Back in action

2007-04-25T18:04:00.000+05:30

I've got a new home http://praveenpn.com

32 Strange Things You Likely Didn't Know

2006-11-29T11:22:00.000+05:30

1. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

2. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself. 3. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

6. A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

7. A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".

8. During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston's wearing a watch).

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries....)

10. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

11. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

12. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

13. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.

14. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.

15. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

16. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)

17. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

18. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

19. The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

20. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

21. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so the called themselves Motorola.

22. Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

23. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

24. Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

25. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

26. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

27. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

28. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!

29. The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.

30. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

31. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

32. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!

technorati tags:FACTS, TIPS, STRANGE, KNOWN

Bluetooth Rival

2006-10-04T14:00:00.000+05:30

Bluetooth rival unveiled by Nokia

A short-range, wireless technology that is more energy-efficient than Bluetooth has been unveiled by Nokia. Wibree is a new radio frequency technology than can work alongside Bluetooth but using just a fraction of the power.

AMAZING FACTS....

2006-10-03T10:59:00.000+05:30

AMAZING FACTS................

Coca-Cola was originally green.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that they start
with.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on
one row of the keyboard.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart
stops for a millisecond.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest
tongue twister in the English language.

If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a
sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history.
Spades - King David
Clubs - Alexander the Great,
Hearts - Charlemagne
Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle.

If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of
wounds received in battle.

If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural
causes.

What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and
laserprinters all have in common?
Ans. - All invented by women.

Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this?
Ans. - Honey

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

A snail can sleep for three years.

All polar bears are left handed.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each
salad served in first-class.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to
squirt blood 30 feet.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over
million descendants.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear
by 700 times.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different

And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

Now stop smiling and get back to work... :)

technorati tags:FACTS, TIPS, FUN, AMAZING

i-Pod Nano Pics

2006-09-13T11:17:00.000+05:30

Hands-on with the 2G iPod nano rainbow

iPod Nano..... Simply the best <- Flock

Busy...

2006-09-01T22:38:00.000+05:30

Busy Busy....
Gonna Be back soon with some good stuff here.

For all the Guitar lovers

2006-08-02T15:51:00.000+05:30

Nice one this time!!

Let's describe the whole earth!

2006-07-24T12:56:00.000+05:30

Wikimapia Wow!!!Its simply cool.
Went through the whole of goa; My school, Higher secondary, college & many more places, Home of course :) .
Thanks to the duo Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev who created this amazing project(Wikimapia) using Google Maps & wikipedia.
It has got a lot of fascinating features like search for any place in the whole world, add places, tags
It allows user's to find ,add, edit, delete places.One of the catchy features is the map on your page feature.

Apart from adding places, finding new one's and editing the old one's (A history is also maintained He he he :D); I liked the map on your page feature the most :).No more narrating direction's to friends.. Just trace & come.

Lot of features to write down, less time to write :)

High-Nerd

2006-07-13T13:42:00.000+05:30

That's my Nerd score

What about U :)...

Mumbai's local trains(incident)...

2006-06-23T16:28:00.000+05:30

I've always wanted to write about this.Mumbai local.
Aaaahhh.A long breath is what you require to get into the mumbai local(Specially during peak hours).
If you are somebody new to mumbai, then just forget of travelling in mumbai locals during the peak hours.Choose a weekend or might be a sunday to move around by the train.

This incident took place when i was travelling back home(yesterday) thats from Andheri(Workplace) to Thane(home).I was waiting on Platform No. 5 for the 7.47 p.m local(train) to arrive.As usual the train was late by 5 min to arrive.Unlike the other trains this train's starting point is dadar.Since it starts from dardar, majority of the people prefer to travel by this train(less crowded).
The train was arriving .. As usual i jumped in.. Oh Shit!! It was a First class bogie.Had to get out of this one & get into the usual bogie.By the time i could get out(Ah!! people squeeze & literally kill you) of the bogie & get into the general one, the general bogie was full, No place to sit :(.
I moved to the door(double the size of the normal train doors).Found two men sitting down(not on a seat) right near the door.I realised i had no place to stand near the door.Tried to get in the gap between the two sitting & there they go "Dont stand here!!!, we want air to come in, its hot", i said "ok..but i am just standing & this shouldnt block the breeze from coming in"..No use .
The man sitting behind me started pulling my leg behind.I told him to wait for a sec & i moved out from that place.I was standing right next to that man.
The train started moving... Somewhere in my mind i got a feeling that he should realise that what he had done was wrong.But i said "NO" to myself(it was my ego.. since i didnt get what i wanted).I waited by the side & watched the train speed up & slow down.Within a few moments it started drizzling, as the train went away from "dadar" it started raining heavily.It rained very heavily & both of them(the guys with whom i had argued) had to get their ass off the ground, they were standing.One of the guys looked at me and said "Tune toh hame such mein utha diya"(you made us get up from our place). I didnt utter a single word, i just smiled at them.Soon one of the guys realised he had got near to his destination.. he asked his friend "Woh ladka kahan hai"(where is that boy).His friend pointed his finger towards me.That guy said sorry to me.. I was surprised to hear that from him.I replied "Dont be sorry" & he got off the train.
Another two more stations & i was at my station(thane)...

Still wondering.. Was it a coincidence that it rained & the guys got off their place or ......

She's coming back on friday...

2006-06-13T17:52:00.000+05:30

Let me be clear..
"The title has nothing to do with a girl!!"
What the title means is Holiday..Yes Holiday.You guys might be wondering how often do i go on a holiday.If i get an opportunity to go on a holiday then why do i miss it.Especially when it is with my ex-college(+2) mates.
This time it was GOA.Yeh its one lovely place i never get bored of.Boarded my train from CST(Mumbai for those who dont know) at 11 p.m, it crawled for about 13hrs(actual journey = 10hrs).The rains had done the trick of delaying the trains by about 3 hrs.
By the time i reached home, it was 1.30 pm."Grhhh Grhhhh" goes my mobile, To my suprise it was my friend calling who had planned for a hangout the same evening.Without giving it a second thought i said YES.In minutes they were ready to pick me up.
We went to Baga beach, got lost in between, got back in track after sometime.Went to anjuna(No people though).Got tired of travelling & we planned to relax at calangute.The beach was less crowded as compared to the normal days.It was 9 in the night.Dropped in to a nearby restaurant had some good(Chicken - i love it) food.Tasted something called as "Chicken rang bhi rangi", had heard about the dish for the first time.It was really worth a try.Had a great dinner & returned back home.It was almost 11.45 in the night.
Football struck in my mind.Match was played between Argentina & CIV.Drogba sturck at the 82' in return to argentina's 2 goals.He made the argentines sweat.Suprisigly i saw the whole match.Went to bed at about 2.30 a.m.
Thats all for the satur(day).

Its 666 today

2006-06-06T10:56:00.000+05:30

Date : 6/6/06
Strip that "0" off and there you Go --> 666 .For some its a "day of the devils" but for the others its yet another Tuesday.

what's so special about the number 666, The number 666 is based on the "Book of Relevation", 666 is known as the "Number of the Beast".
Its being believed world wide that 6/6/06 is the day of satanic power.Its a warning for all the people who love to live but don't believe the devil.
There are predictions made by scholars worldwide.Some of them are

"Forty days from today will see a natural calamity like heavy rains, an earthquakes or an accident. Also heavy fluctuation in the share market and political problems loom large." -- Astrologer Pankaj Nagar

There are many such statements made by people worldwide.What catched my eye is a few of the ones below.

Mathematics
666 = "sum of the squares of first seven prime numbers"

Computers
666 = Port number used by Doom(Game) while playing against another player over the network(TCP)
666 = The Price of the first apple computer Apple I($666.66)

At the end of the day who cares, life goes on & on.If you are reading this then surely you are alive till now.Who knows what's there tomorrow, what if tomorrow never comes.

"Think as if you are going to live forever, live as if you are going to die tomorrow"

Orkut simply rocks!!

2006-06-01T15:44:00.000+05:30

Had heard about this buzz word(orkut) a year back.Never went in dept to know what the buzz was all about.

Some few days back i heard some guys talk about orkut.They were like "orkut is really good" the other one is lke "i've made 65 friends in a month" an so on.
This is what caught my attention.Obviously my next step was to google for orkut.Heck..got a hint that it was yet another "invitation only services" like gmail. Did a lot of digging in my Yahoo, MSN , Gmail friends list only to find that either people had deleted invitations(Which they had got from other's) or didnt have an orkut account; some of them were like, "Whats orkut!!". I even googled for invitations.All in vain.

About 3 hours later i get an IM from my frind saying "Do i send you an orkut invite".Yes was my immediate reply.

Started off with the registration process(looks like the site is developed in .NET, who cares),The registration procedure loked smooth & so was the site.The profile section was divided into three subsections(social, professional, & personal).The Registaration was time consuming but preety simple & understanding.

Started exploring for friends & was suprised to see the people i found in the network.I met a few of my old friends over the network.Was happy yo find them.

Talking about the features packed in orkut it was OK.The scrapbook feature is interesting.It would be great if they(the google guys) plan to integrate the gtalk with orkut.What orkut badly misses is a chat feature.Its hard to imagine anything without a chat interface.

Thats all for the day. Got something new know as 30gigs .They provide a massive storage limit of 30 GB.Yes 30 Giga Bytes...Whoooo.Mind you they are still a beta.
Will write about it next time.

I wish every day was a holiday...

2006-05-19T17:14:00.000+05:30

Ah... Relaxed.Hmmm
5 days leave + 4 extra days{2(sat, sun)} = ....yipeee thats 9 days!!!!
Oh i love being on a holiday.

So i'll be back to work by the next week thats by the 29th.
Why am i taking about work.I am on a holiday man.
Firstly i gotta go to cochin, yeh thats mumbai-goa-cochin.Once i am there i gotta go to all the relatives.Listen to their talk ehh.
It would be great if i get a change to play football.Its been almost a month i've kicked the ball.oh ill love it, if i get it.Football remids me that my favourites(Arsenal no doubt) lost to Barcelona 2-1. Didnt get a chance to see that match though sound's like the match was pathetic(the refree was favouring the barca's) .
Internet..Thats one thing to look around for, as long as u get access to my mail i am happy.Gonna have a tuff time without the internet.

A little bit of moving around the place, attend a religous ceremony.Thats more than five days gone.
Gonna be back home by monday.

Oh i gotta pack my stuff before i leave.
yup..

2006-05-17T12:46:00.000+05:30

Boy, I really had to squeeze in time to put up this post.

Starting of with BarCampMumbai, it was a tremendous success.Lot of great talks along with some lousy ones though.
The best part of the it was unlike the boring sessions it was something like shoot at site.Yeh..thats what made the barcamp mumbai more interesting that i ever thought it would be.

To start off the barcamp one guy comes up some mobile sms stuff, in the begning it started looking a bit boring(his voice could not be heard).But as the flow went on it picked up pace & there were loads of questions.Eventually it went off to a good end.

Hmmm(scratching head..) i dont remember exactly who followed next but i'll list the ones i remember.
Oh yes, then there were these two guys(kaustubh and shreyas) who gave a live demo of their internet radio.To be more precise its well known as INFINITY RADIO.I liked the idea of promoting indian rock(nobody seems to notice them), but this can suerly develop as a platform for all the rock starts who need more publicity.

Oh too much of radio stuff.Next on fire was something regarding tagging, he displayed a web 2.0 model(half working) :) tagsufer.The idea behind creating that hack was, he couldnt findin some data which he was searching over del.icio.us.Skipping the basics of searching can lead to new ideas.
Great..
Then thers one guy coming up and started speaking some shit.He was like i dont know .. well forget it.What i know is somebody came up and wrote a nice little note no the board whic read something like "Hacking EMACS Vadapav 3min....".Oh i said, gotta go for this.
hacking emacs even though the time was not sufficient the guy tried squeezing in.Great job though.
Well i returned to the main room i found that Atul's talk was over.OH Shit!!
Missed a great topic on "moblie computing".

Ther's smething called as neobinaries a web listing for most of the well known WEB 2.0 sites.The look and feel of te site was really good.Great work..Go to visit this site to know what they mean by neobinaries.

Coppermine is what the name is, but its a very old...... way of implementing a photogallery.free though.Hmm..Looks ok, not great.Something of a photoblog was also mentiond by Tariq sani.

Loads & loads of knowledge to gain from these geeks.

Oh i no more patience to write.
There were some more things like webaroo(they gave a DVD version of webaroo's wikipedia pack).some more talks on web 2.0, a yahoo guy sharing his piece of information,india 2.0, a presentation by some DJ ... i forgot his name.

Did i miss something, yehh thats the fabulous Lunch which was organised.

To summarise.Most of the topics were based on the web(web 2.0 almost all) and mobile related technologies.The best part was all the talks were about latest technologies or the upcomming one's.Some of them were outdated topic though.

Was a great day at IIT mumbai.Cheers!! Barcampmumbai.Looking forward to these type of events in future.

2006-05-12T17:49:00.000+05:30

Yet another weekend.
Yeh...Not the sleepy saturdays any more.Barcampmumbai (IIT Mumbai powai) is the place where i'll be on saturday.
Barcamp : Its more of participant's and less(actually none) of spectators.

What a great opportunity to meet all the geeks under a single roof.
Awaiting to check out people with different ideas, thoughts, technologies, etc.
Wel... better experienced than said.
Looking forward to some interesting topics like web 2.0, Next-generation Internet, Ajax and many more.

Hope i make it up this time.

Hey cool poster though..