Friday, March 13, 2015

27 Reasons why 21 Reason Titles are better than 11 Reason Titles!


In the recent times, the platform for the stupid people to show off their stupidity or 'internet' as they call it, has taken up this weird way of getting users to click on their stories.
By the way, the title of this post was in no way planned to entice you to read it. Just don't pay attention to the title.
This trend of title shaming has been going for sometime. I believe it was buzzed or one of its sister websites who might have started it. Here are some example headlines:
  • You will never believe what happened.......
  • 11 reasons why you should click this.......
  • What happened next will blow your.........
  • This is how you make.........
  • This big multi national company did something you will never believe......
  • This will make your heart melt.....
  • 10 things you didn't know.......
  • ......this happened. What happened next will melt your........
The reason for my rant and hence this post is that, now the indian news media has picked up on this recently. Major news outlets like NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times, etc, have been running news article with this sort of titles. 
We all know that Indian media is only beaten in SH*T rankings by fox news and its sister news channels, but I guess this is another low for the so called 'news' media, completely sold out to the corporates and bollywood. 

Friday, January 11, 2013

Ted Baker Packaging

I have always been a big fan of Ted Baker's clothing line. Most of it is beyond my reach though. But there was a sale recently and i set my eyes on a vest which looked very enticing on their online shop www.tedbaker.com.

Finally decided to give it a try and ordered it. It arrived the very next day. What impressed me, more than the cloth itself, was the brilliant packaging in which it was sent. Here are some pics of the same.

As far as the vest is concerned, am afraid, I will be returning it, doesn't fit me well.








Monday, December 28, 2009

Tweet-o-matic!!

Well, due to constrained time and busy lifetimes, i will be quitting the Blogging scene until further notice, you can however follow me on Twitter!!

Search for naveen_nagesh on Twitter!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A year on.......here are my memoirs!

Its been finally a year since I landed in UK and here are a few of my thoughts and experiences:

The Place:
The weather here is bad. You have to accept it. They say it rains 185 days in a year here. That's pretty much true. And its cold, overcast, foggy when it doesn't rain. The very few sunny days we get will mostly be on weekdays. That's the yearly weather forecast for you.You will pretty much get all the material comforts one can think(nothing extra than what you get in Bangalore). Its pretty quiet,calm most of the times. Since its so quiet and bland all the time and a 'great' weather to top it, sometimes u do get into depression and feel homesick.

The People:
They are friendly. Trust me. With %age of immigrants in this country, I wont be surprised if they start some kind of a 'Immigrants Go Back' revolution. Majority have accepted it as a part of their life. But there are a few of them who are unhappy and show their displeasure openly. On the whole people are very conservative, shy, and are highly well mannered. A few cases of racism, occur now and then. But, believe me, if same was the situation(no. of immigrants) with Indians, we would have probably done some kind of 'cleansing'. But still, I will probably never fit in this society. I don't want to either!

The Work:
I hate it(everyone does)!!

The Money:
No, its not great! I mean, at least in my case. I have been struggling to get a contract which pays me a hefty daily rate for the past 1 year, totally unsuccessful. Probably, the field am in, doesn't demand a 'highly' qualified pro like me :) Will keep trying to get a contract for at least 6 months, before I return to my Home.

The Future:
It doesn't look bright at all. Recession has derailed my plans, no doubt. Intentions were to go back in DEC 2009, but might have to revise the target, if the situation stays like this.

On the whole, though the journey till now has been no way near my plans, hopefully things should improve in the future.

Thanks for reading,Ta!!Cheers!!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Unusual Telecom Byproduct

Was checking www.cellular-news.com to get my daily dose of Telecom Gyan and found this amazing story about Elephants in Kenya. To summarise, whenever the wild elphants cross a GPS diefined Virtual boundary, to raid the villagers farm, a collar(GPS Tx + SIM card) tied onto the mammal, sends a text to the Ranger and he takes the necessary action to avert any tragedy. You never know how technology can be put to simple but effective use like these.

Here is the Full story:

Kenya's elephants send text messages to rangers

Kenya's vulnerable elephants fitted with collars that send text messages to rangers

KATHARINE HOURELD
AP News

Oct 11, 2008 18:10 EST

The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as "near threatened" in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar, then set up a virtual "geofence" using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence. She and her neighbors used to drum through the night on pots and pans in front of flaming bonfires to try to frighten the elephants away.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

"We had to go into town to tell the game (wardens) to chase the elephants away or we're going to kill them all," Mwasu remembered.

But the elephants kept coming back.

Batian Craig, the conservation and security manager at the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta conservancy, says community development programs are of little use if farmers don't have crops. He recalled the time when 15 families had their harvests wiped out.

"As soon as a farmer has lost his livelihood for six months, he doesn't give a damn whether he has a school or a road or water or whatever," he said.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, said the project is still in its infancy — so far only two geofences have been set up in Kenya — and it has its problems.

Collar batteries wear out every few years. Sometimes communities think placing a collar on an elephant implies ownership and responsibility for the havoc it causes. And it's expensive work — Ol Pejeta has five full-time staff and a standby vehicle to respond when a message flashes across a ranger's screen.

But the experiment with Kimani has been a success, and last month another geofence was set up in another part of the country for an elephant known as Mountain Bull. Moses Litoroh, the coordinator of Kenya Wildlife Service's elephant program, hopes the project might help resolve some of the 1,300 complaints the Service receives every year over crop raiding.

The elephants can be tracked through Google Earth software, helping to map and conserve the corridors they use to move from one protected area to another. The tracking also helps prevent poaching, as rangers know where to deploy resources to guard valuable animals.

But the biggest bonus so far has been the drop in crop raiding. Douglas-Hamilton says elephants, like teenagers, learn from each other, so tracking and controlling one habitual crop raider can make a whole group change its habits.

Mwasu's two young daughters play under the banana trees these sultry evenings without their mother worrying about elephants.

"We can live together," she said. "Elephants have the right to live, and we have the right to live too."

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Google Android-A Damp Squib!


After iPhone 3G, Google's Android OS based Goggle Phone or G1 was unveiled yesterday. But by the initial looks and the content of the device it looks to be a damp squib. The phone's design is age old, bricky and no way near the big gaints like Nokias or SEs. Maybe Google's strategy is to sell whats inside the phone rather than its looks.

Though t-mobile is selling it at very cheap rates, it is quite possible that the phone might not live up to its expectaions and might be shelved very soon. Of course, Google cant expect to beat long time players and pioneers like Nokia and Ericssons. But they are going to try all the tricks in the book before giving it up.

Meanwhile am still cursing myself for going for the shitty Blackberry :(

Friday, July 11, 2008

Check out my Super Slow Motion Video!

My housemate had discovered a great feature in his LG viewty Handset. It can capture video at high frame rates and playback at the ususal 24fps speed, thus slowing up any high speed action. If you remember the bullet piercing apple video you will understand what I am saying. So of all the high action things I do, I chose to capture Parota flipping in kitchen :-) And surprisingly it has come out good. Check out the video here(apologies for low light):