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India has successfully launched its first spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 today. With the launch, India joined the elite club nations — USA, Russia, European Space Agency, China and Japan. It is definitely a huge step for India’s space ambitions. ISRO had announced a week back that they will do it today (October 22) I was hoping in particular they do it today, which happens to be my birthday!
As a surprise, I got a call from Radio Mirchi RJ “Anjana” about my purchase of land in Moon for my wife. I told her I did it because I thought it was a cool idea – a novelty. At the same time, listeners should be aware that there is currently no real value or legal framework for buying lands in Moon today, so this is a not an investment for future.
I was surprised by the first page of Economic Times newspaper today. First there was no colour it was all Black, then the headlines. For about 15 to 20 minutes I was left scratching my head trying to make sense of the headlines I was reading and re-reading.
The headlines were:
- Sensex hits year’s low at 2832 points (I even checked the latest stock market figures in TV after reading this)
- Now, pay your bills via ATM (haven’t this feature been there for years now? )
- Infosys income rises 115% to Rs.98.43 cr (Something was wrong here, they do more than that figure in a week now)
- Incoming calls are now free and Rs.4 /min for outgoing calls (This is when I started becoming suspicious)
- Crude Near $10 (Now I know for sure this is a prank, looking up the mast-head I saw the date as September 1998)
It turned out to be a prank by Economic Times to “Commemorate 10 years of the Economic Times Awards” and the great journey Indian Inc. has made in the last 10 years. Very nice work by ET, kudos to their team who imagined and pulled off this coup.
Bill Gates is my inspiration in technology and I love Jerry Seinfeld shows, so what more better than seeing both of them together in a hilarious clip. It doesn’t matter it was a commercial from Microsoft – did it?
[Watch the low-bandwidth version here]
Watch the above clip which is the first of a series of advertisement campaigns coming from Microsoft featuring Jerry Seinfeld. If this is the answer to hugely successful "Mac vs Windows" advertisements from Apple, I think Microsoft is on the right path. I think the beauty of this pilot is that it has no direct references to Windows Vista or any Microsoft Products (Read here what The Register has to say on this).
I am very happy when I first heard the news in Radioone while driving to work in the morning now. India’s Abhinav Bindra has won a gold in men’s 10-metre Air Rifle event in Beijing.This is India’s first ever Olympic gold in any individual event and ninth in total. So far the nine gold medals have been won in group events like Hockey. India is growing by every other parameter in the last 50 years – whether it is eradicating poverty, education, economy, Nuclear Power, IT Services, etc. but it was a shame that India hasn’t performed well in sports. We are all celebrating this in our company now with some Cadbury’s chocolates.
(Image Courtesy: NDTV and DD Sports Live)
 I was in Bangalore the other day, there I saw a different type of Aldrop used to lock the main gate in one of the house – don’t ask me why I noticed it!.
Normally the Aldrops (which are bolt latches with a provision for putting a padlock) will be vertical and you lift the handle and move it sideways (mostly right hand side to open) with the padlock in vertical orientation. This one that I saw was oriented differently – you lifted the latch up and down vertically with the padlock in horizontal (lying down) position. Thinking hard with my little brain I couldn’t figure out the advantage of this model – please post in the comments if you know the advantage.
While writing this post I had to find out the name of this device, I was wondering whether to call it Gate Latch or Bolt Latch or Gate Bolt. After few searches I found an item in Amazon with the name “Aldrop”, then after few more searches confirmed that this is how it is called in India.
If you are from India (or Asia) and you happen to visit USA, in the first few days itself you are likely to notice the amount of food (and other stuffs) that is wasted here in this country. For example, today I was in a nearby Safeway (Grocery store) and I couldn’t find a small (100 Grams) pack of Potato Chips. Most of the time, it is because it is cheaper to buy in bulk, much more than what you need and throw the rest. This is encouraged by sellers, you only get everything in really big packs – whether it is socks, handkerchiefs, envelopes, pens or Coffee or Popcorn. In my many visits over last one decade to this nice country this is one thing I wish they can do without. The good thing is that in recent years there is a very slow but sure awareness growing about this, especially due to environmental concerns.
Having said the above, it is also in this country that you see many grass root movements to encourage reuse, donations, etc. It does exist, but it has to expand to general population in large. I was impressed to see few years back Used Clothes Donation Bins (like the ones you see below) in many apartment complexes and malls. They normally place these strategically near to garbage dumps so that even at the last minute before throwing people are reminded to donate and make a difference to the life of a poor. If you are India – you can donate to a near by orphanage like Udhavum Karangal and the likes, all of them accept wholeheartedly any donations.
 
When posting this, I remembered my grandfather’s saying "Don’t buy anything just because it is being sold cheap" (or) in other words "buy only what you need when you need it"
Yahoo! has released an exclusive Women portal called Shine. You might be wondering why I am writing about a Women site!. It is to highlight a small innovation they have done in the site. Most of the times you use a newly released application or a website you may not be aware of all the features. As a result you will end up using only 20% of the features. To overcome this, Yahoo! in Shine has come up with a good idea of showing “help balloons” the first time. The balloons auto-scroll to various sections below and introduce you (this negates the complexity associated of scrolling to novice users). To top it, they don’t show it (by remembering with a cookie I suppose) the next time and irritate you. Check out the screen shots and judge for yourselves.
Yahoo! seems to be working overtime to complete as much as they can before the (almost) inevitable takeover from Microsoft. This week they released the first meaningful (and hence useful) map service for India. Earlier none of the three (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) had any useful data on India for maps. I read in blogosphere that Google was active in data collection by sponsoring with mapping instruments and paying volunteers for plotting Indian cities. That’s about it. Now Yahoo! Maps for India seems to have beaten the other two by significant points. Go check it out.
 
I was impressed by Yahoo! maps features like Auto Fare, Walk the Route and above all "Vernacular" languages. I got a beautiful and correct directions in "Tamil" from our Habibullah Road office to Lakshmi Colony office in Chennai.
 The first motorized vehicle I learned driving (after learning Bicycle) was my father’s Bajaj Scooter with Gear. This was a Vespa style scooter with engine on one side and gears on the left hand steering bar. The trick to learn in riding one of these is that you should keep only your left feet on ground whenever you are stopping as the right feet is needed all the time near the brake (the brake is near right feet). This should have been 15 years before and I was driving it for just few years before I moved to other vehicles. This is one of the most dangerous two wheelers on the planet, as even in medium speeds it is impossible to control it from skidding especially because of the engine (and hence the weight) on one side.
So why I am writing about this here?. I became nostalgic about this today, when I rode my Uncle’s scooter (it was the same Bajaj Chetak model that my father had) for a short distance from my home to a restaurant to have my breakfast. I was left marvelling at how our human brain works – for almost 10 years I have never rode a geared scooter (for that matter hardly I drive a two wheeler nowadays) and when I got on to one today it was easy. Instantly I remembered how to operate one and I was up and running. If only computers and software applications worked like this (human being) we all would be better off…
My wife keeps complaining that I am not creative in my gifts to her. So for our wedding anniversary last November I wanted to gift her something out of the world. What more can be more befitting than few "Acres" of land in Moon as a gift.
Few weeks back I read in Ananda Vikatan magazine about sites in the Internet for you to buy lands in the moon. So I went to one of the sites LunarRepublic referred in the article. The site is supposed to be run by a Society based in USA which aims to promote moon exploration and space science. The society is not owned or sponsored by any government so its legality is definitely in doubt. According to a UN resolution, no nation or individual has rights over moon so technically speaking your claim over land in moon may not be valid in future. All said, I found the idea interesting and the idea certainly novel for a gift, so I went ahead and bought two "Acres" of land in Moon in an area called as Bay Of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium) at Rs.2940 (~ USD 32/Acre) in my wife’s name. Today I got the certificate from USA brought from there by my co-worker coming to India.
I am going to give this to my wife in the evening and I am keeping my fingers crossed as to whether she will feel happy for this gift (or) I am going to get it royally from her for wasting Rs.2940 on something close to being a rip off 
Registered claim of land in moon |
Satellite image of the land I bought in moon |
Anyways, the certificate (shown above) and the satellite image make me feel I got my worth for the money I paid!
Update: When I gave it to my wife, it was more of an anti-climax. The response from her was neutral & cold. I wish I had used the money on some "worldly" items.
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