Sidney Sheldon dies at the age of 89.

vacation.co.in (தமிழ்.co.in)

vacation.th (จดโดเมน.สติ้ )

backtowork.com

If you like to solve the difference between 2 photos, then here is a neat puzzle for you…

Find it PhotoPuzzle

You need to find the difference, and click on it.

Wired invited readers to submit 6 word short stories (Sci-Fi). Fascinating exercise! (I once did a 5 sec short car commercial :)

My Fav Shorts from the contest (Link):

“Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?”
“Easy. Just touch the match to”
“Help! Trapped in a text adventure!”
“He read his obituary with confusion.”
“Steve ignores editor’s word limit and”
“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”

I wish I knew about this, some of my own:

Scifi:
“Lost Love, Searched everywhere, found 404″
“Hello World, Hello?”
“Tired? Check Batteries before calling 911″
“[space] the last frontier”
“This month, my word quota is”

Drama:
“She practiced grammer, but not spellengue”
“Amensia? Remember to… nevermind”

Horror:
“She ran, but got ran over”
“AB+ needed. For Table 4″

ahh, I give up…

If you are in Hyderabad, this is one event you can’t afford to miss. A long list of celebrity speakers are attending (including my fav Professor at IIT). I’d love to be a fly in the wall of this interesting conference. I hope they have a live/offline web telecast.

Organized by UsabilityMatters.Org, this is a 9 day exhibition starting Nov 14th in Hyderabad, India. Check out the Event Calendar for lots of interesting contests and keynote addresses.

Contests which are open to all:

1. Boycott Bad Design Prize (prizes $700)
   If the ketchup bottle cap making a mess on your table? Is the Freezer door handle hard to grab? – Send in your examples of bad design with a photograph, and those products will be put to shame in the conference, as they deserve to be.
2. International Cartoon Contest (prizes worth $1,300)
   Compete with International Cartoon stars in this juried contest. 

Check out their blog at: http://www.usabilitymatters.org/blog/

666 >:)

Skype today has made all phonecalls inside US free (including landlines)…. They say its till the end of the year – but I am sure it will be extended or another competitor will spring up…

Link on how to Make a phonecall using Skype

Dont like talking to a computer mic? Skype has ordinary phones too..

Just like old serial killers who used to keep a journal for recording their macabre thoughts, a Japanese teen has been using her blog to keep track of the progress (or lack thereof) of her poisoned victims. First she started with small animals before moving on to her mother!

Following her idol, the british serial killer Graham Young (a.k.a Teacup Poisoner), she fed her victims slow-killing poison and watched them die. Being a bright chemistry student, she chose thalium for poisoning her mother and blogged about how it affected her system. She also photobloged her mother as she progressively slipping into coma (where she remains to this day).

Some of her blog entries:

“It’s a bright, sunny day today, and I administered a delivery of acetic thallium”

“Today mother has deteriorated. She has been complaining of a worsening pain in her leg and has now become immobile.”

“My mother will go to hospital tomorrow and nobody has yet found out what the cause is. To my regret, she is not covered by good insurance, so life will be a little difficult”

“I took a photo of her today as I did yesterday. My brother said I had a penetrating stare and that he was horrified.”

She was caught last October, and a court in Japan has sent her to a correctional home as she is still a 17 year old.

The most shocking thing in this episode is: “She did not hold a grudge against her mother – she just wanted to do an experiment.”

Deadly!

Some frequent business travellers complain that they almost live in a hotel or an airplane. But Francie Rehwald, owner of a successful Mercerdes-Benz dealership in CA, will have the rare distinction of making that boast – not figuratively, but literally. She is building a house made entirely out of a scrap 747-200 jet!

After buying an old TowerAir jet ($100K), the builders began the task of cutting the jet down with medical precision to carve out individual rooms, and other living spaces. The nose became the meditation chamber, and the majestic wings will be the roofs, the distinctive camel hump of 747 will become the loft, and the toilets, I guess, will used as toilets (pretty uncomfortable toilets for a $2million dollar home

FAA has asked her to paint special numbers on top of her home, so as not to alarm commercial pilots flying overhead mistaking it for a crashed jumbo jet.

Total cost? $2 million, still a bargain considering a 747 jet costs about $200mill.

Now she can boast “Yeah, I own a 747 jet, its parked right in my house!”

Tony Scott’s highly stylized MTV edited Domino is like reading a whole page of text while its blinking and changing colors. The camera is always moving, and the whole movies looks like someone behind the camera was playing with all video effects (polarize, solarize, flip, slowmo, fastmo, flash cut, flash forward cut, B&W, mirror…and the whole kitchen sink) and ran it thro filters in Photoshop.

I liked his style on Man on Fire – but this is too repetetive!

Good for people with ADHD.

3/5

Times of India reports that a group called ’World Federation of Tamil Youth’ have nomiated Jaya for Noble prize! – that shows both the rotting journalistic standard of TOI and also marks the return of JJ workshipping. I dont know who these clowns are – but they sure appear to be a hardcore JJ fangroup - as results show 90% of their prizes/nominations are awarded to JJ.

For a US based group the seemed to be very ill informed. The right to submit proposals for the Nobel Peace Prize, based on the principle of competence and universality, shall by statute be enjoyed by:

1. Members of national assemblies and governments of states;
2. Members of international courts;
3. University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;
4. Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
5. Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;
6. Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
7. Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Next what? – they nominate her for Oscars? mmm… on second thoughts maybe the Rassies

I have used Remit2India (Times of India Group) a few times to send money to India. Today I got an offer mail and I just cannot believe their audacity to advertize this offer!

Dear Ram,

We appreciate the trust you have placed in Remit2India and we believe that your patronage should not only be recognized, but also rewarded. That is the reason we have designed a programme exclusively for you as mentioned below.

If you send money using Remit2India on or before 31st January, 2006(IST), you get

What you Send(USD) = What you Get Extra(Paise)
1000 – 2500 = 0.05 Paise
2501 – 5000 =0.10 Paise
5001 & above = 0.25 Paise

Hurry! Send Money Now.

Yes – they are offering me 25paisas for sending $5000 dollars!

PS:
For those sending regular dollars back home, the new SBI Global Link offers the best exchange rate.

For $1001 (I found that you usually get a better rate if you send $1001 instead of $1000) on today’s exchange rate with no extra fees [Online ACH transfer)]

Money2India [ICICI Bank] = Rs 43.69
Remit2India [Times Group] = Rs 43.71
StateBank GLS [SBI]= Rs 43.89
Market Rate = Rs 44.04

Obviously rates change daily – but I’ve usually found them to consistent in their markups

Disney buys Pixar for $7.4billion!

Eh, not bad for Steve Jobs, who bought Pixar for a mere $10million from Lucas. No good animation movies has come out of Disney for the most part of the last decade… and it kinda survived by piggybacking on Pixar’s success, distributing a string of mega blockbusters (Toy Story, Bugs Life, Nema, Monsters etc). Last year the Disney broke ties with Pixar – everyone thought it killed its Golden egg laying Goose – now it bought its own Goose.

Hope it doesn’t mess up the merger with a ‘Golden Egg Omelet’ or a ‘Goose Briyani’.

At the upcoming Las Vegas CES, the biggest Electronics show in the planet google is set to unwrap this helper robot. Understandably they have been tight lipped about their offerings – but this news comes straight from the top.

1) Google PC
2) Google Desktop
3) Google Robot!

Yes, you read it right. Its a Linux based Robot running on Lithium-Ion batteries (8hour charge). It is to be priced around $499. Sorry no trial versions.

Who is that reliable source?

None other than the tech czar Bill Gates himself. He is quoted in MSNBC as “Google is coming out with a robot that will cook hamburgers”. Since Microsoft has no plans to release any competing products, he has encouraged everyone to embrace this new offering. Wow – a rare demonstration of corporate brotherhood. I am as excited as him.

Its one of those things – you keep flipping the channels and you catch 10secs of something and continue watching it for hours. That’s what happened to me over the weekend. I just fell in love with this HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was spontaneous – it was funny, it was just so freaking fresh!

I just can’t curb my enthusiasm for it.

Its a show which is shot without a script. First TV show to use Cinéma Vérité (a style of Filmmaking like Dogme95 but more similar to Zen Filmmaking). Where all actors are given outlines, and they just push the story forward. Two camera guys follow the actors around with a digital betacam, and they just keep improvising. Since no one knows what the other guy is going to say – the reactions are genuine, dialogues real and finally acting – acting? what acting?.

Out of the Blue

The angels from the sky returned today.

Pushing the envelop further to distance itself from nearest rivals Yahoo Maps, Mapquest and MSN Mappoint – Google boldly goes skyward to Moon!

Zoom further and you will see what the US government has been hiding from us all along! Yes, the very fact that moon is made of cheese!