you can obtain a digital signature through www.tcs-ca.tcs.co.in You can use the digital signature for all egovernance initiatives like registering a company, also use it on any website that accepts digital signatures today or in the future.. so your investment in acquiring a digital signature is valuable for long term.

Income tax returns e-filing: http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal
Pay taxes online: https://tin.tin.nsdl.com/etax

For more information on taxes and tax return filing: http://incometaxindia.gov.in

For queries on filing taxes or income returns, or PAN, TAN applications etc.,
you can contact a toll free number advertized on http://incometaxindia.gov.in.

And oh.. did I forget to mention.. all / most services are free, it costs zero bucks to file your returns, except a few like PAN applications are costed but low cost (below 250 rupees).. And you only spend for paying taxes, and acquiring a secure digital signature.

And if you are not the computer friendly, or an accounts friendly person, you can ask for a 'Tax Return Processor' an agent authorized by the government to drop-in at your office/home and help you with filing returns for free or for a fixed maximum cost of 250 rupees only. These TRP agents are paid some commissions on the taxes you pay, so only a few of their services cost within 250.. and the rest is free.

Are you drinking enough water, or some kind of energy fluids to hydrate your body??

Water is an important source of energy for the body, be it human body or your pet dog. Though not given so much importance in gyms and excercises by normal people. only sports people understand the importance of water and the banana. Yes, banana is one of the fruits that convert into energy usable by the body the fastest.

Everyday we lose water from our body through sweat and perspiration, through urine, and by even breathing. And this loss has to be replaced. When not regularly replaced, the body makes you feel thirsty.

How much water?
Depends on your weight, your energy usage in physical activity over the day, and importantly the temperatures you put your body through because more temperature means more loss of water through sweat and perspiration. So, in summer you will drink atleast 40% more water than in winter.

If you thought you are drinking the right quantity of water, and if you never checked that against some standards, then here is a website that helps calculate your daily hydration(or water) needs.

You can key in details like weight, workout you do, age, and get to know how much water you should be drinking, atleast ideally...and if you are not drinking other energy fluids

Hydration Calculator

You can find more information on fluids and energy and why people drink special fluids like gatorade etc., why water itself may not be enough, through 'make every drop count'.

I found the above links accidentally going through, the coca-cola website. The website has an interestingly squeezed world map out of a bottle thing on its website...artistically a good concept for their homepage. I would have liked to see it in their print adverts... hey, I just remembered, have these cola companies stopped advertising on the print media...its been a long time.

Reports say that "A seven year old student abused sexually in kendriya vidyalaya, Ashok Nagar, Chennai" .. Read it here

Students between the 6th and 10th grade made to strip for collecting commercial data of sex organs.. Reat it here

Sexual harrasement incident in a chennai school.. Read it here ... This and the first link look related.. but i couldn't confirm, because everyone who reports or talks about this is not ready to avoid covering up the school's stupid acts.

It sends me shivers of shock and horror everytime I read something like this about child sexual abuse in schools.. If it had happened in some village school or some low-quality or some low class school then at least we could come to terms saying that the teachers or staff in such schools are of that quality.. but these things all reported above have happened in the best rated, supposedly top quality schools, very much placed in good central areas of the cities in india.

I remember that my friends who were always abroad in the west after their initial travel through their software employers, reportedly returned to india when their kids grow up... because the culture or education in schools in the west are not interesting for them. Now, I wonder where they should go, because our indian city schools are no better.

Amidst all this, the stupid, sensitivity triggered media in india, is already bullying on starting sex education in schools at the primary school level itself.. what the heck, next they will all bully that we should have school proms for teens, and then they will say "now that every child knows about sex, we should be liberal"

whatever heck, it looks like the urban society is bent upopn doing everything possible to make children sex literate (with experience even), but they dont seem to talk so much about improving education as it should be.

Wrap on your seat belts young children, your adolescent elders in india are taking you down the drain !!!

Actor sanjay dutt was given 6-yrs imprisonment yesterday by a TADA court in India.. for acquiring some weapons illegally during the 1993 riots.

Read the full story here: Sanjay Dutt sentenced to 6 years in jail

Though it definitely seems like the actor has turned a noble man today, and understands his mistakes of the past and accepts them as mistakes that are legally punishable by law, and though the judge and dutt have had a few minutes of informal talk in the court during the judgement,

...finally, it is on a strong and brave note that the actor is punished.. that justice prevails.. whoever and whatever you are.

..because, otherwise it could stand a hole in the law/the judgement itself, and might be referrenced innumerable times in future cases quoting this judgement to consider a reprive, hadn't the judge awarded punishment to the actor.

I was moved by the part in the news story (link above), where the judge tries to make some really humane attempts in asking the actor to be brave.. further goes on to make a small joke and discuss his films to help him not breakdown.

I don't know, whether all judges make informal chats like this to really innocent people on the witness box, or try to help them reveal stuff in the light of the law, or talk to the lawyers or prosecutors like collegues rather than as judge on their case.

To me, this was one of the few times I have read details in a newspaper about the lighter side of a court proceeding. In recent years, especially supreme court rulings, elaborated in the newspaper reveals a kind of attitude change in the country, I so tend to believe.

I do not know whether this is attitude change in the way cases are handled, or in the way people are looking at law and the judicial system itself (which has definitely raised people trust levels on the system), or in the way the media has started reporting news in stating it as a script of a novel rather than just bluntly say 'Sanjay dutt awarded 6 years for such and such a thing' and move on to the next news.

Whatever it was, I am growing slowly very possessive and observant of my country India... and happy to be living in a phase where the country is transforming into a developed nation, that too at a maturity level where I am able to understand the changes happening in the country.

And justice prevails. We will wait for Munnabhai to return in 2013, or may be even earlier if he gets a bail or a shorter term based on his nobleness and character in jail.

If you saw Lage raho MunnaBhai, this below cartoon in 'The Hindu' will cheer you up.

News source, pictures, and cartoon source: From my daily newspaper, which I am slowly becoming addicted to, The Hindu.