I want to apologize to some of regular followers of Calvin and Hobbes here on my blog for not being regular recently. There is a lot happening both in my personal and professional life, might move out of Hyderabad for greener pasture and now I am visiting my father and sister’s family at Bangalore and hence I have not been very regular in postings. I promise I will be soon.
It did not work selectively. I have disabled it all together.
I had used DIGG plug-in with Blogger. I do not really know how much people have used this plug-in to book mark the blogs but, when I was cross posting the Blogger posts to Wordpress, I always had this screwed up DIGG code. Today when I was exploring the Windows Live Writer, I saw that it is possible to enable or disable DIGG plug-in (for that matter any other common plug-in) individually for all the accounts you might have enabled in Windows Live Writer. This is the first post in which the DIGG has been selectively disabled for Wordpress site.
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The first blog I created was on Live Journal. The first web site was www.rajeev.net.in (no more operational) and I have quite an affection for my live journal blog (rajooda.livejournal.com). And I am still not ready to drop my live journal blog.
Then came, Windows Live Writer (WLW) and it is one of the slickest blog editor out there. It made posting to various blogs pretty easy.
So, i stuck to rajooda.blogspot.com for now and posting bits and peaces at regular intervals. One thing i have decided is to cross post the same blog to all, windows live spaces, live journal, blogger, Facebook, and status updates through twitter.
I recently came across an article describing how to cross post using a WLW plug-in, aptly called "xPollinate ".
I selected rajooda.blogspot.com as my primary blog and Live Journal and Live Spaces as target blogs where cross posting should happen. The next interesting twist is, using Ping.fm, I can send status updates to micro blogging sites like twitter. Since I don't do much on facebook, I chose to send just updates and tiny URL to Facebook too, just as twitter.
There were hiccups, like multiple status updates on twitter ( have to choose right option in xPollinate ) and its a breeze.
I am posting this barebones article using my Nokia E90. Leisurely, I retrieve this post using WLW, edit with pictures, examples etc and post it again. then cross post it to other two journals too.
Isn't it neat ?
If you want to know more about this, please check again, I might expand this article so that it becomes easy to duplicate it at your end.
Interesting articles which helped me with this article.
You need to have multiple supported accounts in WLW to use xPollinate. Vox is not supported and hence can not be used by xPollinate also
Enable the plug-in xPollinate.
Define Source /Primary Blog and targets.
Using Ping.fm, you can further spread the news :)
Sent from my Nokia phone, modified in Windows Live Writer.
Nokia Sports Tracker is an application which comes with most of the new bunch of mobile phones from Nokia which contain GPS units. Which is almost every new mobile Nokia is releasing these days. I used Nokia Sports Tracker, when I am capturing pictures on a trip and tag them with GPS co-ords, or when doing my routine walks (got to, reduce my mid a bit ;) ) or logging my journeys when I go on vacations. Its an incredibly beautiful applications, at least till recently at least.
I had few of my own wish lists for improving this beautiful application though.
Recently there has been a Beta of the Sports Tracker application, where Nokia has made few significant changes.
Now, the track also shows map overlay
Ability to rename the tracks.
Both the things are slightly problematic apart from occasional messing up the screen fonts.
1. The same maps which are used by Nokia Maps are used, but I don't think they are re-using the maps downloaded already. The screen at least says data loaded in kbs (no network activity detected like connecting to the network is observed). Its not yet clear to me if they are downloading the map while logging the track.
2. I renames few tracks, and the logs are useless I can not load the my GPS logs for those tracks. Don't use this feature you will make the data useless.
I agree that this is a beta release and many problems can be ironed out during subsequent releases or in patches. But, its quite simple things to have been checked before making even a beta release.
As a consequence of loading maps during the logging of GPS co-ordinates, the sports tracker has lost its speed. And I expect it to have a huge impact on my logging over extended periods. Some times when I am driving for 12-13 hours at a stretch, I expect it to consume all the memory, and when I loose network connection during my travel into the wilderness it might even freeze the phone.
A much bigger application, Nokia maps is more agile than Sports Tracker now. It would have been easier for Nokia to add logging feature in the map application than adding Map feature to the Logging Application.
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My sister and her family spent a couple of days with me recently and this was one of the discussions I had with her about her 4 year old son.
As 4 year olds go, my nephew has tons of questions for my sister and brother-in-law. Some times its easy to answer his questions, and some times its pain to come up with some reasonably sounding answers. This blog is about one such question.
We were passing in front of statues of freedom fighters, poets, and other historical figures. My nephew asked my sister. Who are these people, whose statues are erected along the street we were passing. Aruna, my sister told him that, the statues of the people who had done good work and of great importance. Almost all the names of those statues were unfamiliar for my 4 year old nephew Pandu. His next question was, do those people live inside those statues? Aruna said, no, there are all dead. The statues are a way to honor their memory.
Pandu's next question was, does this mean, statues are erected only for people who are dead? Now Aruna was in dilemma. If she says Yes, then that will be not correct.
Read these articles to know the depravity the politicians can stoop to. Now how do you tell a 4 year old child, that, there are people who are "Living Dead". Erect statues for themselves.
Quote of the Day:
In this world, it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
--Henry Ward Beecher
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Few days back, I had written a blog here on the "Pale Blue Dot" a lecture by Carl Sagan. Today when I was browsing the net, I came across this amazing link, called Amazing Perspective. A beautiful illustration site which puts "Pale Blue Dot" in a modified way. I am not even sure if the author of this site wanted to tell the story of "Pale Blue Dot" through these pictures, but he did.
Take a look at this: Amazing Perspective
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These days, because of economic downturn as well as good sense of reducing wasteful spending on energy consumption, lot of Corporations, firms and offices are finding ways of reducing their energy consumption and hence their carbon footprint.
Lot of ideas get floated, some implemented and some discarded once the fatigue sets in.
The fundamental idea is, not to haste in the design of office interiors. It is possible to design energy efficient buildings without actually becoming very expensive to construct and still be very attractive office structures. Designing the buildings right in the first place is less expensive than retro-fitting them later for reducing the energy expenditure. A lot of common sense is required though. Of course, which is not so common.
Use of natural light and properly insulated office work spaces can reduce the electricity bills drastically.
Places like India, has abundance of natural light. But I see more and more office buildings making not much use of this. Excessive dependency on artificial light. And more electricity consumption.
When India is reeling under the power crunch because of explosive growth in various sectors, we need to chip in for controlling the wasteful spending on the energy.
Every degree increase in the ambient temperature inside the office space can save lots of electricity and hence money. The comfortable temperature can be any where between 21 to 25 degree Celsius. But rarely this checked continuously and corrected. Also, if you are at a lower temperature, your body consumes more calories and hence you will eat more, chances that you will put on lots of weight. Be aware of that.
Having indoor fountains is another greatest of energy efficiency blunders. Think about it. Fountain is a fluid and to maintain a constant temperature of a fluid takes more energy than a solid.
The following is the mail, which I have received today on the ways to reduce power consumption in software companies. I do not know the origins of these statistics, but they are not entirely without base.
Let me know your ideas to save energy both at work place and at home. If its good for you, I am sure it will be good for many others too.
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Power Consumption - Desktops - We could save a lot
The average power consumption of a desktop when it is fully functional is about 300-400 watts per hour depending on the graphics card and other power driven equipments connected to your desktop. And when the system is idle, it draws approximately 150-200 watts per hour. A 17 inch monitor alone draws approximately 80 watts per hour.
The above are just an approximate statistics of power utilized by a standard PC provided by any software company to its employee.
Now let me take an example of an IT firm which has about 10,000 employees. Assuming each employee using a desktop, there are 10,000 desktops being used by the firm. Assuming that the employees ideally work from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM (Approximately). I am quite sure that almost all employees would just lock the system before leaving for their homes. This means that the systems will be idle for about 14 hrs a day. So taking account of the 10,000 employees of the firm, number of hours the systems are idle in a day is approximately 1,40,000 hours.
Now summarizing the above cost factor and idle time factors:
Power utilized by a idle system : 200 watt-hour
No of idle hours of desktop of a firm : 1,40,000 hours
Total power consumed during this period : 2,80,00,000 watt-hours = 28,000 KWH
So this comes to approximately 28 Mega Watts Hour just for one software firm with 10,000 employees.
Now let me summarize this for just one city, Bangalore. Statistically, Bangalore has around 1000+ software firms. Assuming that there are around 5,000 desktops being used by these firms, the total number of desktops in Bangalore alone will be around 50,00,000.
Again summarizing the above,
Power utilized 10,000 desktops : 28,000 KWH
Power utilized by 50,00,000 desktops : (28,000 * 50,00,000) / 10,000 = 1,40,00,000 KWH = 1,40,00,000 Units
If you are surprised, then probably you have not yet realized that the above figures are only for a single day in Bangalore.
Alone in Bangalore, the power wasted in a month is about 42,00,00,000 Units.
Don't you think all this could be just prevented by a simple "Alt + F4" and "ENTER" before you leave for your house. These are just statistics of a single city, 42 crores of power units per month can be saved by just switching off your desktops before you leave for the day.
And for those people who think that blank screen saver could save power, it has been very much evident that a blanking screen monitor consumes 30-40 watt-hour in comparison to "NIL" of a monitor switched off.
Of course, System in standby mode absolutely utilizes no power, but again a desktop power settings usually has a standby mode gap of one hour. Let me not get into those calculations again.
Its quite simple,
Switching off the monitor with blank screen saver saves 40 WHr.
Switching off the monitor in general saves 80 WHr.
Switching off your desktop saves overall 150-200 WHr.
Setting standby mode for system saves 90% of power utilized after idle state.
So for the next time, you leave your office for the day, please switch off your monitor, switch off your computer and help save precious power. Just to save your 2 min's to start your desktop in the morning, why to waste crores of precious power units, ask this to yourself and you can provide your helping hand for a noble cause to care for our environment.
The statistics above may be approximate, but the purpose can still be served even if each one of us could save one power unit per day.
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