No Wonder English Is So Hard To Learn

* We polish the Polish furniture.

* He could lead if he would get the lead out.

* A farm can produce produce.

* The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.

* The soldier decided to desert in the desert.

* The present is a good time to present the present.

* At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.

* The dove dove into the bushes.

* I did not object to the object.

* The insurance for the invalid was invalid.

* The bandage was wound around the wound.

* There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

* They were too close to the door to close it.

* The buck does funny things when the does are present.

* They sent a sewer down to stitch the tear in the sewer line.

* To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

* The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

* After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.

* I shed a tear when I saw the tear in my clothes.

* I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

* How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

* I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

Flickr Interestingness

I was really amazed by the ‘Interestingness’ service of Flickr. Its an algorithm designed by them to pick amazing pictures from a large pool of pictures uploaded ever day. Here is how flicker defines:
“Flickr labs have been hard at work creating a way to show you some of the most awesome photos on Flickr. We like to call it interestingness."

It really works great, every time it pickup stunning pictures. It’s a awesome tool for people who are crazy about photography like me.

Link

Verify that your virus scanner is working - Lifehacker

The EICAR virus test is a harmless text file that is detected as a virus by most AV vendors. You can use it to verify that your local virus scanner is working (just copy the string into a plain text file), check to see if your email server scans for viruses (email yourself a copy), and test if scanners detect viruses inside archives (put it inside a zip file).

To test your antivirus program against the Eicar test file.
First, create a new text file and paste the following code into it:
"X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*"

Then save the text as a .COM file (any name will do, like eicar.com). To test that your antivirus is doing its job, you should try emailing the file to yourself as-is as well as zipped into an archive. If you just want to test your desktop scanner, right-click the file (again, you may as well try it as-is and zipped) and tell your antivirus program to scan away.

I tried it on Norton antivirus, the moment i saved this file, Norton threw up a window.

Get access to Google Spreadsheet

Hi,

Just like me if you cant wait till Google opens up the spreadsheets site, you can get the access thru this link

As my first impression, the look and feel it melds with the other Google services like gmail and calendar. I am surprised to see a search box is missing. We could use the browsers search option to search with in on spread sheet, Google’s search will definitely help to search across all sheets and to list down all the matching entries. Probably since its lil tricky and complicated to list down all the search entries of spread sheet, they might have omitted it. I am interested to see it they could come with a innovative way to solve this.

And part from this, i also see that in share window, I cant access the contact data I have in gmail. Probably they might have saved this feature for future releases.

Apart from these the site and features look terrific.

Link to get access to Google spreadsheet

Can You Crack Google’s Code??

A small group of ppl at Google, in cooperation with Sony Pictures, have managed to create 12,358 original puzzles for The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google.

If you could crack it you could be owner of untold wealth!!!!

Well, I solved today’s puzzle. I am waiting for next puzzle!!!!!!

Check out

Finally the ‘one IM’ dream comes true…

Use google talk to merge all your different IM buddy lists…

While gazing thru the net about google talk, in found this interesting article.
Connect Google Talk to AIM, MSN, & Yahoo

Recently google announced that its opening the google talk interface to jabber community.
The article talks about how to take benefit out of it to merge all IM buddy list in to google talk.

There are many open and free jabber gateways for yahoo, MSN and all other IM services.
You can subscribe to the jabber gateway with any jabber ID. Since google talk is part of jabber community, google talk id can be used as a jabber id.

Just subscribe to IM gateway, specify, google talk ID and launch google talk
and tada…
all the contacts from different IM, merges in to single IM client.

The issue is, (atleast for yahoo) its difficult to find a proper jabber gateway. Currently I am using the yahoo.netlab.cz for yahoo, and its working great.

The article recommends to use psi, but if you have many buddies, it will pop up a message box asking for authorization for every contact. It will be very tedious. Instead you could use exodus... Its easy to accept all the authorization request...

Visual Passwords… No need to remember passwords letters, just picture it!!!

Mininova, labs have come up with a new mechanism to password protect the resources. In this mechanism, you no longer need to remember the password letters, you would have to just remember various objects in a picture and click them in a the same order. passclicks

I think it’s a good idea to substitute the current password mechanism. If we adapt this mechanism such a way that every user can uploads a picture of his own interest and the server stores only the co-ordinates in the picture, it will provide both ease of usage and same level of security as current password mechanism.

Link

Google releases new Page Creator

Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes. But it lacks many customization features, definitely it can’t be used a site builder. To me it fells like more of enhanced blogging!!!

Link

U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications

A patent has been granted to a relatively unknown California Web-design firm for an invention its creator says covers the design and creation of most rich-media applications used over the Internet. The patent holder, Balthaser Online Inc., says it could license nearly any rich-media Internet application across a broad range of devices and networks... Read on

Now any site that uses rich-media technology implementations, including Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML, when the rich-media application is accessed on any device over the Internet, including desktops, mobile devices, set-top boxes, and video game consoles will need a licence. This might put a cap on the ever expanding internet applications and technologies.

Link

A wrist watch for the Geek!

This is a binary wrist watch named Kerala Trance Watch.

The uniqueness of this watch is that, the time is displayed in binary notation. And above that the watch looks very attractive. Currently its priced as US$ 176.50 at firebox.co.uk.

Well its costlier than a mid range mobile phone! If the price is made affordable I am sure it will find a place in many software engineers wrists (at least I can assure that it will find a place in my hand!!!)

The last 1000 pixels of Million Dollar Homepage !!!

Another indigenous idea by the owner of the www.milliondollarhomepage.com web page, Alex. After all the publicity and the attention he got on his web site, he planned to make the most out of it. He has auctioned the last 1000 pixels of this web site in eBay!!!

Originally the cost of each pixel is 1$. And can you guess what’s the current bid for this $1000 value pixels is? Its currently at $160,109.09 and two more days still to go. The bid looks like will touch half a million of sure...

Check out the current bid amount in the following link
Link

Kemmanagundi!

This new year celebration was a unique experience in Kemmanagundi.



We had a enjoyable and scenic trek to Hebbe falls from Kemmanangundi.




It was a very different experience walking bare foot for a kilometer crossing small ice clod streams.


I had a chance to see the last sunset of year 2005!


Also the first sunrise of year 2006!