Please dont laugh at me

For last few weeks I am unusually calm. I have been trying to overcome my three particular problems which I am able to recognize. Two of them are minor and I am not worried about them much. But the last one is occupying my mind all the time. I cannot throw it out of my mind. I know the root of this problem but cant help with it.

Anyway it was not the above paragraph why I entitled the post. Infact I have decided to learn the French language (now this is the moment when you are not to laugh at me:) I don't recall that what has made me to do this. I believe when I first read "Beneath The Pyramid" by Christian Jacq, which is originally written in French, I thought something about French language. And again Da Vinci Code re-affirmed the decision.

I have downloaded a free French Tutorial which provides basic knowledge about the language.

Exploring BookSheleved Wiki

I have been exploring and trying to understand BookSheleved for last two days. It is one of the Wiki sites which provides free-to-edit book reviews by users. The site is completely editable. User can give/edit reviews of books. You can create your own webpage with just a few keystrokes (No HTML at all) , where you can list your current-recent-proposed-incomplete readings , about yourself or anything you want. Here is my page. If you have used editing function in wikipedia you will understand the method to edit the pages.

My BookShelf

I am still existing

I have been too lazy to write anything recently. Meanwhile I visited Mumbai during the last week of the 'rainy' August. I was confined to my Hotel at Powai for 6 days due to road closure.

I had never seen so much rain with high velocity of wind in my life. It was nearly 950 mm in first two days . In begining I enjoyed but after seeing news footages of the vast devasation in Mumbai on TV I understood its seriousness.

Upload image to blogger.com

Finally blogger.com has allowed its users to upload image to its server. It will make blogging experience much better and expressive.

CustomizeGoogle Search for Firefox

This seems to be the best and most useful extension released recently. With CustomizeGoogle you can customise Google search page where you will find links to other 10 search engines using the search keyword, and interestingly you can remove GoogleAd from the Google Search page.

Great Writers of The World : Part 2

Charles Dickens [1812-1870] (Oliver Twist)

One of the most famous English writer of all times. I have read (or half-read) a few novels during my college years. I remember to read "Great Expections" many time over ,ah to just get more marks, failing to appreciate the master piece truly.

Critics appreciate one of his novel , which is in my reading list, "Oliver Twist"as under:

"Relatively to the other works of Dickens Oliver Twist is not of great value, but it is of great importance. Some parts of it are so crude and of so clumsy a mlodrama, that one is almost tempted to say that Dickens would have been greater without it. But even if he had been greater without it he would still have been incomplete without it."

A good many of his work available on-line

Contd...

Great Writers of The World : Part 1

Hello everybody, this hot summer has made me lazier.

I recently placed an order for a pocket book titled "Great Writers of The World" providing brief introduction to the some great writers of the world and their literary works. Following is the list of the writers along with a book of each respective writer , which I intend to read, as it is said to be his/her greatest work. I am publishingthe list to remember my goals for extra reading.

1. Arthur Canon Doyle. (THE SIGN OF FOUR)
Famous for his legendry detective character Sherlock Holmes, and the story narrator Dr. Watson who is believed to be resemblance of the author himself.

I have purchased the entire work of Doyle a couple of years back very cheaply. I believe copy rights on the works of the author have expired and are available to public domain. (UPDATE : Stories of Sherlock Holmes available here)

SIDE NOTE : I have read somewhere that the so called famous statement of the detective "Elementary, my dear Watson" has actually never appeared in the stories. (I will need to check this)

Contd....

CRY : Child Relief and You

CRY stands for Child Relief and You. CRY is an Indian non-government organisation (NGO) that works towards restoring basic rights to underprivileged Indian children.

CRY was started by seven young people in December 1978. One of them, an airline purser called Rippan Kapur, was the moving spirit behind the whole thing. Their objective - to do what they could to improve the situation of underprivileged Indian children. Their first office - Rippan's mother's dining table.

Unusually, the founders of CRY chose not to found a grassroots-level implementing organisation working directly with and for underprivileged children. Instead, they opted to make CRY a link between the millions of Indians who could provide resources and the thousands of dedicated fieldworkers struggling to function for lack of them. They saw their role as enablers and in so doing created an institution that is a unique model of a community movement that takes responsibility for its weakest and most vulnerable members and motivates and catalyses change on their behalf.

CRY focuses on the 4 basic rights of children. These were defined in 1989, by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights treaty to which 191 countries, including India, are signatories.

the right to survival - to life, health, nutrition, name and nationality
the right to development - to education, care, leisure, recreation
the right to protection - from exploitation, abuse, neglect
the right to participation - to expression, information, thought and religion

CRY works to ensure that these rights are available to all categories of underprivileged children, including street children, girl children, children bonded in labor, children of commercial sex workers, physically and mentally challenged children and children in juvenile institutions. 26 years after it began work, CRY has made a profound difference to the lives of more than 1.37 million Indian children, by channelising the resources of over 125,000 individuals and organisations. In doing so, it has shown that lasting change happens when individuals believe it can happen and do what they can to make it happen.

Holidaying

No I haven't taken holiday at my pleasure but forced to spend mini vacation on this weekend. This month has nearly 12 holidays, it is lot of fun, isn't it?

But really we ,in India , are having too many holidays, isn't it simply criminal waste of billions of human hours.

I was looking for list of public holidays to see how many public holidays we, Indians, have every year. Then I saw this messgae where participants were fighting about why Gujarat Govt. Cancelled holiday of Good Friday. There was a flow of criticism on CM of Gujarat about aggression and intolerance towards minorities like Muslim and Christians, for canceling the holiday on Good Friday.

Then the thread went to chaos when someone promptly wrote , from USA, that even USA is not having holiday on Good Friday or Easter.

We have holiday on Sunday and there are public holidays. Again High Courts and supreme Court relaxes on every Saturday also. Lower courts and revenue departments are also closed on 2nd and 4th Saturday.

We poor India loose few of our great politician every year and entire nation mourn for them for a day or two, depending on their greatness.

Hi

I have dropped here to just say Hi!

Last week of the March was quite depressing for me at work and home too. Now I feel somewhat relaxed. For last few days I played C&C and SIMS most of time to recover from depression.

Bye

Session Saver for Firefox

When I switched to Firefox from Opera, one of the features I missed most in Firefox was Session Saver. In Opera when you close browser it saves the last opned pages which are restored automatically when Opera re-starts.

I just found an extension which can save sessiosn ,like opera, even during crash.

You can find here the installation link. In case if the link is dead, try finding "SessionSaver" at Firefox extension site.

Procrastination :(

I do procrastinate a lot and worst part of it that I am aware about this. I try to procrastinate a job until its deadline , then do it in hurry.

I procrastinate mostly such job, for which I am of opinion that it would be failure or it would not turn out as I expect.

Last month, I completed job on the last day of the deadline (28/02/2005) , which I could easily have completed in the first week of the month. I delayed it for entire month, and that too deliberately, believing that I have entire month to complete the job:(

I try to find excuse to postpone such job like I have another important job to do or I have plenty of time to do etc.,

I have tried different method to overcome it. First when I believe there is too many tasks at hand (only due to I postponed them) I make a TO DO list of pending jobs and give numbers to the jobs according to priorities. That works well. (Honestly, sometime I even postpone preparing TO DO LIST)

Recently I am trying different one. I simply concentrate on any one job, forgetting - not bothering the other jobs while first is not complete. I find this one easier. One job at a time.

But best of all is to never to post pone anything ( that I cannot do)

I found this really good article on procrastination and how to overcome it.

I want to get rid of it.

Is it hoax or real happening?

I just received following e-mail.

=========================
Dear Friends,

Kindly take a couple of minutes to go thru this mail. If useful may advise others also .

This happened in Paris recently and may happen elsewhere also.

A few weeks ago, in a movie theatre, a person felt something poking from her seat. When she got up to see what it was, she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying "You have just been infected by HIV".

The Disease Control Center (in Paris) reports many similar events in many other cities recently.

All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines. We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation.

All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use.

A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.

We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help! Just think about saving a life by forwarding this message.

Please, take a few seconds of your time to pass along.

===========================

What you think of it? is it rumour or just another internet hoax ?

Please give your feed back, I will delete the post if it is a hoax. Spread the if it is true.

I am trying to find the story through google.

UPDATE!! It turned out to be a hoax check this

Mobile mystery

While reading a post at Bill's blog about funny mobile incident, I recalled an incident ,not funny but mysterious, happened with my cell phone .

At one night , I was working (blogging to be honest) late on computer, suddenly a person known to me called and asked me if I had given miss call on his cell? I said no, why I need to call someone at mid-night. I was surprised so I checked my cell to see "last dialed" numbers but his number was not found, and I knew I had never dialed that number from my cell, or it was not on my speed dial key, so there was no possibility of accidental dialing of that number.

Next day morning I checked his cell and he was right, there was my number displayed . I am still confused about the incident, I don't know the reason how it happened.

Is it possible to receive someone call when your number is dialed from that number ?
Is it server problem of Mobile Service Provider ?
Or is it warm or virus ?

I will pour more information if you need to solve the mystery.

Do you have any Gmail invitation left?

Hello there, I was so busy (or lazy, not sure) last week I did not post anything.

One of my friend like to have the Gmail account, I tried to search few blogs for Gmail invite, but I couldn't find and therefore I have posted this request.

Kindly let me know if you have any invitation left, and please feel free state any condition you have to have the invite ;)

Thanks in advance.

Wallpaper

As you can notice I have added a wallpaper to the background of the blog.

• Tell me how does it look?
  
• Does it match with the rest of blog?
• Does it slow down the blog on your compute?
  

I shall give the credit of the background image to Grsites. The site has thousands of background images, web graphics, fonts totally free. It also allow you make your button and logo online using their images and fonts. It really free and I highly recommend this site, give it a try.

FireFox

Just a couples of day ago SunGrooveTheory commented about how tech-savvy I am. Actually this blog was meant for testing grounds for new scripts and templates. But in time many friends like you left encouraging comments on this blog and so it has become my favorite blog.

Today I downloaded Firefox. I have been using Opera for quite some time, but Opera is not compatible with some features particularly of blogger.com. I was not able use the feature of Post creating in blogger.com as it was not available through Opera. With Firefox it seems perfect and provide all the function.

Profile Photo

I have seen many bloggers using their own photo and many using any other graphics to their profile. So I thought to put a pic on my profile. After a long thought I selected Jughead Jones to represent me.

Blogexchange.net

Blogexchange.net works like link2blogs.com. It operates on a 1:1 exchange ratio, meaning every time someone visits your site, you get a credit. In return, your button (88x31) will be displayed on other member blogs according to the number of credits you have.

Happy Valentine Day

LOVE YOU ALL