December 2008

Winter time parking in Chicago

If you ever see a open spot on the streets of Chicago, during winter time, and it looks like this.

Don’t think you got lucky and park there.. You might end up with a broken windshield or worse yet, be beaten up with a baseball bat :-). And the cops won’t even sympathize with you, if you file a complaint. There is an unspoken rule in Chicago.. If a (wo)man spends time to shovel snow on the street and put their chair/basket/table/crap to mark their spot, they are entitled to it, until the snow melts! :-).

As Chris Tucker say’s in the movie Friday “Never come around here again..never, never,ever,ever,ever come around here again…can you do that?” :-).

Support WikiPedia

It is the season of giving.. And who else can be more eligible than the WikiPedia Foundation. For those that use the Internet regularly, you know that WikiPedia has become an indispensable resource. This is collaboration and sharing in it’s purest sense. How many of your arguments end now with.. “I checked WikiPedia and I am correct” :).

I know that times are tough for many people, but if you do have the opportunity..take a minute to donate to the WikiPedia foundation. Click on the this link to go to the donation page .. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en

They are aiming to raise $6MM and are up to $3.8MM now.

Loose the shackles..

If you need to edit documents, create spreadsheets and presentations… and don’t want to spend $$$ for Microsoft Office, download the latest version of OpenOffice for free and give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I wrote a post earlier about using OpenOffice as a free PDF Editor.. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with OpenOffice.

Most of the people that use Microsoft Office, only use the basic functionality. As my old boss used to say, “95% of the people use 5% of the functionality in Office”. And switching to OpenOffice would be a breeze for then. OpenOffice is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS X.

Since OpenOffice 3.0 was released back in October, the software has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And we are close to hitting 20 million downloads..Here’s a live counter from the OpenOffice website

Makhna ve makhna

Last weekend, I attended my first concert by a fusion band named Funkadesi. They play a fusion of  Bhangra and Reggae. The band definitely knew how to keep the crowd entertained..  They also introduced another band “The Afromotive” as their opening act. I thought that this band had great talent. I rarely buy music.. but was so impressed by the talent of both the bands that I bought their CDs on the spot. I forgot to take my camera with me.. but this video kinds shows how fun the band was

And the best part of it? The percussionists did an improve of Boney M‘s “Rivers of Babylon” to close the concert. To say the least… I was stoked!! :-).

If you get a chance.. definitely check them out.

Stephen Colbert.. I envy you.

I thought long and hard before writing this post.. but finally thought,  the topic was too funny not to share it with others :-). Warning that this post contains sexual content and is NSFW..

I was browsing (I swear) through the channels on my TV, the other night, and came upon a program called “Katie Morgan’s Sex Tips” on HBO. And yes, it was purely coincidental :-).. So anyways, one of the viewers asks Katie about multiple orgasms. Katie brought a guest on the show by the name Marenna Lindberg to answer the question. Apparently this women can experience an orgasm in a few seconds!! Katie asks her to give a demo on screen and voila.. Marenna whips out a picture of Stephen Colbert.. yes, The Stephen Colbert 🙂 .. looks at the photo for a few seconds..closes her eyes and in a few seconds whimpers out an orgasm!!! I was literally rolling on the floor as I watching this :-). And Marenna attributes this to her diet and her crush on Stephen Colbert. She even wrote a book about it.. “The Orgasmic Diet

So ladies.. start eating fish oil, stop drinking and smoking. Make the “not-so-better” side of you happy 🙂

How does the iPod touch detect your location?

If you are the proud owner of an iPod touch, you would have noticed that the Google maps application on it identifies your current location with scary preciseness. Every wonder, how the touch manages to do that without a GPS or cellular receiver? Apparently, Apple uses a service from a company called Skyhook Wireless to do this. And how does Skyhook achieve this? They drive around in vehicles scanning for wi-fi signals and create a database that matches the SSID and MAC Address with the physical address. Put on your tin hats folks!! 🙂

Some interesting links

Apple’s use of Skyhook : http://www.skyhookwireless.com/inaction/apple.php

How Skyhook does it : http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/wps.php