parag’s posterous

Wow!...erm...i just...i mean, how can this design be ergonomic for photographers?

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Instead of Making Art

"Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Excerpt from "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"

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Emoticons (sometimes known as "smileys") are a popular form of expression on the Internet, especially in instant-messaging and e-mail. Heres a small list of some of the popular emoticons. The end of the list contains some weird ones though.

:-)        Smile
;-)        Smile with a wink
:<})      User with mustache, smiling
:-||       Mad
:-(        Sad
:' -(     Crying
:~        Also crying
:-))      Really happy
:-D      Big grin
:-*       A kiss
:-P~    A lick
:-o      Wow! or I'm surprised
:-|       Grim
:-P      Sticking out your tongue
:-         User happens to be Popeye
:-/        Perplexed
=:O     Frightened (hair standing on end)
=8O    Bug-eyed with fright
:-}        Embarassed smile
:-)<>>>>>       Basic Smiley with a necktie
;-^)       Tongue in cheek
%*@:-(            Hung over
:-~~~                Drooling
>:)        Perplexed look
.)          Keeping an eye out for you
8:-)      Glasses on forehead
8:[        Normal smiling face of a gorilla
0:-)       Angel
]:-|[       Robot
(:V)      Duck
 3:-o    Cow
:-]         Vampire
(_8-(|)         Homer Simpson
C|:-=           Charlie Chaplin
=|:-)=          Abe Lincoln
*<:-)            Santa Claus
-:-)               User sports a mohawk and admires Mr. T
(:)-)             Scuba diver
:-'|               User has a cold
:-{}              User with heavy lipstick
:-)8             User is well dressed
>:-<            Mad
*#:-)           Scotsman wearing his Scottish tam
%-^            User is another Picasso
#-)             User partied all night
<:I              Dunce
:-| "             Have an ordinary day!" Smiley
:}{:              Kisses (stolen from June bug)
oooo(0) (0)oooo          Toes
(-_-)                                Secret smile
#.-o          "Oh, nooooooo Mr. Bill!!!"

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Continuing on the previous post heres some more to tickle the funny bone:

CONFUCIUS SAY:

• Masturbation is a solo played on private organ
• Tact is the unsaid part of what youre thinkin
• Gynecologist and a pizza delivery boy much alike. Both can smell it, but they cant eat it
• Woman who wear G-string, high on crack
• Man who buy drowned cat, get wet pussy
• Those who say they sleep like a baby havent got one
• House without toilet is uncanny
• Even a turtle only makes progress when it stick its neck out
• Woman who is wallflower at party, dandelion in bed
• Man who sit on tack, get point.
• Best way to cure water on the brain is with a tap on the head
• Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion
• Couple who cross LSD with birth control pills, get a trip without the kids.
• He who sleep on bed of nails, is indeed a "holy" man
• Learn to masturbate...come in handy.
• Man with tool in woman's mouth, not necessarily dentist
• The perfect gift for man who has everything, is a burglar alarm.
• Man who want pretty nurse, must be patient.
• Sumo Wrestling is survival of the fattest.
• Deaf people has phone sex by fax.
• An enemy is sometimes nothing more than a friend who got wise to you.
• Taliban's national bird is duck.

CHUCK NORRIS:

• can eat just one Lays potato chip.
• once shot a German plane down with his finger by pointing at it and yelling, Bang!
• is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
• will call up the Power Rangers occasionally just to say hi
• is still Chuck Norris in Soviet Russia
• Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.
• got drunk and fucked the Statue of Liberty, then bragged about it to the Lincoln Memorial
• once destroyed the entire world, but rebuilt it faster than the human mind can comprehend, so no one noticed.
• is accurate to within 1 second in a million years.
• can crush coal into diamonds.
• eats pencils and markers for breakfast, and he shits out masterpieces.
• expected the Spanish Inquisition.
• was born with his beard
• sperm are as big as eels.

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Digging through some old files on my hard-drive, i found a couple of guitar sessions with Vibhu, one of my university friends. I call it the "Room 213 Jam" (after the hostel room no. where we were playing). It was the old and rusty "Givson" acoustic and a few whiffs of the friendly neighbourhood weed that set the mood for, well, pretty much all of our music sessions.
The first song is called "Fcuked Up Car". Henry and I were generally strumming on our guitars when both of us started hitting the blues scales and we thought, "Damn! that sounds cool!" and we continued. Vibhu added his signature screams on the impromptu lyrics and we had the song ready.

The second one is "Ciggi". Vibhu had the lyrics and I whipped up a few chords to add rhythm to this somber number.

The third is just an attempt to play the first part of "Coming Back to Life" on heavy distortion and echo. Kinda like Coming Back To Life in Metal !

Click here to download:

f00ked Up Car -Vibhu_Parag_Henry.mp3 (3709 KB)

Click here to download:

ciggi-Vibhu_Parag.mp3 (2132 KB)

Click here to download:

CBTL_in_metal.mp3 (1417 KB)

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The following is the Obfuscated C Contest for 1990. The source code is in the form of a hilarious conversation between a man (Charlie) & a woman (Charlotte). And the code compiles without errors. Enjoy (if you're a geek)!! :

char*lie;

	double time, me= !0XFACE,

	not; int rested,   get, out;

	main(ly, die) char ly, **die ;{

	    signed char lotte,


dear; (char)lotte--;

	for(get= !me;; not){


	1 -  out & out ;lie;{

	char lotte, my= dear,

	**let= !!me *!not+ ++die;

	    (char*)(lie=


"The gloves are OFF this time, I detest you, snot\n\0sed GEEK!");

	do {not= *lie++ & 0xF00L* !me;


	#define love (char*)lie -

	love 1s *!(not= atoi(let

	[get -me?

	    (char)lotte-


(char)lotte: my- *love -
	
	'I'  -  *love -  'U' -

	'I'  -  (long)  - 4 - 'U' ])- !!

	
	(time  =out=  'a'));} while( my - dear

	&& 'I'-1l  -get-  'a'); break;}}

	    (char)*lie++;


(char)*lie++, (char)*lie++; hell:0, (char)*lie;

	get *out* (short)ly   -0-'R'-  get- 'a'^rested;


	do {auto*eroticism,

	that; puts(*( out

	    - 'c'
	
-('P'-'S') +die+ -2 ));}while(!"you're at it");


for (*((char*)&lotte)^=

	(char)lotte; (love ly) [(char)++lotte+


	!!0xBABE];){ if ('I' -lie[ 2 +(char)lotte]){ 'I'-1l ***die; }

	else{ if ('I' * get *out* ('I'-1l **die[ 2 ])) *((char*)&lotte) -=

	'4' - ('I'-1l); not; for(get=!



get; !out; (char)*lie  &  0xD0- !not) return!!

	(char)lotte;}


(char)lotte;

	do{ not* putchar(lie [out

	*!not* !!me +(char)lotte]);

	not; for(;!'a';);}while(


	    love (char*)lie);{


register this; switch( (char)lie

	[(char)lotte] -1s *!out) {

	char*les, get= 0xFF, my; case' ':

	*((char*)&lotte) += 15; !not +(char)*lie*'s';


	this +1s+ not; default: 0xF +(char*)lie;}}}

	get - !out;

	if (not--)

	goto hell;

	    exit( (char)lotte);}

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1. Amdahl's Law: The speed-up achievable on a parallel computer can be significantly limited by the existence of a small fraction of inherently sequential code which cannot be parallelised. (Gene Amdahl)
2. Augustine's Second Law of Socioscience: For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction. (Norman Augustine)
3. Benford's Law: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. (Gregory Benford)
4. Brooks' Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. (Frederick P Brooks Jr)
5. Church-Turing Thesis: Every function which would naturally be regarded as computable can be computed by the universal Turing machine.
6. Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. (Arthur C Clarke)
7. Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. (Arthur C Clarke)
8. Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C Clarke)
9. Conway's Law: If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler. (Melvin Conway)
10. Cope's Law: There is a general tendency toward size increase in evolution. (Edward Drinker Cope)
11. Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. (Scott Adams)
12. Deutsch's Seven Fallacies of Distributed Computing: Reliable delivery; Zero latency; Infinite bandwidth; Secure transmissions; Stable topology; Single adminstrator; Zero cost. (Peter Deutsch)
13. Ellison's Law: The userbase for strong cryptography declines by half with every additional keystroke or mouseclick required to make it work. (Carl Ellison)
14. Ellison's Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
15. Ellison's Law: Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts. (Larry Ellison)
16. Finagle's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will. (?Larry Niven)
17. Fisher's Fundamental Theorem: The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change. (R A Fisher)
18. Fitts's Law: The movement time required for tapping operations is a linear function of the log of the ratio of the distance to the target divided by width of the target. (Paul Fitts)
19. Flon's axiom: There does not now, nor will there ever, exist a programming language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs. (Lawrence Flon)
20. Gilder's Law: Bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power. (George Gilder)
21. Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. (Mike Godwin)
22. Grosch's Law: The cost of computing systems increases as the square root of the computational power of the systems. (Herbert Grosch)
23. Grove's Law: Telecommunications bandwidth doubles every century. (Andy Grove)
24. Hanlon's Law: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. (?Robert Heinlein)
25. Hartree's Law: Whatever the state of a project, the time a project-leader will estimate for completition is constant. (Douglas Hartree)
26. Heisenbug Uncertainty Principle: Most production software bugs are soft: they go away when you look at them. (Jim Gray)
27. Hick's Law: The time to choose between a number of alternative targets is a function of the number of targets and is related logarithmically. (W E Hick)
28. Hoare's Law: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. (Charles Hoare)
29. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. (Douglas Hofstadter)
30. Jakob's Law of the Internet User Experience: Users spend most of their time on other websites. (Jakob Nielsen)
31. Joy's Law: Computing power of the fastest microprocessors, measured in MIPS, increases exponentially in time. (Bill Joy)
32. Kerckhoff's Principle: Security resides solely in the key. (Auguste Kerckhoff)
33. Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns: As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes). (Ray Kurzweil)
34. Law of the Conservation of Catastrophe: The solutions to one crisis pave the way for some equal or greater future disaster. (William McNeill)
35. Law of False Alerts: As the rate of erroneous alerts increases, operator reliance, or belief, in subsequent warnings decreases. (George Spafford)
36. Lister's Law: People under time pressure don't think faster. (Timothy Lister)
37. Lloyd's Hypothesis: Everything that's worth understanding about a complex system, can be understood in terms of how it processes information. (Seth Lloyd)
38. Metcalfe's Law: The value of a network grows as the square of the number of its users. (Robert Metcalfe)
39. Moore's Law: Transistor die sizes are cut in half every 24 months. Therefore, both the number of transistors on a chip and the speed of each transistor double every 18 (or 12 or 24) months. (Gordon Moore)
40. Murphy's Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it. (Edward A Murphy)
41. Nathan's First Law: Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container. (Nathan Myhrvold)
42. Ninety-ninety Law: The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. (Tom Cargill)
43. Occam's Razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. (William of Occam)
44. Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. (Don Osborn)
45. Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. (C Northcote Parkinson)
46. Pareto Principle: 20% of the people own 80% of the country's assets. (Corollary: 20% of the effort generates 80% of the results.) (Vilfredo Pareto)
47. Pesticide Paradox: Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual. (Bruce Beizer)
48. Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. (Laurence J Peter)
49. Red Queen Principle: For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the system it is co-evolving with. (Leigh van Valen)
50. Rock's Law: The cost of semiconductor fabrication equipment doubles every four years. (Arthur Rock)
51. Rule of 1950: The probability that automated decisions systems will be adopted is approximately one divided by one plus the number of individuals involved in the approval process who were born in 1950 or before squared. (Frank Demmler)
52. Sixty-sixty Law: Sixty percent of software’s dollar is spent on maintenance, and sixty percent of that maintenance is enhancement. (Robert Glass)
53. Spector's Law: The time it takes your favorite application to complete a given task doubles with each new revision. (Lincoln Spector)
54. Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. (Theodore Sturgeon)
55. Tesler's Law of Conservation of Complexity: You cannot reduce the complexity of a given task beyond a certain point. Once you've reached that point, you can only shift the burden around. (Larry Tesler)
56. Tesler's Theorem: Artificial Intelligence is whatever hasn't been done yet. (Larry Tesler)
57. Weibull's Power Law: The logarithm of failure rates increases linearly with the logarithm of age. (Waloddi Weibull)
58. Weinberg's Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. (Gerald M Weinberg)
59. Wirth's Law: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. (Nicklaus Wirth)
60. Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. (Jamie Zawinski)
61. Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
    A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
    A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
62. Isaac Asimov's Zeroth Law of Robotics:
    A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

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Couldn't help but notice the parallel in the pictures 1) Mumbai's symbol of glory and grandeur, the Taj Hotel, under fire   2) St Paul's Cathedral in WW-II under billows of smoke

   

Click here to download:

Mumbai_Still_Burning....zip (52 KB)

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From what i see, they are all top heavy. I guess it helps to cushion the fall. Or there may be some other advantage i dont know of :P
http://www.uncoached.com/2008/11/25/20-of-the-hottest-women-in-pro-wrestling/

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