Google Street View

Of late two of my friends have been to US. One has been to Philadelphia \fi-lə-ˈdel-fyə, -fē-ə\ (derived from Greek philein, to love, plus Greek adelphos, brother, i.e., the city of “Brotherly Love”). And the other one has been to Phoenix \fē'nĭks\ (A mythological bird, said to be the only one of its kind, which lives for 500 years and then dies by burning to ashes on a pyre of its own making, ignited by the sun. It then arises anew from the ashes).

Being inquisitive, I checked, how their respective flats/apartments looks like, in Google street view (GSV). GSV gives the omniscient feeling of any place in US, UK, NZ etc; especially if you are anticipated to visit the place. Though Google has launched this feature long time ago, this article is intended to let you know how to use GSV (if you are not familiar beforehand) and to show my friends’ apartments in U.S. :)

How to Use:

Step 1: Login to your Google account and click on "Maps" tab. If you don’t have Google account, you can use GSV from here. Give your desired address in the textbox displayed. Then it gives the destined location with a balloon mark (approximate location) as shown in the below screen shot.

Step 2: Double clicking on the navigation lines (white/green/yellow in color) leads you to the street view of that particular location as shown below screen shot.

Step 3: Drag and drop the stickman in the bird eye view map given at the extreme right hand corner, to navigate directly.GSV allows you to have 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views from a row of positions along the street, and 2X to 4X zoom of the ambience depending on the availability.

There are many buttons and tabs, privileged to be reconnoitered by you. Enjoy the panorama of the streets.

NOTE: Street View is not available in INDIA and many other countries till date.

Courage: The joy of living dangerously

Prologue:
Frank Lucas a drug lord from America, Frank Abagnale Jr an American security consultant and former check forger, and Osho a spiritual guru, are the people whose way if thinking was utterly out of the box.
Usually I don’t follow the spiritual lectures and practices, but on 10th July, I saw this book, titled "Courage" written by Osho, in our office library. I thought of giving it a try and see what’s in it. 

After couple of days, a friend of mine showed me a vedio of Osho’s addressing to his disciples. It was first time that I heard a speech about a particular English word by a spiritual guru, which left me stupefied.

About the book:
“Life is uncertain and insecure” this is what I heard from many people, but Osho addresses it in the other way. He says “Don’t call it uncertainty - call it WONDER”, “Don’t call it insecurity – call it FREEDOM”. He elucidates about courage and how to live life courageously/dangerously. He discusses about the importance of love, meditation, morals, ethics, dos and don’ts of human life. He addresses about the life before one’s birth, and the views of different communities/religions on how life will be after one’s death, with dainty examples. He also tells us (as in most of the other self-help books) to always get ready to accept the change when it knocks on your door, even if it leads you from bad to worse, you should be ready to accept and embrace the change (read book to know why).

I liked the following example regarding how we need to embrace the change. “When a human being is in mother’s womb, he/she gets everything from mother - food, breath and warmth. It is the best place in the world that a human being can ever live with out toiling much. But we can’t stay there for our lifetime, we have to accept the change and come out of the womb to face this world, where he/she has to strive for their endurance”.
There are few titillating stories like how George Bernard Shaw sold his books, how danger it is to ask time to a Punjabi at 12’o clock.

Few Lines from the book:
A boy was constantly scratching his head. His father looked at him one day and said, “Son why are you always scratching your head?”
“Well,” the boy responded. “I guess because I am the only one who knows it itches.”
The above four lines are enough to depict Osho’s wit and astuteness.

Epilogue:
On the whole I enjoyed the book.

Hand-me-up and hand-me-down

Does the expression ‘hand-me-up’ exist?

Believe it or not, it does. People who have older brothers or sisters will certainly know what ‘hand-me-downs’ are. They are usually clothes which the older child has outgrown, and which the parents give to the next in line. If the clothes are still in good condition, they get handed down to the unfortunate third child. Sometimes, a child grows up wearing hand-me-downs! A ‘hand-me-up’ is the opposite of ‘hand-me-down’. In this case, it is the younger generation which passes things on to the older generation: parents, grandparents, etc. Young people today are very fond of gadgets: computers, IPods, and cell phones are some of the things they must have. They cannot survive without them. Once a particular model becomes outdated, some people immediately go to the market and buy the latest version. What do the youngsters do with the old gadget? Many choose to hand it over to their less tech savvy parents or grandparents. This handing over of used gadgets to the older generation is called ‘hand-me-up’.
*I got this laptop from my daughter. It’s a hand-me-up.

SOURCE: THE HINDU

WordWeb Dictionary

Couple of months back, one of my friends was carrying “Word Power Made Easy”, the book which is accompanying me for the past fifty odd months, unfinished yet. The book deals with the etymology, pronunciation, and the usage of words. Since that day i am craving a bit more to learn new words. And whenever I encounter a new word, I check it in WordWeb Dictionary. Though it doesn’t deal with etymology, it beguiles with pronunciation and usage. Its my privilege to introduce you the "WordWeb Dictionary" in this post.

Quick look at WordWeb:- 

The WordWeb contains, a text box where you can enter the word you are looking for, navigation buttons (highlighted in rounded rectangular) to check previous words, and a shortcut to web browser(second next button to navigation buttons). ). Two separate compartments, one to show which part of speech the given word belongs to, pronunciation of the word, meaning of the word, and the other to show "Nearest”, “Type of”, “Types of” “similar”, “synonyms”, “antonyms” and “see also” (few or all depending upon the availability) tabs.

The Tabs, Wikipedia and Wiktionary sails you through the contents of the current word's respective web pages. 

And the last tab “WordWeb Online” will take you to the web page http://www.wordwebonline.com/, i.e., online Wordweb dictionary. The below highlighted tab “Translations” is very interesting, because it translates any given word to Spanish, French, German, or Italian and vice-versa.

There are many buttons and tabs, privileged to be reconnoitered by you. 

How to get it??

Retrofitting WordWeb to your PC/lappy is as simple as it gets. Free WordWeb "exe" file is available here.

Key board Shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+w

Have fun time with the WordWeb dictionary.

Clipboard Hack Problem

I have been cerebrating from day one i started blogging, that i should post technical articles which will be useful for everyone. In January 2008, one of my friends forwarded me an e-mail, which contained the risk involved in using Ctrl+C (used for copying text).  And again couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from my office Infrastructure Services team, containing the same information. I felt the information is worth to share with everyone; the same ardor dragged me towards my office desk on a weekend. The content of the mail is condensed as below.

" Please be very careful when u press Ctrl+C ..

Here is some useful information for all.
Ctrl+C may be the most important work we do everyday. But it's not a very
safe thing to do. What happens when you press Ctrl+C
while you are On-line? We do copy various data by Ctrl + C for pasting
elsewhere.
This copied data is stored in clipboard and is accessible from the net by
a combination of JavaScript's and ASP.

Just try this:
1) Copy any text by Ctrl + C
2) Click the Link: < http://www.sourcecodesworld.com/special/clipboard.asp   >
3) You will see the text you copied was accessed by this web page.

Do not keep sensitive data (like passwords, credit card numbers, PIN etc.)
in the clipboard while surfing the web. It is extremely easy to extract
the text stored in the clipboard to steal your sensitive information.
 
Solution is here...

To avoid Clipboard Hack Problem, do the following:                                                          
1.        Go to internet options->security
2.        Press custom level
3.        In the security settings, select disable under Allow paste operations via script."

Now the contents of your clipboard are safe.. :) 

My Favorite Dialogues...

Most of my friends knew that i use some famous punch lines from films to make the conversations' luscious. In all,I like the dialogues of "Pirates Of The Caribbean" film series most. I will come up with one more post with all my favourite lines from the series. As of now, i tried hard to get the top 10 favourite dialogues i like in other films.

 

1)  “Why so serious?”   

                                                            - Joker, The Dark Knight

2)  "This is John Connor. If you are listening to this message, you are the Resistance."

                                      - John Connor, Terminator Salvation

 3) “If you're going to point a gun, you'd better be ready to pull the trigger.”

                        - Marcus Wright, Terminator Salvation 

4) “Did Caesar actually live here? “

                                    - Alan Garner, The Hangover

5)  "Koo-koo-ka-choo got screwed”

                                                            - Wolverine, X-Men Origins: Wolverine

6) "We are brothers JIMMY, brothers look after each other"

                                                            - Victor, X-Men Origins: Wolverine

7)  “There's nothing like a first kiss.”

                                                            - Lucy, 50 first dates

8) "I'm listening"

                                    - Frank Martin, Transporter

9) “Autobots, roll out!”

                                    - Optimus Prime, Transformers

10) "I will be back"

                                    - I know...you know this. :) 

May be...

I always enjoyed “MAY BE…” story.

I thought many times, to post this story but deep in my heart, I have a feeling that people "MAY BE..." thinking “Does this guy always tell stories?”

Lot of hullabaloo happened in my mind for a long time, and the result is... yet again one more story for you.

Many moons ago a thief lived in a kingdom. He was punished couple of times for pick-pocketing. He was produced in The King’s court again for the same crime. The king and the courtiers wanted to teach a lesson to all the thieves in the kingdom, so they verdicted death sentence to the thief.

The thief beseeched The King in many ways but, The King didn’t plead him.

Thief being wily tried one more trick.

“My lord, if you hang me to death, you will loose a great opportunity to ride a horse that can fly in the clouds”(praying to god in the heart to make everybody believe in his words).

The King and the courtiers were left in silence for few seconds and lost in their own imaginations about “the flying horse”.

“You can’t imagine what people think about you when you hold your inner ostrich egg right”
Darrel Bristow-Bovey said in “I Moved Your Cheese”.

“How?” The King asked by making a knot with his eye brows.

Being sensed that his plan started working, the thief told “My lord, provide me a black, healthy, Kladruber horse, and one month time with all the food I ask, I will feed the food to the horse and let it grow big wide wings on its back, so that it can fly. Then you can have the horse and hang me if you want”.

The King frenzied with his imagination about “the flying horse”, ordered courtiers to provide a separate cell and the horse that have all the attributes mentioned by the thief.

The thief in his special cell along with the Kladruber horse started enjoying a royal life from the next day.

The whole kingdom was waiting for the day to come. Especially the imaginations of the security guard of the thief’s cell was beyond the extremity of J.K.Rowling and George Lucas.

He was peeping into the cell every now and then, but there was no sign of a single feather germinated from horse’s back. He served variety food items ordered by the thief, with a curiosity of the end result. As the days were passed his curiosity got better of him. One day he asked the thief who was ready to take a nap, that “Three weeks over and you are hardly left over with less than ten days, I didn’t find anything special that make the horse fly?”

Thief cackled and told the security guard “it was a trick to defer my execution”.
Flabbergasted guard said “But on the thirty first day if horse doesn’t fly, you can’t elude the execution” with a perplexed sigh in his face.

“May be” (thief shrugged his shoulders)….. “May be!!!!?”(Security guard popped his eyes widely)

“May be...

May be, The King may change his mind and forgive me in these thirty days….
May be, my friends may plan, come and rescue me from jail…..
May be, I may get an opportunity to escape from the jail…..
May be, The King’s enemies may declare a war on our kingdom, and the King may forget about me, being busy in war...
May be...
May be...
May be... the horse may fly...” said the thief and went for his nap.


So friends "Hope is the only thing with FEATHERS, with which we can fly miles high", "never loose your hope in adverse conditions,and  just try to trick the world around" :) :) :) !!!!...