“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”

“The mind is everything. What you think you become”

It’s been almost close to a year since I’ve met the Rajas’ & their Queens’ in their abode. Was cleaning stuff at home for Diwali and surprisingly saw a packet of sand which I dumped in my travel bag from Jaisalmer last year.

As I write this entry am just hallucinated over my trip. Enjoy some pics here…

Today is the Thanksgiving Day holiday in Canada.  A day off tospend some time reflecting on all the things we can be thankful for.

Here are some of mine:

• Maa & Paa
• My beautiful wife, Reshma
• Amazing Friends
• My health
• Freedom – in so many different ways.
• Coaching – super cool people, colleagues, and a tons of opportunities

I could think of a million more things I could be thankful for – there are so many.  But what stands out the most to me today is how quickly I forget to be thankful.  After what only seems like a couple of minutes, I will get caught up in my own world – what to do I have to do, achieve, conquer?  What’s the next action?  The pressure mounts and a constant striving for ‘more’ creates a space for reflection on how thankful I should be for all the amazing things I have provided.

So, today, I will stop, take a breath, and be thankful.   And, in a couple of minutes when I forget, I will try to remember to do that again.

mwah… mwah… mwah… (most typed word from my cell these days!!!)
So just kiss me, and let my hair messy itself in your fingers. Let me steady myself  in the arms of a woman who won’t ask me to be what she needs, but lets me exist as I am – Jewel

to laugh is to appear the fool,
to weep is to appear sentimental,
to reach out to another is to risk involvement,
to expose feeling is to risk exposing your true self,
to place your ideas, your dreams in front of a crowd is to risk their loss,
to love is to risk not being loved in return,
to live is to risk dying,
to hope is to risk despair,
to try is to risk failure,
but risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
he may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, and live.
chained by his certitudes, he is a slave.
he has forfeited his freedom,
only a person who risks is free.

— from page 147 of the book “Addiction by Prescription” by Joan Gadsby

There are lots of words which were always there in my dictionary of life but not with these meanings. Its amazing, you think of a word and how instantly an image or impression takes shape into your mind. God almighty is really a great creater.

Same words can have different meanings for different people. It differs quite due to the life we live… our individual encounters throughout and now I feel Age too play an important role. As I get completely different images when I speak them. What about you.  Take a look..

I … Me … only “Me”
You … Your
Love … Friendship
Family … Relationships
People … Society
Being practical … Faith
Values … Conscience
Lust
Beauty … Manner
Originality
Mind Games
Marriage
Character
Adjustments
Honesty … Lies
Strength … Weakness
Commitment
Career … Money
Educated … Literate
Pride … Ego
Affection … Opportunist
Fake … Soul
Life … Death
Human … Animal

and many more…

And “Love” has been most beautiful word for me. It makes me what I am.

A fallen leaf
flying in the winds

a closed book
pages gone blank

a single face
but many facets

a silent witness
to many worlds

in thy vast universe
I live my own

and walk a different path
just all Alone!

While the title of the post, “New Logo Look,” at the Official Google Blog is more of a tease than an actual new look for their logo, the small gesture of changing the way their array of services & applications are displayed on screen makes quite a big difference.

One of the thing about Google is that it is very consistent.  Going to Google.com hardly ever leads to confusion. Google has actually made aesthetic changes to its pages too.

But was just guessing the font – looks unfamiliar – just read that it is a custom font designed by Hoefler & Freré-Jones specifically for Google and this typeface isn’t being licensed

Interesting read:
http://typophile.com/node/58262
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-logo-look.html
http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

According to Māori mythology, tattooing commenced with a love affair between a young man by the name of Mataora (which means “Face of Vitality”) and a young princess of the underworld by the name of Niwareka. One day however, Mataora beat Niwareka, and she left Mataroa, running back to her father’s realm which was named “Uetonga”.Mataora, filled with guilt and heartbreak followed after his princess Niwareka. After many trials, and after overcoming numerous obstacles, Mataora eventually arrived at the realm of “Uetonga”, but with his face paint messed and dirty after his voyage. Niwareka’s family taunted and mocked Mataora for his bedraggled appearance. In his very humbled state, Mataora begged Niwareka for forgiveness, which she eventually accepted. Niwareka’s father then offered to teach Mataora the art of tattooing, and at the same time Mataora also leant the art of Taniko – the plaiting of cloak borders in many colours. Mataora and Niwareka thus returned together to the human world, bringing with them the arts of ta moko and taniko.

A maori done from Als Tattoo Studio, Bandra.

Maori tattooing is essentially curvilinear, and the mainstay of Maori designs are based on the spiral. It should be noted that renowned traditional Hawaiian artist Keone Nunes has demonstrated that it is possible to reproduce complex curved designs using traditional Polynesian tattooing implements. Maori tattooing is distinguished by the use of bold lines and the repetition of specific design motifs that are prominent both in the tattooing or “moko” of the Maori people of New Zealand and within other cultural artworks suck as carving and weaving.  A traditional Maori tattoo artist could produce two different types of pattern: that based on a pigmented line, and another based on darkening the background and leaving the pattern unpigmented; as clear skin.

Some of the technical differences between Flash and Silverlight to help you choose the technology that best suits your needs.

Animation
Flash uses the frame-based animation model. In frame-by-frame animation, we create an object for each frame to produce an animation sequence. For example, if you want to move something across the screen in 3 seconds, calculate how many frames 3 seconds will take, then calculate the matrices required for each frame along the way. Keep in mind that the player won’t actually maintain a frame rate unless you embed a blank audio track; otherwise, 3 seconds might turn out to be 2 or 6 or 5.

Silverlight is based on the WPF animation model, which is time-based instead of frame-based, so you define the start and end conditions, and it figures out how to do it. No need to deal with matrices like with Flash. Also, no need to calculate the positions of objects in various frames.

File Size
Flash uses a compressed format, and text and images are embedded in the movie, hence the file size of a Flash component is relatively small.

Silverlight uses XAML for its description language, and it is non-compressed, so the size of a Silverlight component is usually larger.

Scripting
ActionScript is used to program Flash objects. ActionScript is an object-oriented language with a full range of controls for designing user interfaces. And it can be integrated with back-end technologies that use other languages and frameworks, such as PHP, ASP and Ruby On Rails.

For Silverlight scripting, you can choose from among a number of programming languages such as Visual C#.Net and Visual Basic.Net, including client-side scripting with JavaScript. C# and VB.NET can be used to write managed code that runs on and uses all of the enhancements and capabilities of Microsoft’s .NET framework.

Sound
ActionScript offers a set of sound classes that can be used to generate and control sound in a movie. You can add sounds from the library while the movie clip is playing and control those sounds. If you do not specify a target when you create a new sound object, there are methods to control sound for the whole movie.

Silverlight doesn’t have the low-level audio APIs you would need to write an audio application in the browser. It doesn’t even support playback of WAV files because .NET has very little audio playback support.

Platform
Flash supports Windows Vista/XP/2000, Windows Server 2003/2008, Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (PowerPC), Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (Intel), Linux 5, openSUSE 11, Ubuntu 7.10 or later and Solaris 10.

Silverlight supports only Windows Vista/XP/2000, Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows Mobile 6, Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (PowerPC) and Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (Intel). Because Linux and Solaris support is missing, users of those operating systems won’t be able to experience Silverlight on their machines.

SEO
Flash stores fonts using shape definitions and the player doesn’t understand TTF, hence we cannot separate the text layer from the movie. Typically the text written on a flash component was not SEO friendly however Adobe has made the modifications to Flash so that it will be indexable, and the search engines have begun to index Flash.

Currently Google is the only search engine that is noticeably reading Flash files. They have worked closely with Adobe to develop the right toolset for the Googlebot in order to read the files for indexing. Yahoo is working on it and MSN is working with their own format, Silverlight, so they probably won’t be developing the toolset necessary to read Flash files.

In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in XAML and programmed using a subset of the .NET Framework. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Text is deployed on web server as separate entity and can be read and accessed separately. Textual content created with Silverlight is searchable and indexable by search engines as it is not compiled, but represented as text (XAML).

Image Formats
Flash supports almost all image formats.

Silverlight supports only PNG and JPEG file formats. Some other file formats are supported by Silverlight but in a limited way. A full list can be found here http://www.accusoft.com/ig-silverlightformats.htm

Suggested reading material:
http://www.learn-silverlight-tutorial.com/
http://silverlight.net/forums/t/3015.aspx