Modern Vision zone:

Just thought about the space that we are left with, without gadget in front of our eyes. After a bit deliberation, I could put down the items as below.

Divided our eye vision into a 3x3 squares or 9 quadrant and fit in the gadgets. With new smart watches coming in and occupying quadrant 7 or 9 (if right or left hander), chance of people getting neck pain may increase.

Q4 and Q6 are occupied by 10-20% of people if they are using dual monitors or triple monitors but a rare case.

Now tech companies can explore the real estate available in Q1, Q2 and Q3 which might come in future. A point to note, google glass covers all the quadrant.  The color code is as below.

• RED – completely occupied
• Orange – other gadgets can explore here
• Yellow  - very less users are here so can be explored
• Green – free to explore

Might be a haphazard way of writing but should be a starting point anyway. Writing after a long time ( lot of hectic work and changes in family kept me away from this).  Will ensure this post is interesting. 

What we miss?

The recent Christmas vacation made me to think as this. I have not seen people planning for any long leaves during our festivals but we plan when our owner's festival come.  Not sure in future, people will really forget our festivals.  All the IT Companies ( whose bosses are in different zones) are making these happen.  

People from different states come and work at a common place. Yet they find little time to travel back to their natives.  How come a day holiday for Diwali will help a person working in Bangalore to travel to Delhi and come back. A flight ticket would be expensive at the near moment as well. So we skip it. But when Christmas came, we had no work, most of the cubicles were empty.  IT - the boon is also having a negative influence on our traditions. We are MISSING something.

I beleive any changes will always show signs before it changes completely. We are slowly losing our closeness towards our religions, culture etc, here.

Remember recently reading a post somewhere : A birthday party invited by some one. The party was mostly attended by parents and there were very few kids alone. When the host asked for the reason, he was shocked to hear that most of the kids were in some trainings ( Swimming, skating, singing). We are blocking the essence of parties/functions to the newer generations. As read somewhere, tomorrow our kids will see the Tiger only in books. 

See not to lose any of our old wonderful fragrances given by our forefathers/religions here. We have a very rich culture right from history. There is still a lot to come. Think about it.....

Logging after a long gap

Hectic schedule and bit of travels between kept me away from the blog.  I am leading a nomadic life. Recently had a chance to get my hands dirt on my Point & Shoot camera. Took some snaps of our campus which I am posting here. 

Want to share few quick bits that lingers in top of my head currently as well....

• New Horizon will reach Pluto by 2015 after a travel for 9 years ( launched in 2006). This is also the fastest man made object currently
• VY Canis Majoris is the largest known star to us. To compare its size, assume Sun as your first and a mustard is Earth. Now replace Sun with VYCanis Majoris (will henceforth call it as VY) and Earth with Sun.  

• VY when replaced with Sun, will occupy till Jupiter - which means Earth will go inside its body
• The giant red eye in Jupiter is almost equal to size of Earth. Ideally it is bigger than that. This is a storm that is always present in Jupiter. Imagine a storm that is to size of Earth:-(
• The solar flare is a ring created by fire as it gets erupted on the sun surface and get back to it like a ring. A typical solar flare can hold 100 Earths inside its ring. 

Blogging from iphone

First time I am trying to blog from my phone. I am posting the poto of our dog Tuffy here.

Readings...

Recently completed reading a tamil book by Madhan "Manithargalum marmangalum". It talks about ghost and UFO. As I have already read enough about UFO's ( you can see in one of my earlier post about UFO), it was a refresher course when I read it. The details about Ghosts were interesting.  Nice book - if you get a chance to read, give a shot.

Current readings are: "Ki Mu Ki Pi" by Madhan and "A monk who sold his ferrari" by Robin. Dont know when I will complete both.

Back to iPhone from Wild

Atlast, my iPhone got repaired and started working. Was having trouble in handling the HTC Wildfire S but now I can heave a sigh of relief.  I need to install most of my applications again there but now I am comfortable. The problems I see with HTC Wildfire S are:

• Screen size small so the QWERTY key board doesn't come handy for text message
• Very difficult to edit any text
• Sometimes the keyboard hides the text boxes partially ( in few web pages) and we could not see what is the text entered due to this.

What feels better in iPhone?

• Screen big. I could see what character has been pressed
• Easy to edit.
• Context sensisitve key board appears ( for e.g: if you are typing email or web address, we have .COM, @ buttons ready there

Cleanliness....

Why India is not clean? I wont blame the Government - it is the responsibility of every Indian to keep the city clean. When I recently travelled in train, I took a small stroll towards the entrance of the couch and could see beautiful tracks but waste cups, packets came from most of the doors into the track. I pity the railway team for how can they clean our waste. Few things that needs action at this hour:

People should be aware of environment and inculcate the habit of cleanliness
Have dust bins everywhere possible with a clean board saying not to spit on it - even in trains where most of the petty shop owners sell fruits/peanuts/biscuits etc.
Always see to carry a waste bag to dump all wastes till you find a dust bin.

Let s keep the city clean

Software failure push people breakfast

A recent incident remembered me of Terminator film.  Most of the hospitals now relies on softwares for billing.  The software in a hospital failed which resulted in blunt stop of billing. This eventually resulted in stopping of blood collection as they need a bill receipt to proceed further.  People who came with fasting to give blood sample had to wait till the issue has been resolved. More people started gathering as timing passed by.

Am just thinking why do we rely on software or hardware when it is not fully reliable. Final comment:  Rely on something only when it is proved to be reliable or else have a back up method to resolve in urgency.  In the above case, a manual entry or some sort of would have eased the situation but that system was not in place in the hospital which eventually created chaos there. 

Currently reading a book by Osho

Started reading a Osho book in Tamil (Marainthirukkum unmaigal). Initially it was bit tough for me to understand but quite interesting. I could not fully believe in the things mentioned about thilagam, how people entered into Pyramid but the book keeps you tight in your seat.  Will be completing it soon.

In India
Life is going on good - learning new things every day. Recently moved to Android phone from iPhone.

Ithu oru nagaichuvai patti mandram.

Thalaipu : en oochi mandailya soorunguthu un naan paarkaiyal kirruunguthu – mandaila sooraa = paarvaiyill kirraa – ithu ilakana pizhaia?

Naduvar: Salman Kopaaiah

Mandaiyala soor  correcte engira ani

Vennaivelu ( VV)

Kozhambu Samy (KS)

Mandaiyala soor thappu engira ani

Sottai mani (SM)

Thirupur varala ( TV)

Salman kopaaiah: Adada – nallaa thaan vachu irukaanga titlea , en uchi mandailya sooraa? Illa kirraa – engenga pidikiranga itha – room illa oru hotela vaangai yosichu iruppaanga pola.  Paarpom ivanga en mandaiya epdi soriyaranunganuuu.

Itho irukare vennai velu – ivaru mandaiyala sooru right thaaann solraru. Vappa vennai – vanthu porinju thallu

Vennai velu : naduvar avargale – intha padimandrame vedikaiayaga irukirathu

Salman : yov, ithu nagaichuvai pandi mandram ya. Vedikaiya thaan irukanam.

VV: Athu illa thalaivare. Mandaila sooru – paarkaiyal kiruunu nama doctor vijaye sollitaaru appuram ithu epdi ilakana pizhaiya irukka mudiyum. Valluvar kooda itha pathi …

Salman: Avar kooda itha pathi pesi irukaarraa.... sollu sollu

VV:  Amaam thalaivare : thupaarku thuppa thuppakki… thooovuam mazhai.

Salman: ennaku ippu kirruthunguthu

VV: athaan thailavara – ungalluku ippo paarvaiyil thane kirrunguthu

Salman: yove nee mela pesu ya

VV: appo mandaiyal kirrunguthaaa? Neenga ilakanatha maatha paarkireenga

Salman (thinking): thangala da sami - enga intha mani adikirathu – aaa itho  - Mani adikiraru (timeout bell rings)

Sottai mani: Hey VV, unakku pel adichachuuu nee kilambu ,. Ithu en time

(VV idathai kali panugirar)

SM: Naduvare… neengal maniyai aarambithileye adithirukka vendum

Salman: oo apdiya – marupadiyum mani adikiraru(timeout bell rings)

Kozhambu samy ( fromVV team): Sottai, innaiku sani, salman unnakku adichatu mani, idaithai vittu kilambu ini

SM: enna koduma ithu aarambi nee ini

KS: naduvare VV sonnathu sarithaan

Salman: Avar Vijay sonnathu sareengiraru – ippo yar sonnathu thaan Sari

KS: VV sonnanaalum Vijay sonna mathiri thaan.

Salman: Avare oru thadava sonna avar pecha avare ketka maataru. Punch dialogue ellam illa inga venam nee solla vanthathu sollu

KS: oochi enbathu top. Top na mandai  - mandaiyila veyil patta kirrunguma illa soorunguma?

Salman: atha nee thaan sollaanum

KS: kirrunnu thaan irukkum

Salman ( kozhambi) – ivan entha katchi

KS: mandaiyilla kirr enbathuthaan correct –aana…..

VV: yov vayaa ( KS ezhuthavar padukirrar) uttaa avangalai jeyika vachiruva pola

Thirupur varala: KS sir vaanga inga oru seatu kaaliya thaan irukuthu.

VV: Neenga ezhunthathaale seat kaaliyirukku – itha koda publicity panrangala da samy!!!!

Salman: Amma athu enna thirupur varala; Thirupurukku varalama???

TV: Sir kovaikku oru sarala irukum pothu thirupurukku oru varalaruuu… chee varala irukka kodathaaa?

Salman: nayamaana point ithu..

TV: sir – oochi mandaiyila, ithula oochiya piruthu paarthal

Salman: Ulla onnum illa thane!!!

TV: illa sare

Salman – Athamma naanum solren!!!

TV: thalaivara, ithai neenga pirithu paarthal, oo + ich+ chee. Ich and chee yum kaama sorkal – athu epdi mandaiyil nadanthu – appa heroine hero mandaiyila kiss panala illa hero mandai thaan sottaiya – enakku therinja varaikkum hero vuku sottai kidaiyathu

Salman: ema varala – hero mandai sottaiya ella mudi irukka enbatha naama adutha varusha patti mandrathula  parthukalam

TV: athukkula hero thala mudi valarthuduvare!!!

Salman: mudiyala!!!!

TV: mudiyum saaru – ippo ethethuo thailangal vanthudichi – atha thadavina varum saaru

Salman: (manathukkul - saarula irunthu thane thailam thayaripaanga, aaa kozhaparangale)yaarupaa athu – antha thailatha konjam eduthuttu vaanga

TV: paaru thailavare kozhambittaru – appa illakana pizhai illamaya irukkum?

Salman: Naa kozhambala – neenga kozhamba vachividuveenga pola irukku  continue…

TV: naduvar avargale – soor matrum kirrrr irandume irattai kilaveegal. Pirithaal porul tharathuuu

Salman:  (manathhukkul) iva mattum komariya --- perusa serthu paartha mattum porul vara mathiriye pesarangappa!!!!

TV: Thalaivara ivai irandum English vaarthaikal – SURE enbathaithaan ilaya thalapathy soooru nu maathi irukaar, GEAR enbathaithaan girrunnu maaathi irukkaar

Salman: Aalalukku tamizha kola panraganda samy thangala. ( konjam sathamaaga) amma varala, neenga konjam overa poitte irukeenga. Pothum ithukku mela nee pesina

TV: enna mani adipeenga

Salman; Illa mani unnai adikkum, naan mani adicha satham varum. Mani unnai adichaa ratham varum. … appa theriyum unmaiyana answer

TV: Sir, Sir – naan utkanthiduren – neenga theerpa sollunga

Salman: Appada oru vazhiya mudichutaanunga.  (Sathamagaa) – nalla thaan pesinaanga irandu aniyum.  Yaaro correct a kandupidichaanga – athavathu uchi mandaiyila soorru epdi possiblennu – ena – neenga intha padathai paarthal herovukku mudiyirukkum. Thalaiyila mudiirukkum pothu ivar epdi mandaiya pathi pesa mudiyum. Appa mudikku enna mariyaathai???

Makkal: Vare wow vare wow

Salman: Intha paadaloda adutha variya paartha ungalakku vishyam puriyum.  Enna solraru “ kitta nee vanthala daarruu nguthu”.  Orutharukku darr eppo varum. Appo avar enna pannuvar?  Darru bayathil erpadum. Padikaatha maanavan vaathiyaara paartha darrr aayiduvaan. Appo epdi sir paatu varum. Bayathulla ellame nadungum. Building, basement ellam aadipoidum.  Appo intha “Kitta nee vanthale darru nguthu” varthaiya epdi hero jollya paada mudiyum. logicke thappu. Logic thaapaa irukkum pothu paatu epdi right a irukka mudiyum. Paatu kandippa thaapa thaan irukanum.

Makkal: Salman correctaa pudichitaaru paarthiyaa?

Salman: Athanala – en oochi mandaiyila soor enbathukku pathila – en oochi mandaiyila kirru enbathu thaan correct. Unnna naan paarkiyil sooru correct ( athavathu sharp paarvai). Melum hero intha varigala dance aadi padama , bayathula manasukulla ninachi amaithya pesi irukanum – appo thaan intha varikallu mariyathai. Aaga intha padal ilakana pizhiye ena theerpu solli intha patti mandrathai mudithukolgiren.

(Thidirendu dinguunnu oru satham- Salman mandaiya VV alarm mani kondu oru adi aditha satham thaan athu. Salman nilai thadumaarugiraar)

Salman:  Ayyyo mandaiyilaa…..

VV: Sollu thalaivare soorunnu thane irukuthu

TV: illa kirunnu thaan irukkum

Salman (manathukkul): inge oruthan adipatu sava kidakuran – ippo poi soora illa girrannu sandaipodarangule – (mayakammagirar)

Alarm sounded...

Been a long time - kind of getting back from hibernation. Hope I will spend more time in writing few things which I am reading - so wait for few more interested packs.

Let me start again with a cool note. Not sure on the exact date when I ( ideally We)  made a trip around Mysore. I remember taking this snap in the Somnathpur temple in the Garbha griha.  The small labyrinth bends at the top ceiling took sometime in my mind to give the path.  Not sure from where they started to begin this master piece and the best part is if you trace the path, it will go one below or above the other - all this in pure carvings in stone (Period: 1254-1291 AD ) - where no proper mending tools as we have now. It is an architectural master piece.

Second snap shows the delicate carvings and third one is a symmetrical piece of kopura taken from bottom.

To Newyork.....

2 months passed by - i forgot to scribble here about my trip here to NY.

Posting here few snaps. We started as a big team on a 4 day trip to Niagara, NY and Washington DC (covering most of northern America).

Though it was bit hectic, it really added a spice to our holiday mood.

We traveled in all the modes of transport like ship, air, train and by bus to see the places in this trip. 

Few memorable moments to pen here.

There were sudden drops in altitude made by a small air plane during our trip to Niagara from Cleaveland.  The journey was even bit scary when the air hostess told to passengers who were sitting to the emergency exit window on what to do during emergency.

All heaved a sigh of relief except for my colleague's kid who was enjoying whenever the aircraft went down with a huge laugh every time.

The other one was during our bus journey to Washington DC from Newyork. Our bus was at 10pm and hence all though present at the spot were roaming to get quick dinner. 

Our luck( or unfortunate to say so), the bus driver asked us to board the 9.30pm bus. Everyone except my colleague were there and he went to grab some food stuffs. I tried reaching him over phone but my bad luck no signal where we boarded the bus. I left him a voice message.

As the time clocked near 9.30pm, the bus driver started shouting that he will start the bus and there was a bit of chaos happening (they were holding the bus for us) which I was totally unaware waiting for my friend. Oops I got a call finally from him.

When we rushed to the spot, all our luckages were off the bus. The driver went and called the police. Somehow we got all our loaded luckages back and took the 10pm bus and reached Washington DC. 

Outlook Macro... quick way to save the mails

I am currently using Outlook 2003 to check my emails.  I have a case wherein I need to send the mail as an attachment to other user.  The steps  I used to do are :

• Open the mail
• Click File > SaveAs and save the mail as outlook message format
• Compose a new email and add this mail as attachment ( *.msg)

Since I was doing this quite often, I thought of writing a macro to quickly help me to do this. I completed it and thought of sharing with you. The code snippet given below

''''Saves the current mail in msg format for easy sending
''''Created by Senthil - Aug 16 2010
Public Sub SaveThisMail()

Dim pathString As String
Dim fullPath As String
Dim itemMessage As String
Dim fName As String ''' Only the file name
Dim selObject As Object

pathString = "C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxx\My Documents" --- Change the path here as per your need

Set selObject = Me.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)

If (TypeOf selObject Is Outlook.mailItem) Then
    Dim mailItem As Outlook.mailItem
    Set mailItem = selObject
End If

fName = Format(Now(), "ddMMYYYYHHmmss") & ".msg"
fullPath = pathString & "\" & fName

'''Save the mail
mailItem.SaveAs fullPath, OlSaveAsType.olMSG

'''To open the place where the file is located
Dim a As String
a = MsgBox("Saved successfully (File name: " & fName & " ). Want to see the location?", vbYesNo + vbDefaultButton1, "Save successful")

If a = vbYes Then
    retVal = Shell("explorer.exe " & pathString, vbNormalFocus)
End If
End Sub

What you need to do?

Open Outlook and select Tools>Macro> Visual Basic Editor

Paste the code written above in the "This Outlook Session" ( Please remember to edit the red line in the code as per your need)

Save the project and close it.

Now we will add a small button to the standard mail window. Open any mail and right click at the tool bar ( any icon). You will get a menu as shown below

Click Customize. Now go to Commands tab and  go to Macros and select the macro SaveThisMail()

Simply drag the Command to the tool bar. Now you have the button ready at the tool bar.  See below the screen.

Now you are good to go. Whenever you want to save this mail as .msg, simply click this button and the mail will be saved in your prescribed folder. You will be prompted to open the location and you can quickly select the file from the location. 

(Note: Since this is a macro, whenever you open the Outlook, you will be prompted to Enable or Disable the macro.  Enable the macro to have the above function working. Click the images if you want to see bigger)

Security in GMAIL

Scenario:

You are browsing your gmail and suddenly some visitors come in. You left the screen as it is and went to get a drink for him.

At this time, visitor started browsing the website and there is a chance that he might see your gmail and email content.

Solution:

This solution helps you to hide the emails temporarily and you can keep some important emails hidden.

What you need to do?

Go to Settings in your GMAIL:

Create a filter and hide it. How it is?

I will go with an example. If you want to keep the mails from AA@gmail.com hidden, do as follows.

Create a label in GMAIL with some specific name – I go with name “hidden” here for example

Create a new filter so that all mails from AA are labeled as “hidden”. Check the following:

• Also apply filter to X conversations below
• Skip the inbox (Archive it)
• Apply the label ( select the label here “hidden”)

  

Go to Labels and select hide.

 

Now if you go to inbox, mails from AA will not be shown. And the label “hidden” will also not be shown in the main screen.

How to see the mails which are hidden just now ? Do I need to go and activate it back from the settings which are again painful?

My answer is NO. Just go to inbox, in the search type “label:hidden”. Hurray – all the mails which are labeled with this are shown now.

(Tip: In similar lines, if you want to see only “UNREAD” mails, go to search bar and type “label:unread” and you will be only shown all the unread mails. And Inbox is also one of the default lable in gmail).

SAS..(Software As a Service)

I was going through the gmail blog and got somewhere the link of most recommended internet applications ( top 10). I landed in ZOHO which gives software as a service. 

I was trying the spreadsheets present in it. It is pretty amazing. It has got even macro recording and assign it to a button. 

You can compare this with Google docs. The user interface and the usage are more in par with a normal MS office applications. 

You can try it out here - you need to create a zoho account for this. 

Following are my recent readings and observations:

• Gmail came with drag and concept of attachment. Now instead of browsing attachments when you are sending email, you can simply drag and drop into Gmail from your computer. Gmail takes care of rest.
• Multiple attachments can be selected in one go - either drag multiple items into Gmail or using browse for attachments, select multiple files in one go.
• Also Gmail has introduced rich signatures - now your signature can have different font, colours and hyperlink and you can include images as well. I recently included my blog link to my signature in Gmail.
• If you are typing frequently the same messages every time, you can save this as a template message and add it in a click in Gmail ( called as Canned responses) - i have never tried it out.
• The recent office outlook 2010 contains a check for empty subject line. Earlier (till 2007 version), there is no straight way to check the subject and you need to write a macro to check this. The painful part outlook will trigger an alert message whenever you open it to execute the macro.

Have created a simple test below using ZohoChallenge

SFO...


I made a recent trip to San Francisco for a week. Trip was good - it was far more different than Houston. Streets are very sloppy. I enjoyed the scenic beaches and the buildings.

I had a chance to take in hand the dungeness crab which you see below. Its huge one and is a popular dish cost of San Francisco. I am posting here few snaps which I took there.

Sea lion

Lombard Street

Old Army Ship

Piston of a ship

Ship at a pier

Dungeness Crab

Some footprint at the beach

Phoneix--Space craft (amazing design)

This is not the bird but designed to live with the help of sun - the Mars Phoneix space craft. Again this was collective information from my own readings.

This was the first lander on the Martian polar region and has the privilege of getting snapped by another object in space - the MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). The MRO took a poto of Phoneix during its landing - photo shows "Phoneix with parachute" - the last minute stage of its landing on Mars.

It was a first of a kind where a soft landing of a space craft was successfully implemented on another planet. The atmosphere on Mars also handed its help to the success. All other landings on any other planet were on crash mode. Even the rovers on the mars have a landing with air balloon which was also a crash type.

Few statistics of Phoenix:

· Duration of travel from Earth to Mars: 9 months

· Time taken for a signal to be received from Phoneix: 10 minutes

· The speed of Phoneix when it reached Marsian atmosphere: ~15000miles per hour

· The speed has been reduced to 125mph before it touches the ground within 7minutes of its entry into Marsian atmosphere. This was achieved by deploying a parachute that drastically reduced the speed of the craft and also by the friction caused by the atmosphere

· Entire duration of Entry Descent and Landing (called in NASA Terms as EDL): 7 minutes

As mentioned earlier, it takes 10 minutes for any signal to reach Earth, by the time a signal for EDL has been received; we can safely assume all the stages of EDL are over. This gives a challenge as to every decision has to be made by the space craft and not manually controlled from Earth. A point to note is - the signal so far was direct from Phoneix to Earth.

The EDL contains the following steps:

E- Entry - with the help of heat shield to protect the Phoneix from extreme heat. The heat shield surface temperature during entry was expected to be closer to temperature on the surface of the sun (2500F). But the inner temperature was maintained close to a normal room temperature to protect the space craft. This is an amazing achievement.

D- Descent - achieved by deploying parachute which again reduces the speed of the space craft. Once the speed is 125 mph, the heat shield is jettisoned and for the first time the Phoneix is exposed to Martian atmosphere.

L - Landing: The Phoneix should deploy its legs now and start calculating how far it is from surface. Based on which it decides when to leave the parachute. After which it is a free fall from space. Once close to the surface it starts its thrust engine and lands safely on the surface.

Few unknown facts about Phoneix:

Fact 1-Has survived more than the actual duration and worked greatly. Phoneix's last message to Earth was "Triumph" which it sent in binary code to MRO after which it went to sleep mode (dead).

Fact 2-The signal to Phoneix happened via MRO. The order is Phoneix ->MRO->Earth and vice versa. MRO is a satellite launched some time earlier to study the surface of Mars. All communications to Phoenix from Earth happened via MRO. It makes 2 complete rotations on one Martian sols (1 sols = one solar day of Mars). Hence, Phoneix can get the signal from Earth twice a day. They used the first one to send data to Phoneix (via MRO from Earth) and the second one to receive data from Phoneix (via MRO to Earth).

Fact 3-All instructions for the whole day have been sent in the first attempt. The results are received on the second attempt.

Fact 4-Still scientists are trying to establish communication after its dead message due to no light because of Mars winter. There is one more attempt to be made in April 2010 to see if there is a signal of hope from Phoneix.

Fact 5-There was a landing camera installed on the bottom of the space craft to capture the landing of the space craft. At last minute during the body built of Phoneix it was found that turning on the landing camera would disrupt the Phoneix memory. So it was decided not to switch on the camera as it was too late and the date for launching was already near. Phoneix was too late to repair at that stage. (If everything went ok – we would have seen now how exactly Phoneix has landed in his last minutes of descent)

Fact 6-There was also a sound recorder on board to record Martian sound but this was never turned on. Phoneix life time was used to do most of the soil analysis and slowly Phoneix started losing its power because of blooming Martian Winter. At last stage a decision was taken to turn on this mic but it was again too late as Phoneix was into dead mode the next day. So this message could not be delivered to Phoneix. (Again – if this went ok, then we would be playing first sound from Mars in Youtube).