The World's Big Mama

On April 20, 2008 the world's oldest known person turned 115. Imagine how it would be to be so old. I guess it would be a really good feeling to have seen many generations. Edna Parker, the world's big mama, has cheated death on a number of occasions to become what she is now. Only 75 people in the world are supercentenarians. Yes, that's what the people above the age of 110 are called by scientists. These nerdy bugs name everything and everyone. This amazing woman was born in 1893 and she's been a widow since her husband died in 1938. Here's more, it seems that longevity runs in the family. Ms.Parker's sisters lived to be 99 and 88. It's a pretty odd sight to see three sisters to live for such long years. Scientists doubt that there is something in the genes as some families have people who out live a lot of other people. Put the genes aside. A really captivating thing is that these kind of people who live for long years often are a little different from many others. They laugh out loud, have more will power and definitely handle stress much better than normal people. So everything is not in the genes. Maybe we should laugh more, have good health habits and be relaxed most of the time. The world's big mama seems to be a really nice. Most happy people are.

Would You Use Blackle?

On the first day when I joined my company I noticed that all the computers are set to show Blackle.com as their homepage. If you have not heard of it already, Blackle is the black version of Google search. There is a fact that to show the colour black the computer monitor uses less energy than when displaying other colours. So Heap Media have developed Blackle, a enviroment friendly google custom search engine that has a background colour of black. There are few factors that I would like to look into:

• Would you use Blackle because of the claims they make?
• Would you like to browse black web pages?
• Is all this really a popularity stunt by Heap Media as many doubt it to be?

I don't like using Blackle much. But may be you will. But this site is quite popular it seems. I checked it's Alexa rankings and it is around 4000. So I guess a lot of people use it. Heap Media wants every one of us to set Blackle as our homepages. Would you?

Is it really environment friendly? Or is it just a popularity stunt? Any ideas?

Direct Descendant of India's First Family

They've found the direct descendant of the bunch of people who migrated from Africa to form India's first family. They've been hunting for the M130 gene for more than five years it seems. A little trace of the gene was found in many people across the south eastern countries like Malaysia and Singapore. Why M130? Well, that is believed to be the gene that was carried by the first settlers of India. What exactly is M130? Honestly I have no idea except that it's some gene. Why worry, M130 sounds a lot better than heirohyperglycemia doesn't it? Back to the first family thing. What happened was, the bunch of scientists who were hunting for the DNA ended up in a little village near Madurai in South India where all inhabitants of the closely knit community seemed to have something very close to the actual gene that these guys were looking for. And thus they cornered Virumandi, a systems engineer, and conducted a research for the next five years. The guy cooperated well with the scientists and they finally came to the conclusion that Virumandi is the direct descendant of India's first settlers. This news created waves in local newspapers and media and the guy became a little popular. Now that's pretty cool. But what's cooler than being the direct descendant of the country's first family? He would be really proud of his lineage. The articles about this were quite interesting to read but I got mad when a group of guys at work mistook Virumandi to be the world's first man. There was this guy who asked whether Adam was an Indian! Another one wondered why the bible didn't mention this. Oh my..they took the fun out of it. Anyway, it's pretty good that they've actually successfully found the descendant among of billions of people out there. Must have been real hard. I hope they're right.

RescueTime - A Very Useful Web Application

I use RescueTime, a very useful tool to track your activities and evaluate how efficient and effective you are. All you have to do is go to RescueTime.com and register for an account. They also provide a software for you to install in your computer and the software tracks all your activities and sends it to RescueTime to store those records in your account. The best thing about it that you can tag and rate all your activities as to which is really productive.

Lessons from the Tour Down Under

India toured Australia recently to play four test cricket matches and a one day series. And how eventful it was right from the day it started. The Indians did not adjust well to the condition in Australia and faltered in the first hurdle. They lost the first test match and then went in to the second test match with less spirit. But they played really well and competed with the mighty Australians in their own country. But horrible incidents took place in that match involving Andrew Symonds, Harbhajan Singh, Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden. India lost that match as well and the kind of criticism the match received is well known to all. Not to mention the standard of umpiring in the game. It was really horrible. Everyone thought the Indians were down and out. But they hit back with a convincing victory at Perth in the third test. Who would have thought an Indian team would win so convincingly on a track like Perth? I suited the faster bowlers and Ishant Sharma bowled so well and got into a wonderful rhythm that helped him bowl well throughout the series. The fourth test as we all know ended in a draw. Then came the one day series. Under the new captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indians played really well and outplayed the Australians in both the finals and won the CB series and the trophy. It was such a dramatic finish! After all the ugly incidents of the second test match at Sydney, all turned out well and in the end Cricket was the winner in the much hyped and talked about series of recent years.