FTP for Mac users - Cyberduck all the way!

Found a great FTP software for Mac called Cyberduck. It is  a very easy to use freeware with option to 'donate'. Great piece of software for Mac users who are web designers or need to transfer files through File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Recommend it!

The Grapefruit sized Universe!

10^-32 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe was the size of a grapefruit. Everything that ever was, is, or ever shall be was already inside it! I'm talking every galaxy, star, planet, person, animal, plant on this world or any other was already there in the form of pre atomic energy. Think about that! So, we are truly one!

Great sites for photos & prints - Flickr & Snapfish

Discovered two great sites in the last few days. One is Flickr - a site used for uploading and sharing photos. It is a site owned by Yahoo. But what I really liked about this, is that you can upload photos and share them easily with people. You can also add your pictures to a stream of Getty Images, which also has a tie up with Flickr, so that if Getty Images likes a picture you took, they can license it from you (and they can pay you as well).

I also really liked the link-up between Flickr and Snapfish, which is a site where you can print your pictures that you have uploaded onto Flickr. Not only can you print photo prints of varying sizes - you can also print your photos on cups, keychains and other things. Plus you can design and print your own custom made collages, calendars, photobooks, notebooks, etc.

If that weren't enough, you can also have your photos converted into works of art by having them printed on canvas in varying sizes.

All this at a pretty affordable price. Since Snapfish has an Indian site as well, the prices are in Indian Rupees and the delivery is pretty efficient and quick. The canvas print I had made of one of my Lakshmi Statue pictures was nicely packed in a tubular package perfect for canvases.

This is the Lakshmi photo that I had printed on canvas.

The bit.ly advantage

Have you had problems sometimes with long links that do not fit into your Twitter box? If the answer is yes, then you must try out http://bit.ly .

This is a utility used to shorten and share your links. The best part is that the same shortened link can be used in your Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Website, etc.

Visit the site and create a free account. I also recommend to use the bit.ly sidebar option that can be integrated with your browser. This is a very good way of creating a shortened link wherever you are on the Net instantly (without going to the bit.ly site). This can be integrated with your twitter account, so when you click the bit.ly sidebar, it opens a window which has the shortened link and allows you to write upto 140 characters to post on Twitter. It works great.

I really recommend bit.ly. Go for it!

India and the US going up a rising escalator

P062710PS-0397
Originally uploaded by The White House

This photo captures the rising nature of Indo-US relations.

President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ride an escalator on the way to their bilateral meeting during the G20 Summit in Toronto, Canada, Sunday, June 27, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Poor drainage leads to wastage of water, reservoir needed

Yesterday, there was a deluge in Delhi. Today's newspapers report that 11 people across the city died from walls collapsing and electric shock. Roads were jammed for hours and hours and many parts of the city were under a few feet of water.

It is unacceptable that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), Delhi's two civil bodies are not punished for this debacle. There is no reason on Earth why Delhi's civic bodies cannot do their job in an efficient and transparent manner.

With a complete disregard to the principles of town planning, we have neglected completely to make an efficient drainage system which would lead rainwater into some kind of natural or man-made reservoir.

What is sad about yesterday's deluge is that not only did we get 51 mm of rain that caused havoc, most of it has gone waste. There may be a few environmentally conscious citizens who were able to capture some of the rainwater and I hope they did.

I hope that the authorities will learn something from this and repair the drainage systems and create a water flow network that will allow excess rainwater to be stored and not wasted.

We need desalination plants

The Government of India and every government for that matter needs to subsidise the construction and operation of desalination plants. This will ensure that we have enough water to last for centuries. 

Simply saying that desalination plants are too expensive is not acceptable. 

Also, as far as India is concerned, water should be on the Union list and not a state subject. It is too important a resource to suffer at the hands of bickering state politicians.

Fun at Bangalore airport

I'm currently at the Bangalore airport with my dad. Our flight is delayed, but I don't mind because the airport is pretty good. Lots of eating places and good beer! A great bookshop to boot. A nice airport is fun in its own kind of way and having a laptop is a must. I am connected via my Reliance Broadband + and am able to communicate with the world.

I showed my dad some stuff on Twitter and Facebook. I took a few pictures and uploaded it. He was amazed at how technology has advanced so much that you can take a picture and upload it from anywhere and in seconds the whole world has access to it.

Various beliefs about Jesus in early Palestine

In response to a question by Rev. Vinod John about various 'Jesus movements' in early Palestine...




Well it is true that there were a plurality of Jesus movements in early Palestine. James the Elder (traditionally believed to be Jesus' brother, also son of Mary) was believed to be the head of one group who considered Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and believed that he was a prophet and not the son of God (The Jewish Messiah so to speak was never thought to be the 'Son of God' in an exclusive sense but rather like the way it says in the Bible that you will be called the 'sons of God'.)

One faction was supposedly headed by Mary Magdalene and was more Essene in nature and belief). 


Then you have Peter - Paul group, which actually created the concept of Jesus as exclusive 'Son of God'. It was this faction which prevailed and then later on in the 4th century A.D. prevailed upon Constantine to make Christianity the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire. 


It was around this time that the Council of Nicae was convened and certain books were canonised into the Bible as we know it today. Many concepts that existed prior to this, most notably the widespread belief in reincarnation was declared 'heresy'. It was also during this time that Jesus was 'deified' and declared to be God. This was never believed for the first three centuries of Christianity.

Mars and water - Big News and Good news!!

Space agencies have discovered that Mars was once covered by an ocean. This is news that was much speculated upon and had a high degree of probability. But now it has been confirmed.

This is great news as it really makes two important things closer to becoming a reality:

1. The discovery of extraterrestrial life - as it is now confirmed, Mars had an ocean a long, long time ago. While we still do not have proof that life of any kind existed there, the general rule is: where there is water, there is life. So, now with both the moon and Mars having been confirmed as having water (the moon even today, Mars in the past) and perhaps Europa of Jupiter and Enceladus of Saturn as well, we have found that water may not be as rare a commodity in the universe as we once thought. This discovery alone, highly increases the probability of life outside of Earth. Perhaps it is now just a matter of time before we have hardcore evidence.

2. Since there are more places where water is or was, it also increases our chances of being able to colonize these worlds in the future. Colonization is an absolute must for the longevity of the human race.

Let's see where we find water next.

Recreating Nostalgia

Recently my aunt Asha turned 60 years old. It was an occasion where most members of my family - aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews - came to New Delhi from different parts of India and the United States.

For over ten days, there were lots of parties, dinners, outings, etc. I had fun like I haven't had in a while. It was great to meet most of my cousins after a long time.

But what struck me the most is what I'll call - recreating nostalgia. You see, my cousins and I spent a lot of time together when we were growing up. That was the time when most of them lived in Delhi and some were scattered in different parts of India. Every summer they would come to Delhi (sometimes I would go to Bombay). But those days are the days I remember with a pang of nostalgia many times. I'm talking about the late 1980s early 1990s.

But over the past fortnight, I felt as is we were 'recreating nostalgia'. Because not only did we relive those fun days of being teenagers and early twenty-somethings, we also seemed to strengthen the bond between us so that we will continue to have better days ahead to remember. We recreated our days of nostalgia and at the same time created another moment in our lives that we will look back nostalgically in the future!

On Stephen Hawking's concern about aliens

In the vastness of the Cosmos, we are just a "pale blue dot" as Carl Sagan said. With over 400,000,000,000 (400 Billion) stars in the Milky Way Galaxy Alone and about 6 billion people on planet Earth, that translates to 66.66 stars in this Galaxy for every human being on this planet. Now multiply that by the 100s of billions of 'known' galaxies and you get a huge, huge number. That coupled with the fact that since 1995, we have found hundreds of extrasolar planets, it is almost certain that we cannot be alone in this universe. But despite all the vastness of the Cosmos, one fact remains - Earth is still our only home. We have nowhere else to go yet. So the opinion of Dr. Stephen Hawking about whether we should be careful about inviting alien species here for fear of them being hostile to us is a very wise opinion. The Earth is just too precious.

But there are other aspects to this whole debate. Take the example of Christopher Columbus travelling across the Atlantic and finding the Native Americans. Their communication technology of that time was limited to perhaps 'smoke signals'. So, its not that Columbus knew that they were there when he came. He would have come anyways. Likewise, the aliens would not necessarily even be able to detect our radio and TV signals. Who knows what kind of technology they use. Maybe our technology is actually too primitive to be detected.

Take the case of ants, dolphins and whales on our world. They obviously are able to communicate with each other. Ants are able to make complex colonies. Yet we humans don't even know what they say to each other. We don't treat them like fellow intelligent beings. Why would an alien even bother about us? How would they communicate with us if they are much higher on the evolutionary scale. It is like us trying to communicate with ants. Perhaps they are so far ahead of us that they are already here and we are not able to observe them, much like amoebae do not have any idea when we watch them under a microscope. There are so many possibilities.

But the one thing that we need to do is keep on looking for life. Even if we are never able to have a meaningful conversation with an alien either too ahead or too behind our scale on the evolutionary ladder, we must keep looking for those who are more or less at the same level.

Perhaps we will only learn the secret of interstellar travel when we have been able to survive without killing each other. Maybe we will come into contact only when we evolve into a higher state of consciousness as a species. Maybe we are still in the stage of a cocoon and must evolve more before we are able to venture out into the Cosmos. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. One day we will find the answers.

But unfortunately we are still earthbound and this is something we need to take very seriously. We have all kinds of issues here on terra firma - terrorism, environmental problems, poverty, etc. We need to tackle these first and then ultimately if we are to survive as a race - we must venture out into the stars - aliens or no aliens - the future of humanity is in space. If our civilisation is to survive in the long term, we have to colonise the Galaxy or at least to begin with our little measly corner in it.

Good cheap Mac software substitute for Photoshop and Dreamweaver users

After buying my MacBook Pro, one of the things that took some getting used to was the compatibility with certain popular software like Photoshop and Dreamweaver - applications that I used very frequently. Well, Adobe (the company that makes both the above mentioned software) has a Mac version as well. But of course, the issue here is the price. If you were to download and buy the new Adobe CS5 suite it would cost you more than $ 1000 US dollars!

So after discovering a site one day, I was pleased to find that it was made on a software called RapidWeaver, which is made exclusively for Macs. I went to the rapidweaver site - http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/ and downloaded it. After trying it out I am of the opinion that while it lacks much of the real control that Dreamweaver offers for making websites, it is pretty good for making a basic attractive website at a very attractive price - only $79 US.

Then comes the photoshop equivalent. Though I haven't downloaded and tried it as yet, but http://www.pixelmator.com/ seems to have most of the features that Photoshop gives at a very attractive price of $ 59 US. I believe they have a Windows version as well.

So worth a look for Mac users trying to get their hands on some Mac Software.

Shashi Tharoor clean bowled

When Shashi Tharoor entered Indian politics a year ago, not even the fake pundits predicted that he would be out so soon. Kind of like Tendulkar being clean bowled in his first over.

The nation looked forward to the entry of this person into it's political arena. Here was a man who was a 'super diplomat', a man who was a heartbeat away from becoming the UN Secretary General.

But despite his impeccable credentials and diplomatic record, Tharoor turned out to be a major disappointment. His never-ending tweets (many times with controversial contents) showed a surprising lack of tact and diplomacy. It was really unnecessary for him to have written all these official matters in a hasty and irreverent manner.

The last straw of course being the IPL controversy which led to his resignation.

Is Tharoor out of Indian politics for good? Who knows. But what is for sure is that he needs some serious coaching on how to conduct himself as a minister. A minister is a representative of the government and as such is not supposed to air out his opinions so openly (sad, but true). But Tharoor is still an MP and maybe he could still be a better MP than he was a minister. But if it is proved that there was some corruption involved in the IPL scandal, maybe even his future as an MP could be in doubt.

New blog colour scheme

Changed the colour scheme on my blog today. Hope you like it better than before.

Blog lazy!

Okay, so I haven't been blogging much lately. Well, what can I say other than the fact that I have been lazy! Having said that, I hope to be more regular here on. The thing is now with all these social apps - twitter, facebook, etc. you never really know whether to tweet, blog or note (write a Facebook note that is - yeh, I think I've invented a new socio-tech word..come to think of it -- 'socio-tech' sounds pretty original as well, no?)

Got to go now, more later.

Faith, Reticence And Work - Edit Page - Opinion - Home - The Times of India

Faith, Reticence and Work
Prashant Solomon
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ performed many miracles, including healing the sick and even raising the dead. Christ tells healed people two things: ''According to your faith be it unto you'', and ''your faith hath made thee whole''. Then he charges them by saying, ''Tell no man about what has happened to you.'' Faith has a vital role to play here.

The Roman centurion whose servant was ill had so much faith in Christ that though Christ offered to come to his house the centurion said, ''I am not worthy that you come to my house, but simply say the word and it shall be done. Like I am a man in authority and when I tell my subordinates do this or do that, I know it shall be done.''

Jesus was so impressed by the centurion's faith that he declared to all those assembled there, ''I have never seen so much faith. No, not in Israel.'' Within the hour, the servant had miraculously been healed.

However, there are also some cases in the Bible where Jesus could not cure people ''because of their unbelief. Jesus also said to ''tell no man''. This is so because at times sharing things with others can be counterproductive as other people's envy, doubts, fears and negativity can adversely affect the healed person's mind and could also create some kind of negativity which could hinder the healing or other desire of the seeker as a negative suggestion is also powerful and can choke the flow of positive energy or belief. This is why reticence is important. Claude M Bristol says in his book, The Magic of Believing: "It cannot be too strongly emphasised that you should not give anyone an inkling of your plans or desires. To do so may end disastrously for you.'' Because the negative vibrations that other people can send you could be powerful and can deter your plans. This is perhaps the same reason that Jesus instructs the healed person to ''tell no man''.

When a woman touched the robe of Jesus, she was cured and Jesus asked: "Who touched me for I could feel virtue flowing out of me." Now the word 'virtue' is not the best translation of the original Greek word dynamis which means power or strength. Incidentally, all the verses that talk of Jesus's 'mighty works' also are translations of the same Greek word dynamis. Each time in the original Greek text, it was this word that was actually used. This word is used throughout the New Testament. So there is a kind of power that flows into the faithful, it is this faith that attracts the flow of the healing power and it is this 'power' itself that is the originator of the mighty works of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible. It is likewise lack of faith that blocks the flow of healing power.

The woman believed that Christ would cure her, but she also acted by touching his robe. The centurion had faith in Jesus, but acted by asking Jesus to heal him. There must be some kind of action or request (prayer) on the part of the receiver. ''Ask and it shall be given'', ''seek and you shall find''. While we need to have faith in God, we need to act as well for without action on our part, faith itself is of no use ''For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.''

Chintels day out at Ambience Mall

On Saturday, March 6, 2010 - we at Chintels officially started off our 25th anniversary celebrations. We plan to have a series of celebrations that will culminate in a 'grand finale' sometime towards the end of this year.

To get the ball rolling, the entire staff of Chintels corporate office had a 'day out' at Ambience Mall in Gurgaon. The day started off at 10:00 am, when we all assembled outside the PVR ticket counter and watched the film 'Atithi, Tum kab jayoge'. As for the film, I would give it a 4 out of 10. Well, this is not supposed to be a film review, so we'll leave it at that.

After this, I bought a new Canon PowerShot SX200 IS from the Reliance electronics store to click some pictures of the event. This was followed by lunch at the food court, where after much deliberation, I decided to have a slice of pepperoni pizza from Sbarro. It was OK, nothing to write home about.

The next thing we did, which was really the highlight of the day as far as the rest of the Chintels people were concerned was the bowling at Blu-O. Wow! We had a blast to say the least! We booked about five lanes and played for about three hours non-stop. It was good fun. Photos of the event are also being posted here.

After that most of the team Chintels left, but I stayed on with my parents, wife, brother and a cousin who was there. We had some wheat beer at the Bavarian (part of Rockman's Beer Island) and then the highlight of the day for me and my brother was that we both bought identical 13" MacBook Pros!

But by the end of it, I was dog tired. My brother drove home and as soon as I reached home, I crashed out! But what a day man. I haven't had so much fun in a long time and I have never spent so much time in a mall on a single day. We were there for about 10 and a half hours!

Where are you in the Milky Way Galaxy?

Like a mote of dust our planet is in the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy, which in turn is but a mote of dust compared to the vastness of the Cosmos. Yet we divide, bicker and kill. Make peace not war. There is so much more to learn and explore.

A little video I made

Indians first, Indians last

Facebook Prashant Solomon: Indians first, Indians last:
"SRK, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Gandhi and the list must keep growing of those people who will stand up to the devisive hooliganism of the Thackerays. India is not a land of Marathis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Tamilians, Delhiites, etc. It is the land of Indians! We are all members of one body, one family, one India and in a united voice we declare that We The People Of India will fight against the forces of communalism, regionalism, casteism and any other 'ism' that threatens to divide our people. It is time for us to be Indians first and Indians last. Whether Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist or Jew we are Indians. Whether Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi - we are Indians. Whether Dalit, Brahmin, Yadav or Jat - we are Indians and this is all we need to remember. Jai Hind!"