Phosphorus

“The land of India is an ocean of mystery, the more I solve it, the more mysterious it becomes” – Anurag Singh

An Introduction –
From the east to the west, from the north to the south , India has a lot to reveal. The biggest fact of them all being that you can never truly experience India until you’ve been there , still in my review I’ll try my level best to unveil the mystic India , in the best possible way, in pen and paper. I’ve categorized the details under various headings to make the article more readable and organized.

Facts -
India the seventh largest country in the world stretches 3214 km from the north to the south, and 2933 km from the east to the west, covering a whooping area of 3,287,263 sq km. India has 28 states and a population of over
a billion (1,027,015,247 – 2001 census) which makes it the second most populous country of the world. India has a GDP of 470 billion dollars and per capita income of 366.5 dollars. Here are a few more interesting facts (they have been listed for convenience).

Total Road network (in km) – 3.3 million
National Highway – 58,112 km
Cellular mobile subscribers – 13.5 million
Internet users – 3,000,000
Poverty ration – 26.10 %

Culture -
India has always been known for its great culture. India has the greatest quality of all to “Adopt”. The Indian culture is a result of various different cultures pouring into it. It was rules by the Hindus, Buddhist, Muslims and then the British. All of these (and many more) have influenced the Indian culture, which has taken up all the good from other cultures and yet maintained its individuality. India is exploring the horizons of the next generation any yet has some how, India maintains it charm and prestige. The Indian Bollywood produces more than 700 movies every year, more than 75 percent of them on love, yet majority of the marriages in India are arrange marriages (Decided by the parents and other elders, instead of the couple). I will admit that it’s changing slowly but steadily.

Indians are sweet people, eager to meet and be helpful. As a foreigner one receives great respect and hospitality. There is a huge gap, the called generation gap in between the elders and the new generation. In the earlier generation the Men wore shirts and pants, brought by the British and women Saree and salwar. The modern generation is much more liberal and open minded and all enjoy freedom. I marked one great thing about India that, drinking is not really accepted by the society, may it be social or recreational. Though a Vodka fan I believe that is a very intelligent thought to discourage alcohol. Indians are found of gold and as a matter of fact, more gold is wore in India then else where in the world. Indian love to get dressed and look good (as a matter of fact they do).

Diversity - in my trip to India, talking to Indian, I came across the saying “Unity in Diversity”. It was a little hard to understand but as I traveled from one part to another, it wasn’t long before I realized. India has the great quality of being unique, no I don’t mean as a whole (yes it is), but what I mean is every single, tiny piece on India in different from the other. Walk two miles and the clothing changes, the people change and the languages. Every state is so different from the other that you start to feel that you’re in a different country all together. I traveled from East to the West. East most people looked like something between the Indians and the Chinese. They spoke different languages. I traveled a little west to reach Bengal and people changed all of a sudden. The language changed to Bengali and people really looked different. Traveling a little more west brought me into central India. People spoke Hindi here (Hindi is India’s national language), they ate different kinds of food and clothing too seemed changed. I continued further more to the west and reach the western end of the country. People spoke Gujrati and they wore these beautiful clothes.

In India you can find the desert, lush green forests, snow covered peaks and plain lands.
It really worth being called a subcontinent for it has it all.

India on the move -
India is truly on the move. Indian economic figures weren’t very pleasing in the past but it all seems changing. India recorded a growth rate of 7, which put it as one of the fastest developing country. India is the hot spot for job outsourcing; almost 50 % of IT related jobs were moved to India in 2002-2003. India is booming with call centers, IT related companies and dotcoms. Indian Bollywood is expanding to new areas and has an ever increasing international market. The Indian Bollywood has a far greater audience and revenue than the Hollywood. The Indian Fashion Industry is the latest trend setter with Indian clothes being worn the world over. India is truly moving but it has several bottle necks which have slowed it down over the past and are right now too.

Despite all the Glamour and Glitter surrounding India it has several dark spots in its face which really need to be worked on.

Corruption - While is on the train to Goa from Mumbai (Bombay), I asked a fellow passenger “What do you think is really killing India, throwing India out of the track and away from really being what it deserves to be” , He smiled and said “Corruption” . My stay in India revealed to me the depth of the roots of corruption. It’s not organized like the gang of God Father; rather it resembles the peer network. There is no centre, no hub yet it’s all interlinked. Getting a simple job done in any government agency is extremely crude and very painstaking. Despite this some how in a mysterious way, it’s working.

Dispute - the single biggest dispute that India has is of Kashmir with Pakistan.
Pakistan was a part of India before 1947 and was ruled by the British. By the time of Independence the Muslims under the leadership Mohammad Ali Jenna demanded for a separate state. So India and Pakistan were formed. Kashmir then was an Independent state and was free to go either in Pakistan or India. The king of Kashmir opted for India and merged with India. Soon after the independence Pakistan declared war on India and entered into Kashmir. India believed in the UNO as it to interfere. The UNO set the so called Loc (Line of control) and the part of Kashmir with Pakistan formed the POK (Pakistan occupied Kashmir). Since then it has been the dispute between the two countries.

This is just brief information on India, to truly experience India you have to be there. I’d like to know your comments and would like to work more on this article.
ps: I’d earlier written this article on Mouthshut.com now I’ve moved a copy here

Enlarge

The Da Vinci Code
By: Dan Brown
Publisher: Double Day

Recently I got to lay my hands on the much talked about book The Da Vinci code.
The first thing about the book is that the story from the start is very gripping in nature and not for one moment while reading the book did I feel lost out or bored. What I like about Dan Brown is that he writes small chapters and that repeats with The Da Vinci Code. What this does is makes you read a few more pages and then a few more, because you feel that it’s a few more pages to end the chapter and so the next one. This coupled along with an intriguing story makes a deadly combination.

Here is a little list of the main characters in the story:

Jacques Sauniere: Curator Louvre Museum
Robert Langdon: Professor of Religious symbology , Harvard University
Agent Sophie Neveu: Department of Cryptography
Captain Bezu Fache: French Police
Opus Dei: Conservative Catholic congregation, established in 1928 which literally means God’s work
Bishop Manuel Aringarosa: Head of Opus Dei
Silas: member of Opus Dei
Sir Leigh Teabing: A British citizen who was knighted, is an historian and the owner of Chateau Villete in the suburbs of France.
Remy Legaludec: Sir Teabing’s Butler

At the start of the story the book features a page, with the heading FACT. It says a few things and then it mentions-
“All the description of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in the novel are accurate”.
This is quite similar to rest of Dan Brown’s novel but the matter inside is striking. It might be unacceptable to Christians but when you hear the author explaining the matter he has put forward you might be start looking at the possibility that it might be actually true.

The back of the book says this –
“While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body and the floor around him covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu, sor through bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci – clues visible for all to see & yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Even more starting, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion – an actual secret society whose members including Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo & Da Vinci , among others – and he guarded a breath taking historical secret. Unless Langdon & Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle – while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move – the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever.”

I guess saying more than a word about the story will be injustice to such a marvelous book & talented author. If you like to read fiction you should go for the Da Vinci code. It’s a must read.

Score 9/10

Thankyou for reading

With Warm Regards
Anurag Singh

You might consider visiting the following sites for more information
DaVinciCode.com
DanBrown.com

Today is Diwali here in India. The festival of lights.
Check out fire crackers being sold in the make shift shops on the eve.
I did not buy any crackers this year as I am all alone (no firecracker partner lol) and it ain’t fun busting crackers alone. Anyway may be I’ll have some fun next time. I did get a few candles (2 packets 18 in each) and some sweets & ummm what else did I get ??? Yes I bought three games for my Ps2

(1) Burnout : Revenge
(2) The Warriors
(3) Tony Hawks : American Wasteland

I grabbed this photo in my Microbiology Lab. That is a petri dish containing Maconkey’s Agar with Ecoli colonies.
This in common language called “culture”. When a person is infected by certain pathogen then they are tried to be isolated to make a confirm diagnosis so as to decide the best line of treatment .

Mozilla ThunderBird

(1) Fetch Mail
(2) Folders
(3) Connection Status
(4) Address Book
(5) List of Mails in the Folder
(6) Preview of the mail

INTERFACE

ThunderBird now features a sleek, neat & tidy work area and a large number of features(as u can see in the above screenshot). It’s pretty easy to work with,
Searching mail is a breeze just as in Gmail or Yahoo. Just type it in the search box and ” Hey Presto U’ve got it ! ”
Apart from the normal functions it features Labels (Yeah , just like in Gmail) sadly you can’t create any new ones(gotta work with the predefined ones).
ThunderBird Supports Themes , it simply means that you are no longer stuck to the boaring interface.

COMPOSING

ThunderBird features pretty basic features (as one would expect). What users would appericiate is Email suggestion as you type, from the Address Book.

SWITCH-OVER (Uh! Why¿)

Most of you (guess excepting a few…errrr.leave it) have email accounts and more than 60 percent of you use an Email Client(so….?) . If I were to say “Quit your Clients and Adopt ThunderBird” you’d definatively be aroused to ask “Why ?”

Privacy

The Most prime concern these days seems Privacy. I dunno whom to thank the media, the viruses or the spam..anyway… ThunderBird seems to have it all undercontrol.
It’s Adaptive Spam filters ensure that all the spam goes where they rightly belong and also that you need not download any addons. Spam fighting is very well inbuilt in it. Apart from that , easy to create ‘n use rules add the iceing on the cake(or the flag on the mountain..whatever)
ThunderBird integrated well with PGP and GnuPG as well. Ofcouse you need to download Them seprately.

RSS READER

Now there’s no need for a seprate Rss reader your mail client does that for you and it does it in a style. It’s a breeze (as walk in the park,or talk in the back or……Shutup!) to use it.

ADDRESS BOOK

I particulary like the Address Book functionality of ThunderBird. One can easily import address book from Outlook or any supported file format. Apart from that the Address Book is pretty much similar to Outlook.

MESSAGE GROUPING

Another nifty feature let’s u group messages. It Neatly labels them and arranges in folders.

EXTENSIONS

If all of this doesn’t answer your appetite then there are extensions to the rescue. Basically extensions are notting but Plugins that increase the functionality of the program. There are tons (literally) available on the net.

WHAT’S NOT COOL

Every-one has got both something good & Bad. So does ThunderBird.
If you are looking for Email Client only then ThunderBird’s For you but if you depend heavily on reminders , scheduling , appointments etc the arrow turns the other wayround. Calander Project (an extension) can be downloaded but it’s has very limited functionality.

So If you are looking for a EMAIL CLIENT and ThunderBird suits you then Go Get It.

Thankyou for reading the posting
Looking for your Comments & Creative Suggestions
With Warm Regards

Anurag Singh

For more Information please visit :
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird