Thoughts for Thoughts

Here is a brief description about Ugadi from shubhashaya.com.

Yugadi or Ugadi is the first day of the Hindu calendar (first day of the first month, the Chaitra).

In Karnataka and also in some parts of the country, the tender leaves of neem mixed with jaggery are distributed on the occasion. The neem, extremely bitter in taste, and jaggery sweet and delicious, signify the two conflicting aspects of human life - joy and sorrow, called as ‘Bevu-Bella’ (a mixture of neem and jaggery in equal measure). This denotes the acceptance by man of all the sweet (jaggery) and bitter (neem) things that are in store for him in the coming year, with gratitude.

People look forward on this occasion is the Obattu, a sweet prepared mostly in Karnataka which comes in various varieties like Kai Obbattu, Bele Obbattu, Sakkare Obbattu etc.

Another important festival for the Kannadigas.

Watch this amazing lecture on Global Economy By SWADESHI JAGARAN MANCH and VISION INDIA TRUST

Google Video

1. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day. And while you walk, smile.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
3. Sleep for 7 hours.
4. Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Play more games.
6. Read more books than you did in 2007.
7. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
11. Drink plenty of water.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip.
14. Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
15. Don’t have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
16. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
17. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
18. Smile and laugh more.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others.
20. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
23. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don’t compare your partner with others.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
25. Forgive everyone for everything.
26.. What other people think of you is none of your business.
27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
28. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
29. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
30. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
31. The best is yet to come.
32. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
33. Do the right thing!
34. Call your family often.
35. Your inner most is always happy. So be happy.
36. Each day give something good to others.
37. Don’t over do. Keep your limits.

We listen lots of songs online which are in .rm (real player format) if we want to listen to them offlline most of the players does not support .rm files including ipod. There are many .rm ro mp3 converters which are good but they all are not free we need to pay minimum fee to get the software. Here is a way to convert using GNU tools in 3 steps.

Step 1 : Downloading .rm files
We can download .rm files using the “wget” . Place all urls of all the .rm file in a file names rm.txt and run the following command it will download files one by one.

wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off -i ~/rm.txt

Step 2 : Convert .rm files into .wav files.
You can use software called mplayer . Run the following command on each downloaded .rm file. It will convert the .rm into audiodump.wav file (audiodump.wav name is default).

mplayer thefiletobeconverted.rm -ao pcm

Step 3 : Convert .wav files into .mp3 files.
LAME is a tool to convert .wav into .mp3. Run the command on the converted .wav file from step2.

lame -h -b 128 audiodump.wav converted.mp3

That’s all. Your .mp3 files is ready to go into ipod to listen offline. You can put all the three steps into script or batch file for easy converting.

Here is a great website to increase your vocabulary and help with world hunger.Freerice

It has been a while since I updated my blog. I have no reason apart from being lazy :). I will try to update regularly from new year, it is not a new year resolution. I wish all readers “Wishing you and your family a very Happy & Prosperous New Year“. Stay tuned for more news!

We goto WalMart and many times amazed to see low prices. Yesterday I happen to watch movie WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price and my opinion about WalMart changed completely. The movie shows various effects of WalMart on the economy and also how WalMart is affecting community. When WalMart comes into your neighborhood how it takes away all the other business, how WalMart treats it’s own employees without Medical benefits ,cheating long working hours and not paying attention to rape and kidnapping in WalMart parking lots. Walton family denotes 1% of income to charities where as BillGates donates 58% income to charities. The part of the movie that is difficult to watch is how they manufacture items in China by paying $3 a day and lives of those Chinese people. It is a well made documentary by Robert Greenwald .

Watch on Google Video : Here

I was browsing through the different websites and found MorningStar has quite a few very good articles about investing in Stocks, Bonds and Mutual funds and they are all free. Check it out when you get a chance.

MorningStar Link

We studied the seven wonders of the world for so many years although many of them were destroyed over the period. These old seven wonders of the world were selected about 2000 years back ,Great Pyramid of Giza, the only surviving original wonder of the world, retains its honorary status. On 07.07.07 new seven wonders of the world have been announced.

1.The Taj Mahal in northern India.
2.The Great Wall of China.
3.Statue of Christ the Redeemer.
4.Kukulkan pyramid at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico.
5.Machu Picchu in Cuzco, Peru.
6.Rose red ruins of the city of Petra, in Jordan.
7.European site, the Colosseum, in Italy.

Click Here for a wiki article and official website for 7wonders.

Yesterday I tried adding a favicon to my blog, there are several sites which has info about adding favicon to blog.

What is favicon ?
The small icon displayed in browser next to the URL in the address bar.

Steps:
1. Go to Favicon from pics
2. Upload the image and and click generate favicon.ico
3. Download the generated file.
4. Extract the downloaded .zip file
5. Upload the favicon.ico to your wordpress blog /wp-content/favicon.ico using any ftp client such as Filezilla.
6. Goto wordpress->Presentation->Theme Editor > header.php and add the following lines after the head

<link href='/favicon.ico' rel='icon'/>
<link href='/favicon.ico' rel='shortcut icon'/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

More examples can be found here