Happy Deepavali

Today we celebrate Deepavali or Diwali or however you call it in Tamilnadu, but I’m in Bangalore, and seems like the Diwali is tomorrow. I never managed to understand why this difference 🙂

But, whenever I think about Deepavali, I remember one question (or a riddle or whatever) been asked to me (and asked by me to others) a lot of times when I was a kid – “Where do you think Rama and Sita celebrated their First Deepavali?”. The answer is “Krishna came to this world after Rama, and when Rama was there in this world, there was no Deepavali”.

I always wonder as a kid what all these all about – God, Demons, etc, etc. Till now, I never managed to understand what all these are, but firmly believe in a supreme power, and couldn’t really been able to relate to that supreme power in day to day life. Probably, its time for me to travel to Himalayas to understand life? Not yet, I guess.

Deepavali means a lot to kids, my nephew called me in the morning today to wish me and he told that his dad got crackers for him worth Rs. 6000/- I never managed to understand the need of crackers, and the money being spent on just hearing a ‘blast’. But even as a kid I wasn’t really amused about the crackers, I would rather ask my parents to get me 2 extra suits for the festival.

Forget about my ramblings, you have a safe Deepavali, and have fun, play safe with crackers!

Touchless – you gotta believe this!

This is an interesting piece of technology that amazed me first when I read about its release, and freaked me out when I ran the demo application. Below is the demo as available from Office Labs.

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swfVideo: Touchless

It needs a webcam, and know more about this here.

Nice works folks!

.rm

Smoking Banned in Public Places, India. I welcome this!

Hmm, this is a very interesting move from the Government of India, and I would call this as an outstanding achievement of the current government, and special thanks to Honourable Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss who is also a doctor by profession.

So, as usual there is a high debate on this ban around the country, and lot of “smokers” would be affected by this. I’m not sure how much banning smoking at “smoke zones” at office premises would cost, because I thought those are “smoking zone” and non-smokers can easily avoid using that. While on a discussion group, got this image from one of my colleague. This looks pretty impressive idea, and an innovative way of telling the smokers the advert effect of smoking. This seems to be a smoking zone inside an IT company premises.

Whatever people say about this, I welcome this and this would save a millions of life dying with cancer because of smoking, and save more millions of tears coming out from their family members.

Some Related links

http://www.itexaminer.com/supreme-court-refuses-to-stay-smoking-ban-.aspx
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Parents_to_pay_for_minor_drivers_follies_SC/articleshow/3546390.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ITC_hoteliers_appeal_against_smoking_ban/articleshow/3523835.cms
http://www.chem-tox.com/infertility/
http://wish2conceive.com/smoking-fertility.htm
http://kidshealth.org/teen/drug_alcohol/tobacco/smoking.html