Winner of the world’s best presentation this year over at Slideshare:
Blog Aggregator readers might need to click through to the post.
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This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s a lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Also known as The Last Lecture, it was delivered on September 18, 2007 to a packed audience at Carnegie Mellon about a year after he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It addresses three things- his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and the lessons learned- how you can achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others. (If you’re reading this in a feed aggregator, you might need to click through to read be able to see the video) Randy Pausch died from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.
This is a picture I captured on a train a while ago. My apologies for the fuzziness. For the benefit of those who don’t understand what’s on the poster, it says, “The cure to Cancer/Aids now exists”. An Ayurvedic Hospital called “Lavanya Kayakalap Anushandhan Kendra” purports to have the cure to cancer and AIDS. Funny I didn’t catch that in the news lately. They even have a website for your benefit. One of the best things about Google’s service is the fact that most of them are nicely integrated with each other. Google Calendar is no exception. It meshes really nicely with Google’s GMail. Surprisingly, despite being an online application, I’ve found it to perform better than mainstream desktop apps like Windows Calendar. Now Google Calendar is a pretty powerful tool. You can use it to create custom events (such as repeating events, shared events, etc) without having to spend much time trying to figure out how to do it. Anyone who has tried creating custom events in other programs will appreciate Google Calendar’s simple yet powerful approach to calendaring. Here’s a run-through of how I put up my semester’s time-table on Google Calendar and then synced it back with Windows Calendar (You know- for all those times when you don’t have internet access)-
Now repeat the above procedure till you’ve covered all your subjects. Once you’re done, select the week view (upper-right), sit back, and admire your new calendar.
To sync this with your Windows calendar, go to Settings> Calendar Settings> Calendars> “College Calendar” (or whatever creative name you’ve given to it). Under “Calendar Details” scroll down to Private address and select ICAL. In the pop-up, click on the link and download the file that appears (basic.ics). In Windows Calendar, go to File> Import> (Folder where you downloaded the file)> basic.ics. And voila! You’re done. (These instructions are for Windows Calendar in Vista- other systems and apps should have similar instructions).
Now you can go share the calendar with your class by going to Settings> Calendars> “Name of your calendar”> Share this calendar> Make this calendar public. Go back to “Calendar Details”, scroll to the bottom of the page, and under “Calendar address” select “HTML”. Copy the hyperlink that pops up and send it to everyone in your class. If you have a blog or a website, you could use the Configuration tool to generate an iFrame that you could paste to a page on your blog. Like this Happy Calendaring. (If you have any problems viewing the images above, right click> “view image” to see the image in its entirety) P.S. To add SMS reminders to your Google Calendar (which can be really handy at times), go to Settings> Mobile Setup. Follow the instructions there. You’ll need to enter your phone number, after which Google will send you a verification code. Put that verification code in the field provided in Google Calendar, and you’re done. …said Federer, ” But look, Rafa’s a deserving champion” Still magnanimous after his defeat in a match that ended in near darkness 7 hours, 15 minutes after it began (4 hours, 48 minutes of play) after having been interrupted twice due to the rain in what’s been called the greatest match ever seen. And when it’s coming from John McEnroe, that’s saying something. I’ve never been a huge fan of tennis, nor has the game been one I’ve ardently followed, but about halfway through the match I knew I was watching history in the making. And boy was I right! From The Telegraph:
If you missed it, I strongly suggest you catch a rerun. Here are some highlights (one of my favourite points is played between 3:19 and 3:46) Did you know: Rafael Nadal’s been blogging about Wimbledon? Wish I’d known about this sooner. Although he admits in his final post that writing is not his strong suit:
[The link comes via GAS and is mentioned on the Sports Journalists' Association site so I have good reason to believe it's authentic.] If you do decide to check out the blog, do not forget to read the Questions for Rafa series. Some responses are hilarious.
Welcome to my new new blog! It’s been a while since the last time I blogged- December, ‘07. I had to stop back then more for the lack of time than anything else. Since then, I have meant to get back, but I did want to start afresh. This blog is an attempt. This is the first post on this blog. All the other posts you see listed as older entries are simply posts imported from the previous blog, My Easel. Before you ask, and although it’s listed on the About page, here’s what Vignetting means:
This site’s been up for less than a week as of this post. There still are a couple of bugs to be sorted out, which I’ll try and get to as soon as I can. If you find any bugs, such as dead links, or misdirected URLs, let me know. Send any feedback you might have to feedback (at) vignettinglife (dot) com. PS. Tomorrow (today technically) is Gelato day (Thanks for the heads up, Zai). Gotta get to bed soon! More to come. Cheers! The annual VJTI Alumni Meet was held in the institute quadrangle on Sunday. What started as a typically stuffy event ended with a rather interesting twist. The event began early in the evening with a special private function for the silver jubilee batch. As this ended, the main even, open to all alumni, began at about 6pm. It began as a formal affair, with dignitaries like K. Venkataramanan and Dr. Vijay Khole taking the stage along with the Director and the Alumni Committee chairman and vice-chairman. The speeches were informative, although a bit long-drawn from what I’m told- I spent a fair bit of time managing the back-end and could only make it to the quadrangle intermittently. The subsequent entertainment programme proved to be a respite. It was well balanced with a number of talented performers in traditional as well as western acts. It was capped off with a brilliant performance by the band, that had amongst its executants present and past VJTI students. The finale stood out for having achieved something that I’m fairly certain is unprecedented: Now, the director of the institute is not known to be impulsive and is reticent and reserved by all accounts. It is to the band’s credit and the committee’s gentle persuasion that this happened: (The director is in white. The men in suits are the Alumni Committee members. Some of the band members are not visible.) If you can’t view the embedded video, click here. I’m back! Here’s an interesting thing I saw today. Something I didn’t know about although it has apparently been in the works for over a year now. The other day, it was late in the evening and I was heading home from college. I was really tired that day and I knew trains would be really crowded at that time. I thought of taking a bus home when voilà- there it was- a tantalizingly empty bus that would take me right home. I decided to take the bus- not an easy choice mind you. A 40 minute train journey home translates to a 2 hour bus ride. I noticed them as soon as I sat down. 2 TV screens at the front of the bus. Small but nice. And probably quite expensive- LCD TVs:
(click through and mouse over the photographs in my flickrstream) These TVs primarily show advertisements- for current movies mostly. There were also intermittent messages about various routes that the buses ply on- these were too rapid to read and generally pointless. The TVs are hooked up to the Wadala bus depot and are used primarily in buses that are on longer routes. Which explains why I’ve haven’t encountered them earlier even though I take about 3-4 buses daily- all on short routes. Another thing I noticed was the presence of CCTV cameras at entrance and exit. The TV screens and CCTV cameras have both been installed by a company called EMNET. The bus operator, BEST intends to earn some revenue out of this arrangement. BEST is pretty ambitious about this project: “All buses will be equipped with LCD display screens. Commuters will have the choice of viewing anything, right from news, music videos, advertisements to even cricket matches,” said Uttam Khobragade, general manager, BEST. The administration has targeted to install these systems in all of its 3,350 buses by late 2007. What do you think? |
Electrical Engineer, Occasional Writer, Control Systems and Robotics Enthusiast, News Junkie, Technophile, Quizzer, Voice of Reason... |
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Copyright © 2010 Aditya Sengupta - All Rights Reserved |
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