A return bolt of lightening is 400,000 times faster than a space shuttle

We had another thunderstorm yesterday – thankfully being wise to it, we disconnected everything, Swati even advised the Cablewala to do it, he did it as well! So far so good, the problem arose when he no longer could put the things back – we got connected only after 8 hours of blackout or should it be called netout.

Have finally tweaked my machine as I like it the only complaint is that the new version of Log Jam does not (and will not ever) allow long subject lines. The other rant of the the day is that FTP to SANIsoft site for some reason is not working in passive mode and cable allows only passive mode FTP. Have taken out tons of pictures to be uploaded to the new album which I am creating… …

Upgraded to new GAIM 0.60 and thanks to installed apt

Ghazal – the word originates from arabic, meaning, “mannerism of talking to or talking about women”

Yaar laut aainge
Dil thaher jaaye ga
Gam na kar, Gam na kar

Dil thaher jaaye ga
Dard thum jaaye ga
Gam na kar, Gam na kar

Zakhm bhar jaaye ga
Din nikal aaye ga
Gam na kar, Gam na kar

Abr khul jaaye ga
Raat dhal jaaye gi
Rut badal jaaye gi
Gam na kar, Gam na kar

Friends will return
Heartache/emotional turmoil will stop
Don’t grieve, Don’t grieve

Heartache/emotional turmoil will stop
Hurt will also stop
Don’t grieve, Don’t grieve

Wound will heal
Dawn will break
Don’t grieve, Don’t grieve

Clouds will blow away
Night will pass
Season will change
Don’t grieve, Don’t grieve

Apologies to Faiz Ahmed Faiz for a pretty lame translation but a lot of small things have fallen into place which give rise to this optimism.

I finally have Linux back on my computer. Yeah Red Hat 9!!, Will write a detailed raves and rants may be tomorrow BUT yes all the hardware on my 845glly mobo was detected out of the box and works properly and the rants are about the changes that Red Hat has made to the UI.

Double entry accounting has been around since the late 15th century, when it was described by an Italian friar, Luca Pacioli.

“Contrary to popular belief and even some dictionary definitions, accounting debits and credits do not mean decrease and increase. The only constant definition of debits and credits is that debits are left-column entries and credits are right-column entries. In fact, debits and credits each increase certain types of accounts and decrease others. In asset and expense type accounts, debits increase the balance and credits decrease the balance. In liability, equity and income type accounts, credits increase the balance and debits decrease the balance.

For example, debits increase your bank account balance and credits decrease your bank account balance. Wait a minute, you might say, a debit card decreases the balance in my checking account, because I take money out of it. And when the bank gives me money back on something, they credit my account. So why is this reversed in accounting?

Banks report transactions from their perspective, not yours. Their perspective is exactly opposite to yours. To you, your bank account represents an asset, something you own. To the bank, your bank account represents a loan, or liability, because they owe you that money. As explained in this chapter, asset and liability accounts are exact opposites in the way they behave. In a liability account, debits decrease the balance and credits increase the balance.

When you take money out of your bank account, the balance in your account decreases. To you, this is a decrease in an asset, so you credit your bank account. To the bank, this is a decrease in a liability, so they debit your bank account.”

From the GnuCash user guide

All is so very logical – duh, It is easier to believe that TV has all those tiny people sitting inside and playing the music.

The world’s smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand

Came across a nifty toolbar when I was browsing https://mozdev.org

Its called Stumble Upon The base line says “Word of mouth Web”

StumbleUpon allows you to “stumble upon” great sites that have been highly recommended by friends and community members with interests similar to your own.

It is a very interesting concept and I did stumble upon interesting pages like this one

https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2874495.stm

But be warned – After Swati installed it on her Mozilla 1.0 for Linux the browser refused to start, however it runs perfectly on my Mozilla 1.3b on WinXP as well as Linux

“At the end of the day each one of us can endure more that what we had previously imagined”

Woke up at 5am and hacked away at some totally useless code while listening to the birds gradually waking up and trying to recognise who’s who without looking outside. Returned to the bedroom to wake her up at around 7:30… … ummmmh

Lunch was fabulous Gobi Parathas made by our excellent cook… …

After which Swati and I settled down to watch the movie “Frida” – loved the character, want to read the book.

achitnis‘s daughter has turned 13 congratulations and our blessings to her – she *is* a fine young woman – and best of luck to her father 😉

Actor Steve McQueen encouraged his karate teacher to pursue a career in acting. The teacher? Chuck Norris.

Was a stand in Forensic Lecturer as a favour to a friend at JNMC during an official inspection 😉

This College is about 80kms from my home and has a nice campus – I am very much tempted to pick up a regular once a week teaching assignment for the next academic year. Forensic Medicine is still the same after 5 years…

Came back home and discovered that Aasim had made some profound statements.

Do children grow up faster these days?

What about the so called innocence? We just try to avoid Aasim seeing the gore, otherwise he is pretty much free to watch news… …

That reminds me – the other day Swati thinking that wild life on NatGeo and Discovery will be safe programs to let him watch, started it, only to find several programs depicting animals engaged in copulation!!

That act is something he is not allowed to watch or question till he is old enough to, BUT I wonder how old is old enough?

Sex, Lies and Life

Humans are perhaps the only animals in whom sex is a learned behavior and sadly very few learn it right in the first place.

Here are a few random “right start-up” tips which I can think of… …

The most important ingredient for repeated good sex with the same partner is LOVE.

The second most important ingredient is COMMUNICATION – in short ASK 😉

The third ingredient is de-focus the act from COITUS – there much more to it than “wham bham thank you ma’am”

Planned sex is just as good as spontaneous sex, and what follows as a corollary is no sex != no love.

If it hurts – you are not doing it right.

Forget G spot, search out Y spots (Spots which make him/her wonder why are you doing it 😉

Be innovative – a personal fav is the game of “No Touch” – Think what it could be!

Lastly if you really need help – get a good book which tells you how, like “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex

The horned owl is not horned. Two tufts of feathers were mistaken for horns.

Failure is often a stepping stone to success. Mistakes are often stepping stones to utter failure…

Readers Digest when I should be working is perfect vehicle for a guilt trip BUT then there *is* no work to be done.

May be I take life too seriously. How does one learn to live a purposeless life?

Schooling Vs Education?

Got back from Aasim’s last PT meet of the session. The assessment for him is “Average” for most of the things, “Good” for math, table activity, jigsaw, “Slow” for reading and writing.

If I type in my Gaim (yes he is on local Jabber) asking him to “come here” he will type back “why” – guess that does not count, neither does beating me in Quake III death match counts.

I was actually taken by surprise when to humor him I got into a multi player arena and was fragged three times before I started playing dirty. Sid Carter will be surprised to know this because when he was here Aasim was barely starting out again on Quake after a gap of almost 2 years, no don’t flame be for introducing blood and gore to him.

He has his share of Reader Rabbits and Jumpstart CDs which he plays when he wants.

Unfortunately keyboard from an early age has meant that he is very averse to writing using pencil and paper, same is the problem with reading handwritten text, We intend to remedy this in summer – don’t know how successful we will be.

Open Source blah once more

A while ago, one of my programmers published phpExifRW, A pure PHP class to read and write EXIF data to and from jpeg files. Most distros install PHP which does not have the EXIF extension also there is no way in that extension to write / transfer EXIF data. Add to it the fact that GIMP destroys EXIF data when you save a jpeg (note: convert from ImageMagicK preserves EXIF info)

While looking thru the download stats of our other programs I noticed that our “Open Source Business Model” page showed up as a top entry page, little bit of investigating revealed that this page was mention in the World News section of Linux Magazine in March here

Lastly came across this in Linux For You
RMS when asked Then how does one make money out of developing software? replied I dont know if they do, and it is not important

Wonder what to call it, arrogance to the point of being assnine or plain simple ego trip…