Friday, November 7, 2008

How did Chrome get its logo?

I've always been a great admirer of logos of different companies. It not only represents the company, but has greater potential in advertising and taking the brand to the public.

The logo that I most liked is of "Sun micrsystems"
The word SUN can be read however you may turn the logo.

Few other logos that I like are..

BENTLEY : The other name for Luxury


BOEING : Taking you to space.


NGC: Simple but very effective.

The list is big which includes Google, Apple and Nike. But, this one is strange.

What is behind the design of Google Chrome's logo?
I've been using this browser from the day when it was released. It is pretty fast but sometimes it fails to load heavy pages with CSS, java and flash plugins.

Where did Chrome get it's logo from?
Is this what they call as "trouble the goose that lays golden egg"?

Friday, October 3, 2008

CCA Youth.

CHRIST CHURCH, ALANDUR.
Youth fellowship.

It has been two years now since I've attended the youth fellowship last time in Christ Church, Alandur; though I still pay a visit every time I cross Chennai. Those were great days, juggling my ball between my trainings and the Church. My training sessions spanned only for 4 hours during weekdays and 2-4 hours on Saturdays depending on the volume of LAB exercises we had. This gave me enough time to spend on other things.
CCA Youth - One dynamic group of young people, bound together by the love of Christ. They (We) :-D meet every Sunday after the church service. We start with couple of songs and this problem always existed - feeling very lazy to sing. To solve this problem somebody in the group will come up with this "so called *mind blowing*" idea of singing an "action song". Whew... I am game!. One secret thing is, initially I found it difficult with the actions because, they were different apart from what I've learnt. But, as I always had a good talent of imitating , I started managing my show. Most of the time I've succeeded when tried doing new actions flawlessly. This is followed by a time of worship and Later comes the time of testimony. We then get into the message. Every week a different speaker is arranged and it really really would be a great time learning the Word of God. Finally we wind up by praying for each other and few prayer points. So did every Sunday pass away.

There were exceptions too. Inter-church competitions made the difference. It is actually a one day event organized by most of the churches accross Chennai. It involves a package of songs and a whole bunch of competitions. The event starts after the church service, which ever the host church it be.
I vividly remember my first day when I stepped in being a part of CCA Youth fellowship. I was introduced to the youth secretary, Deepan Francis. I found him to be busy with a paper and a pen writing something. I didn't understand what he was doing. The moment I was introduced, he said; "Paul, good to have you with us. You will be participating in a competition called Ship Wreck. We will be leaving in a while". I was thrown flummoxed. I told him as this being the first day, let me sit and watch everything first, then will join you in all other competitions. He never seemed to mind my plea and didn't excuse me. One thing that concerned me a lot was, I didn't know what 'ship wreck" meant. :-P Did I ever say them this? The gentleman in me again played his part. Finally what? We won a prize! I accompanied the group in many other Inter-church competitions. It was all fun, I say.

We organized one too. Titled as "Anchorage", one big event by our fellowship with a big budget.
It was really a good experience doing everything from end to end. We practiced for the singing sessions, prepared charts, score cards, fiddled with the background curtain decorations, designed our T-shirts, blah blah blah blah... and many many more. The event on the whole was a great success. End of the day, we planned to go to the beach and have a gala time. Eventually, ended up hitting our heads against the pillow after a fully packed busy day. I lost the opportunity in marking my footprints along with the youth members on the sands of Besant Nagar beach.

I've spent ample amount of time with the Sunday school children too. They were awesome. I pray for every children out there, that they may grow in the knowledge of God.

I owe a lot to the fellowship. This was the only source which kept me running closer to God in the marathon of my life; all my days in Chennai precisely. I thank every youth member there. If my memory is not that bad, here are some to be mentioned... Deepan Francis, Eben, Alphonse, Beryl, Joshua, Chinna, Inba, Dani, Justin, Calvina, Caroline, Sarah, Deborah, Diana.... and many more. Sorry people if I had failed to mention your names. You'll have to blame my poor memory.

The last Sunday after which I had to leave Chennai, I stood outside the church compound, on the road looking up the cross over the Church. Tears rolling down my eyes, I thanked the Lord for all that he had taught me during my three months stay in Chennai and for giving such a good fellowship to be enriched in Him. I payed a standing ovation.

I didn't know if I will ever comeback again to join this dynamic group. But, I made a choice to never loose any opportunity in landing down here to pay a visit. I also prayed for a similar fellowship where ever I go. Yes, I knew I was leaving for Hyderabad. After a great sigh of accomplishment, I left home.

I am in Hyderabad at present. He has proved Himself faithful again. I have a good fellowship here.

Later!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

CompuMania

Have you ever had the experience of being caught with CompuMania? You should have been, but might not be aware of. As I write/type this post, I am seriously suffering with this disease. This thought just popped in my brain for a moment, "What the hell would I be doing in the world without computers?"
I think
, I should start practicing "Star gazing" well before that age arrives. What else would I be doing then? Breaking stones? Not a bad profession indeed! We needn't be bothered of our deliverable, target dates, goals, accomplishments, meetings, hike negotiations and in fact no BOSS.Let me start here. - I'm typing this post, yeah, I need computer and I've got one. It runs Windows XP operating system with SP 2. Are there other operating systems out in the market? Yeah, how about DOS, UNIX, Linux, Solaris, Machintosh. There are many more and Linux has numerous distributions. Machintosh? Costly, but worth every penny you've spent. Intensive and heavy graphics is less difficult than a cake walk on Machintosh. Alright, though I am not using my favourite operating system, yes, Linux, windows has always served my needs.

I wan
na publish my blog. To access the blogger I need a browser. Bowser? Which one should I use? Internet explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Flock, Apple Safari... there are many more. My choice is always Firefox. Oops, should I be knowing HTML coding to publish my blog? Not exactly, but still it is always an added value to your blogging spree. I knew very little, and the result is my customized page as you see.

Okay, where are my blogs stored? In Google's servers? Whew! What amount to speed and capacity should that server have to serve billions of blogs. I know that Google uses Linux servers for all these purposes. LINUX - what is that? A command line operating system with black and white window? Nope. Linux is an advanced operating system with billions of colors. It can be configured even from answering your phone call to waking you up in the morning playing your favorite music, video, whatever. On what language is Linux written? C , C++?

Ah.. here come the languages. English, Tamil, Hindi,.but does a computer understand them? Thus computer languages are developed. Two decades back who in India would have known otherwise that C is just another alphabet? But, where did the languages era start? Assembly, Basic, COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL, C, C++, C#, curl, Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, J2EE, J2ME. If you wanna believe this with me, there are approximately about 218 programming languages. Uh! ( Big sigh). Would have I known this about 10 years back, I will now be speaking in Java and Perl. (Yes, I am still learning perl)

This again is interpreted or complied to machine understandable language. Wondering what is that? Zeros and Ones. Now that I have my blog wirtten, I have to publish it so that I can be viewed by the public. The moment I press "Publish Post" button, my blog is taken care of the TCP/IP protocol, reaches my WiFi Access point in the hall, then through the hubs on the post opposite to my house, through the underground cable running round the city via secunderabad, minister's road, Necklace road, through the smelly Hussian sagar lake, Banjara hills, Madhapur, Hitech city and reaches the VSNL building. Gets into the routers, switches, cables again and finally Boom...makes it into the server. 01010111000100100010011101010010001 01001 01001 010 10 010101010 10010 10 01111001010101 01010011001 110 010 10 01 0 0101001 01 101 01 101000011101010 010100101 110110100101 100 01010 000010 10101 01 10 101 010110101 01 01 10 0 10 01 1 0010110101 01 01 10 101 1001010110 10 10 101 010101

Friday, September 12, 2008

Press ON

What is it the world up to? What does it wants from me? Why did it make living so difficult, Or did we? How do I react when the whole world treats differently? Times when parents lose trust, friends give up, relatives *some* as usual are least bothered. Times when there is not a single soul to tap your back and say "keep going", when you go unrecognized for all the good things you've done, when you're deliberately denied of privileges you deserve, when you are rejected by your fellow men, when you are ignored, when your own body fail to co-operate, when your health gives up, when there's nobody to care, not a soul mate to share, when there's nobody to walk with, or laugh along. When your bed turns out to be your only companion, and your pillow, the only one that has learnt the language of your tears,
when you tend to forget what day and date today is and when the whole world seems to spin only around you....

In all, when it is said that you are in "Perfect Ditch", don't forget that there is still little hope where you can cling on.

Bible says "
Fear not; for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God. I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10.

If not for Jesus, there is no reason worth enough to live in this world.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Practice Law?

I just completed reading a couple of novels written by John Grisham. Last one that I read was "The Partner", kept me glued to it until I reached the last page. I love reading books and this is the first of its kind - "Law". I never had a vast knowledge or bright view over that field, but Mr. Grisham, threw me into lime light after reading his collection. He kept me turning page after page, extremely fabulous and completely suspense packed.
After reading good volumes of Law, Firm, Court, Notice, Bills, Jury, etc etc... I happened to come across this piece of information which I found very interesting.

These are from a book called "Disorder in the American Courts", and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. Enjoy reading it!


ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reebok.
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-one-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: You're kidding me, right!?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, is that correct?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you shitt'in me? Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice, which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies(Post-mortam) have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m..
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
______________________________________
The Best of all

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, he could have been alive and practicing law.

I couldn't stop myself reading it over and over again.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Night Study - Climax

To be very clear, I would suggest you to read Night Study Part I first.

Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

I clearly knew that I am in real danger of being smacked by the people in t
he bus. My legs were swift enough to carry me away as fast as it can. Though it being a uphill road, I managed to run with my school bag on my shoulder. I was already 100 mts away from the bus. I didn't scramble the cards, as I still had hopes of continuing the game. I turned back to see my friends, there were not to be seen. I thought the commuters in the bus should have caught them, I was scared. The road was twisted and dense with trees, I know they were searching me. Out of curiosity to know about my friends, I stopped. turned back powered ON my torch light pointing towards the direction where the bus is. Right at the next moment, I heard the people yelling "there he is". Oops, did I let them know where I am? I didn't waste another second and started running as far as my legs could take me without a break. After reaching a particular point and when I felt that I was safe from the commuters sight, I sat down behind the road side block. I prepared myself as how to escape even if they are going to come here. There were tea bushes on the side of the road where I was sitting and I know it can provide me good cover in the dark and even in moon light.

I was gasping for breath, but managed to keep myself silent lest, letting them know my hide. I waited for my friends to come. When they reached, I interfered them. They didn't wanna speak with me and were very serious. After a dozen of sorry, they agreed to tell me what happened. Before my friends realized that something had gone wrong, I was already 40 mts away from them running at my top speed, the commuters caught them. After a long slew of scoldings, the commuters finally agreed to listen. As my friends didn't have a powerful torch and as the commuters had seen me running, they agreed to leave my friends. They also planned in such a way that from the next day when the bus comes, the driver will run the bus over me and my friends should hide when this happens. I was almost about to wet my pants. But being a gentle man, I tried my best to keep up my stature. My friends were so good that they agreed to save me from the bus.
That night I didn't have a good sleep. No, I didn't wet my bed.

Next day came, I was all prepared to face whatever is about to happen. After the night study we started our ususal walk and the wrestling card game. As we knew the time when the bus usually crosses that place, we started taking cover behind a tree and let the bus go. This started becoming our daily routine.

One day, while we were taking cover, we waited and waited but the bus never showed up. We were already running late. We finally decided to move, we thought the bus should have left much earlier than the usual time. We walked as fast as we can. My legs were trembling already. If ever the bus should come, I thought this will be my last day on earth. We were in no mood to play the game anymore, we just concenterated on all the head lights that were flashing on the road though they were just one or two.

When we still had 15 to 20 more minutes of walk, suddenly we heard the engine sound of the bus. Dhanu was the first to see the head light. As it is downhill for the bus, it was pacing at greater speed. We all knew that within 5 - 8 seconds the bus will find us. We didn't know what to do and had very little time to react. My legs gave up. I looked to the left, there were tea plantations. I shouted again, JUMP!

All three were down one above the other struggling between the tea bushes. Did we know that it was 10 ft. deep before we jumped? Still, lying flat, we saw the lights passing by, it wasn't the bus, but a local Jeep. Uh.... with a heavy sigh, I managed to get to my feet. We struggled again to climb up the road. We all had bruises all over the body. My arm hurted a lot. Both my friends gave me a staring look. This time I very well knew that dozens of sorry will not help. I kept my mouth shut and we walked home.

We never saw the bus after that. Later we came to know the timings have been changed. We also stopped our game as we lost most of the cards in that deadly jump and we started concenterating on our studies.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Night Study

January-March, 2001.
I was doing my 10th grade then. Crucial days of my education "they say", but did I ever care?
It so happened during this season, as we had to face the public examination by end of March, our school has started something called "night study" (evening study *these days*) which lasted from 5:30PM to 7:30PM. It was complete fun, I say! We were allowed to play from 4:30PM - 5:30PM and do you think we stopped after that? Staying back in school and pretending to study under the supervision of our most beloved teachers was really a wonderful experience. Well, the truth is, it really helped our final exams to a very great extent

We were given a perfect study plan. It had selected portions from each subject stretching for two days respectively. We had evaluation tests too at regular intervals.
Our Principal always stayed back with us supervising, helping, mentoring, and yes, big time scolding. Mervin Earnest, my best pal right from KG used to share the bench with me. The other guy who joined us was Albert Ravish. If ever our principal happened to see all three of us sitting in the same bench, she'll throw us to different corners of the classroom. I always had the gift of acting on perfection, pretending to be completely immersed into my book all the time when my Principal walks over. Sometimes this works out well as she'll think not to disturb us by changing places. Whew! OSCARS.

Our class ends at 7:30PM sharp. Girls were to evacuate the classrooms (and the campus) first, then followed by boys. But it never worked. :-D We did have our school bus arranged to drop us in our respective places, but were charged heavily. We always had an option to choose our own means. Nataraja Transport was mine - this is by which I commute to and from school, covering almost 5.5Km one way. Mervin opted for government bus. We both stayed almost at different poles. Albert joined with me, there were two other guys Dhanu and Jithu who joined us later. Did I mention that Nataraja Transport is nothing but walking?


Everyday, I brought my yellow torchlight as I had to walk through tea bushes on my way back home. Mer
vin on the other hand had manufactured a tiny rechargeable torch by himself using some rare kind of cells, common wires and bulbs. We almost spent most of our time in the study experimenting different combination of cells, bulbs and wires to make it burn as bright as ever possible. We were always successful to a great extent at every step. Dhanu and Jittu both had one torch to share.

It would always be
5 - 10 minutes past 7:30PM by the time we gathered for our journey back home. I would bid goodbye to Mervin at the bus stop and join the crew - Albert, Dhanu, Jithu and I. We discussed on various topics - science, technology, politics, astronomy, global peace, global warming, ecnomic crisis. Good that we didn't have a nuclear deal then.We argued over these all the while we walked and found it started becoming boring as days passed. One fine evening when we were walking half the way, Dhanu came with a brilliant idea of playing wrestling cards through out our journey. Wow! He's the man, I am GAME. He also promised to bring 3 brand new sets of cards that he had.

From the next day it turned to be an interesting journey. Knowing this, the number of members in our crew increased to grow in number. There were two more additions - Sunil and Kapil. Albert, Sunil and Kapil will take a diversion half the way; Dhanu, Jithu and I used to continue till the end. It really became interesting day by day, we started enjoyng our night study. The usual 40 minute journey started stretching up to 1 hour. Now that my parents might know the truth :-D

Almost a month passed like this. I was always waiting with eagerness for all of us to gather down in the road and begin our journey along with the game. Here starts the best part.
We didn't have street lights those days, there were very few in our way. The torchlight I used was a powerful one and I had a way of fixing it in my monkey cap making it resemble like a searchlight, this helped our game of wrestling cards.

At one particular stretch of the road, we always came across a mini-bus. I, being so mischievous started developing a habit of throwing light from my torch directly into the face of the mini-bus driver. We started having a bit of fun. Everyday, I made it a point to shine my torch at the drivers face. My friends warned me about this, but the mischievous guy within me didn't give up. He wanted to take a risk.
At times the driver would enact like driving the bus over us and we would get scared. Days passed by.

One fine day, the game was going at good pace. I had the good choice of cards, Undertaker, Kane, and all were mine. Just then, there came the bus! Mr. Mischievous in me woke up and got ready for the mission. Its time, I said to myself. I turned my face towards the bus and raised my head. Hope you remember the torch is seated in my head. Looking at the driver and giving him a broad smile, dramatically I let my torch shine in its glory, very bright right into the eyes of the driver. Wow, I enjoyed the moment when he struggled to hide his face from my burning light. I felt like a champion.

All of a sudden something struck my brain, the screeching sound of wheels brought me back to my senses and I realized something has gone bad. I could smell it. I turned back only to see the driver bringing the bus to complete halt with the screech of brakes. I could also see people gushing out of the bus with a loud commotion yelling at me. Thanks to my brain as it acted fast, my legs were already set on fleet. Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

To be Continued...