It is amazing how Google simply comes up with these awesome idea….Check out GMail Paper! It is totally free too….
Yeah, yeah, yeah - check the date today, peoples! ;)
I finally did it - I abandoned “My Dog”. It was a hard decision, but it was one that had to be made. I was getting frustrated not being able to take care of “Dirk” (yep, that was his name - he was named after Nowitzki) the way I would have liked to - couldn’t feed him - couldn’t really look after him.
I was warned that after the 85 days I had spent caring for him, he would not be the same if I abandoned him. I still had to harden my heart and let him go.
Alright, by now if you have realized I am being coy about something, you are right. Dirk is my dog in the mobile game, “My Dog”. I downloaded the game on to my cell phone and tried the pet sim for 85 days before I gave up in frustration.
I am quite surprised by the many glowingly positive reviews the game seems to have garnered - just Google it. The game was also apparently endorsed by the SPCA for how much “bonding” it promoted between people and their pets.
Honestly, I think “My Dog” was a great concept ruined by stupid execution. The game essentially consists of a home with three areas - garden, kitchen and living room - and three out-of-home places - a grocery store, a dog show tent and “around the block” walk. You feed your dog, you scoop his poop and you take him out for walks around the block. You get rewarded with money and goodies when you keep your doggie happy and healthy - fun and games, right?
Not all the time! The problem with the game is that there is a lot of randomness built into it. My dog needed to be fed at least four times a day - if I didn’t, his health deteriorated and he camped in the kitchen begging for food. The problem is that the grocery store didn’t always carry enough good - sometimes I didn’t have enough money to buy the food - sometimes there wasn’t enough food.
The stocking process of the grocery store was so random that sometimes you could go several days in a week with only one edible thing for the dog available per day. I consider that animal cruelty. I was not comfortable with the entire thing - even a game gets you emotionally invested in when it lasts for 85 days and has you spend atleast an hour a day on the total. It was just way too high maintenance for very little payoff and too emotionally grating to be much fun. Just not worth it!
Well, last night’s loss to the Suns still hurts so much I cannot talk about it…Also, exhausted tending to the little one who kept waking up every hour on the dot in the night. Thank Goodness, the weekend is close :)
Oh, here is a cool new tool or an incredible annoyance depending on the way you look at it - they give you a unified phone number that links to all your regular phones and makes all of them ring when someone calls this one number. Makes it even harder to make an excuse to not pick up an unwanted phone. Gotta keep it away from the husband ;)
Oh Man, finally my stupid blog is upgraded and actually works. Here is something I found the hard way - if you are trying to upgrade your version of MT or trying to install the Plugin Manager and you run into the problem of “No permissions. Please contact your administrator for upgrading Movable Type. “, don’t waste your time checking permissions and error logs. Simply drop the mt_config table from your MY-SQL database and try to run the upgrade script again. Magic, I say!
Condsidering this release in June and June is my birthday month, if my husband is reading this…honey, I want this for my birthday :)
Interestingly, my first exposure to the Head First books was the Head First Design Patterns book that I had found quite fun to read unlike the usual set of technical books that you have to force yourself to read while telling yourself not to fall asleep.
Will post a more detailed review once I get through the book.
The husband got a little restless about the 5-year-old digital camera we still have and decided to dump it in the favor of this - KODAK EASYSHARE V610 Dual Lens Digital Camera. Had a lot of fun fooling around with this yesterday - looks great and is really tiny. Has some fun features including bluetooth, so we were able to wirelessly download pictures to our laptop. Only one problem I see so far is that the pictures suck at lowlight. I am still figuring that one out - any suggestions?
What better way to test a camera than to dress up for an all-out photoshoot? Expect a Flickr update with some “fashion photos” from yours truly and the little one ;)
I have written about the Adam’s bridge pictures from NASA in a previous entry and posted images of the bridge here. I received by email recently a lot more information on the subject with plenty of research and references involved. It is really interesting especially if you have some knowledge of the Hindu mythology and the Puranas. It is a fairly long paper with a lot of footnotes and backup documentation so I have posted it in the extended entry section. Let me know if you want to contact the author and I will pass the information on to him - read on!
(Click for larger image)
Correlations between Hindu Cosmology, Sea Level Curves and African -Asian Hominid Dating
By Malcolm P.R. Light
A sea level variation curve from about 8 million years ago to the present day (Late Miocene to Recent - Eberli, 2000) is compared in Figure 1 to the time of construction of Adam’s Bridge between southern India and Sri Lanka, Hindu cosmological dates and African Asian chronological data. There are a number of clear correlations between the Hindu cosmology, the sea level curve and the geochronological data.
Each of the Yuga cycles (Das 2004) appears to correspond to a major cycle in sea level change. The Satya/Kriti Yuga is preceded by a long period of rising sea level in the Late Miocene but sea level began to fall sharply during this Yuga reaching a minimum of -80 metres below mean sea level around 2.7 million years ago (Figure 1 Eberli, 2000). During the Late Miocene, early arboreal apemen, Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumai), Orrorin tugenesis and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba lived in the extensive thick forests in Africa (Brunet et al. 2002; Wood, 2002; Pickford 2001; Aiello and Collard, 2001; Haile Selassie 2001; Senut et al 2001; White et al. 1994; Wood; 1994). The following Treta Yuga represents a period of rising sea levels during which Hindu cosmology said there was increased rainfall and the formation of new rivers (Das 2004). The Dvapura Yuga is a period of falling sea level, followed by a rise at the beginning of the Kali Yuga (Das 2004, Eberli 2000). At the start of the Satya/Kriti Yuga, 4.3 million years ago (Das 2004) there was a general period of falling sea level (Eberli 2000) and major climate change in Africa during which the vegetation began to alter from thick forest inhabited by 4.4 million year old arboreal Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus to dry woodland and gallery forest inhabited by the 4.2 million year old Austrolopithecus anamensis (Leakey et al. 1995; White et al, 1994). By the end of the Satya/Kriti Yuga some 2.7 million years ago (Das 2004), sea level had reached its lowest level some 80 metres below the present sea level and the woodlands were still in habited by Austrolpithecines (Figure 1 Eberli 2000; Leakey and Lewin 1979; Gowlett 1984). The start of the Treta Yuga (2.6 million years ago) when man began to pursue knowledge (Das 2004) corresponds exactly with the time the first tools appeared in Africa. These tools were made by the newly evolved upright hominids, Homo habilis and later Homo erectus (Foley 2003; Leakey and Lewin, 1979) who now inhabited the harsher savanna consistent with the description of the conditions in the Treta Yuga (Das 2004). Homo erectus began to migrate out of Africa because of increasing aridity in the rift savanna between 2 and 1.8 million years ago into Asia (Leakey, 1994; Leakey and Lewin 1979; Templeton, 2002) and India (Joseph 2004). Hanuman, the monkey God in the Ramanyana (Joseph 2004), must have been Homo erectus and this hominid species would certainly have seemed ape-like to modern day man. They were the ancestors of Pekin man in China (Wolpoff and Caspari 1977), the 1.6 million year old Homo erectus in Java and probably the 18 thousand year old hobbits recently found on Flores island (Stringer, 2004; Dalton, 2004). Adam’s bridge appears to have been constructed between southern India and Sri Lanka 1.8 and 1.6 million years ago in the Treta Yuga during a period of sharp sea level fall to some 60 metres below the present sea level (Figure 2; Eberli 2000). A strip of land must have been exposed between India and Sri Lanka as the sea level approached its lowest level, between 1.8 and 1.6 million years ago. Because Homo erectus had already reached southern India before that time he must have tried to get across to Sri Lanka when the land began to be exposed at low tide during this period of sea level fall, around 1.75 million years ago (Joseph 2004). The driving force for his migration was probably population pressure within the southern Indian forest which caused food shortage. The exposed region between southern India and Sri Lanka must have been a treacherous path with many quicksands and shallow lakes. It seems logical that after several of his company were lost during periods of rising tide, Homo erectus could have started to construct a causeway by throwing trees and other vegetation onto the loose sand and and covering them with rocks. Homo erectus must have built the floating bridge on the quicksands that is so elegantly described in Sage Valkimi’s account of the “Ramanyana “(Joseph 2004). Nala son of Vishvakarma (architect of the demigods) constructed a causeway - magnificent with its wonderful paved floor - like unto a line traced on the waves”(Joseph 2004). The Adam’s Bridge causeway must have been a major engineering feat for its thin trace is still so clearly visible on the present day satellite images (Joseph 2004). It has resisted the relentless erosion of the sea for almost 2 million years and it attests to the great engineering skills of the ancient Indian people. It is the earliest and largest carbon-fibre reinforced civil engineering structure known to man and should be protected as a world heritage site. A shallow seismic survey could be used to detect the strong reflection acoustic signal of lignite formed from decayed wood in the framework of the causeway and this will guide later drilling programs where the actual structure of the causeway could be investigated. In addition to the above correlations, one Brahma day (4.32 billion years)(Das 2004) is close to the value for the age of the Earth (4.6 billion years)(Lide 1994). One cycle of our Universe from Big Bang to Big Crunch assuming a Universe age around 15 billion years is 30 billion years almost identical to 1/100 of a Brahma year (31.1 billion years)(Das 2004). One Brahma year is 3.11 trillion years (Das 2004). Note the length of a Yuga cycle (and the start of the Satya/Kriti Yuga) at 4.3 million years is 1/1000 of a Brahma day (Das 2004).References
Aiello L., and Collard M. 2001. Our newest oldest ancestor? Nature, 410: 526-7
Brunet M., Guy F., Pilbeam D., Mackay H.T., Likius A., Djimboumalbaye A. 2002. A new hominid from the upper Miocene of Chad, central Africa. Nature, 418; 145-51.
Dalton R. 2004. A little lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution. News@nature.com
Das. S. 2004. The cycle of the ages - The cyclic time concept of the Vedas by Raja Vidya das. 3pp.
http://www.salagram.net/cyclesOages.html
Eberli G. 2000. The record of Neogene sea-level changes in prograding carbonates along the Bahamas Transect-Leg 166 Synthesis. In Swart P.K., Eberli G.P., Malone M.J. and Sarg J. F. (Eds). Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program. Scientific Results, Vol. 166, Chapter 16, 167-177
Foley J. 2003. Hominid species
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html
Prominent Hominid Fossils
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html
Gowlett J.A.J. 1984. Ascent to civilisation. The archaeology of early man. Knopf. New York. 208pp.
Haile-Selassie Y. 2001, Late Miocene hominids from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature, 412, 178-81
Joseph H., 2004. Nasa images find 1,750,000 year old man - made bridge between India and Sri-Lanka. 4pp. http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/ancient/nasa.htm
Lide D. R., 1994. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. 75th Edition. CRC Press. Boca Raton, 1-1 - I-33.
Leakey M.G., Feibel C.S., McDougall I. and Walker A.C., 1995. New four-million year old hominid species from Kanapoi and Allia bay, Kenya, Nature, 376:565-571.
Leakey R. E., and Lewin R. 1979. Origins. E.P. Dutton, New York, 264 pp.
Leakey R., 1994. The origin of Humankind. Science Masters, Basic Books. Harper Collins, New York, 171 pp.
Pickford M. 2001.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/Tech/newsid_1055000/1055105.stm
Senut B., Pickford M., Gommery D., Mein P., Cheboi C., and Coppens Y. 2001. First hominid from the Miocene (Lukeino Formation, Kenya. Comptes Rendus des Seances de l’Academie des Sciences, 332. 137-144.
Stringer C. 2004. A stranger from Flores. News@nature.com
Templeton, A.R. 2002. Out of Africa again and again. Nature, 416, 45-51.
White T.D., Suwa G., and Asfaw B. 1994. Austalopithecus ramidus, a new species of early hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia. Nature, 371: 306-312.
Wolpoff M. and Caspari R. 1977. Race and Human Evolution. Simon and Schuster, New York, 462 pp.
Wood B. 2002. Hominid revelations from Chad, Nature, 418, 133-135.
Wood B.A. 1994. The oldest hominid yet. Nature, 371, 280-281.
The 30GB version of that and a belkin wireless FM transmitter - I am in heaven right now! :)
I am on the market to buy an MP3 player and a wireless transmitter, so that I can carry around my 13GB MP3 collection and play it all oevr the home and in the car. I am not too into the IPods since I think they are way too expensive compared to some of the other things in the market - any one use anything else?
Reviews anybody?
Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time “saviour siblings” have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team.I find this practice not just unethical, but absolutely abhorrent as a human being. How can you give birth to a child whose sole purpose in life is to be a donor to someone else? These aren’t little seedlings we are talking about here, but actual, live babies who are going to grow up into adult human beings. Has anyone once stopped to consider what kind of people are these babies going to turn into when they find out that they were designed to fulfill the needs of another person and not for themselves?
He told New Scientist that people trying to conceive a child naturally as a tissue match for a sick sibling had only a one in five chance. This method can also lead to terminations where the foetus is not a tissue match for the sibling. “If you do it this way, the chance of finding a match is 98 per cent.”How totally wonderful! We are going to create a bunch of babies - kill them off if they don’t fit our needs and let survive only those that match them? Am I the only one who sees traces of eugenics in this issue?
I don’t know what to say about this really. It is just gross!
Diet of worms protects against bowel cancerREGULAR doses of worms really do rid people of inflammatory bowel disease. The first trials of the treatment have been a success, and a drinkable concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could soon be launched in Europe.
…but good for Microsoft and all those web developers who might be saved the pain of having to redo their old pages to fit in with the new system.
Patent Office Reviews Disputed Web Patent - BizReportIn an unusual move, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is considering whether to revoke a patent that Internet experts claim could hobble Web browsing and online commerce. The office’s top patent-examination official has ordered a review of a patent that covers the ability of Web browsers to display multimedia content, the office confirmed on Thursday.