Another Garland of Ragasri

This year is the centenary year of "Kumaramangalam Srinivasa Raghavan" who was a prolific composer with the mudra "Ragasri", a contemporary and a friend of GNB .   
Srinivasaraghava Krishnan, popularly known as ‘Thiruvaiyaru Krishnan’, who is the eldest son of Ragasri, a Carnatic musician, lyricist, composer, poet, journalist, and a popular story and screenplay writer has sung the following composition.

 You can hear more about him and his collection here.

வேதாத்ரி நரசிம்ஹர்

குகையில் படுத்தெழுந்த முசுகுந்தர் ஸ்ரீ க்ருஷ்ண பரமாத்மாவை நரசிம்ஹ மூர்த்தியாகக் கண்டு வருணிக்கும் போது ஸ்ரீ நாராயண தீர்த்தர் இளமையில் தனக்கு அருள் புரிந்த வேதாத்ரி சோபனாத்ரி ஸிம்ஹாத்ரி என்ற மலைக் குகைகளில் உள்ள ஸ்ரீநரசிம்ஹ மூர்த்தியை நினைவு படுத்திக் கொண்டு துதித்த கிருதியை திரு ராமகிருஷ்ணன் ரசித்து பாடியதை நாமும் ரசிப்போம். 

அவரைப் பற்றிய மேலும் சில தகவல்கள் அறிய இந்த இடங்களுக்குச் செல்லலாம். 

How to escape from ignorance?

In the garden of the Heart, you must plant and foster the Rose of Divinity, the Jasmine of Humility and the Lily (Champak) flower of Generosity. In your medicine chest, you must keep in readiness, the tablets of discrimination, drops of self-control and three key powders: Faith, Devotion and Patience. Through the use of these drugs, you can escape the serious illness called Ajnana(Ignorance).

-Vidya Vahini, Chapter 8.

Spirituality at the Workplace

Recently I got this forward to my email. Really I enjoyed and thought of sharing with you all. Based on a real life incident shared by the Ex-VC of Mumbai University Dr. Snehlata Deshmukh at ORF - Observer Research Foundation)

Long back when Dr. Deshmukh was still the Dean at Nair Hospital, and a practicing surgeon, once elections happened to take place. And as is the usual practice, government deputed people from various departments for election duty. One of Dr. Deshmukhs’ colleagues too got the job of being a polling booth officer. She was given the job of applying the ink mark on people’s index finger. She even got trained for it. Take ink marker, start applying on the index finger a little above the base of the nail, continue till you reach the middle of the nail. That was the recommended procedure. People in her department found the situation rather demeaning. You’re a Ph.D, a surgeon and the government asks you to do this!!!
Apply ink on people’s fingers?? A Ph.D!!

Well, she didn’t take personal offence to the smallness of the task assigned. Her election day duty turned out to be in a school in Dharavi. The day of election came and she faithfully kept applying ink on people’s fingers all day long. At the end of the day Dr. Deshmukh asked her how the experience had turned out. She said “While applying ink on the people’s fingers I noticed that among the women voters more than 50% did not have pink but white nails. And I suspect their hemoglobin count in blood is possibly lower than 10 grams”. She suggested they carry out a diagnostic camp immediately in the area.

Dr. Deshmukh arranged for a camp immediately. And what they found was alarming. More than 70% women of the area had a hemoglobin count of less than 10 grams. This meant that when these women became pregnant, the foetus they would carry would not get sufficient nutrition and would be often born with birth deformities, which would turn into cases that would then come to Dr. Deskhmukh and her team for surgical correction.  So then began a program of pre pregnancy intervention, based in diet and health awareness.

Over the next few years they brought down the percentage of women with hemoglobin count less than 10 grams to about 10% of population. Which coming from 70% prevalence earlier was an incredible achievement? But most importantly that meant that thousands of new born deformed cases which would have otherwise come to Dr. Deshmukh for surgery were now being born as God’s own perfect creations.

All this because someone did not consider a simple looking job...demeaning.

So when the world points the finger towards you…remember it could well mean…you are the one.

What is the best religion ?

Religion is the belief in and worship of a God or Gods, or any such system of belief and worship, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs- WIKI

A brief dialogue between a Brazilian theologist Leonardo Boff and the Dalai Lama has been given as a powerpoint presentation. Leonardo Boff  asked Dalai Lama “What is the best religion?”. Dalai Lama answered

“Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words.

Take care of your Words because they will become Actions.

Take care of your Actions because they will become Habits.

Take care of your Habits because they will form your Character.

Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny,

and your Destiny will be your Life

… and

There is no religion higher than the Truth”.

Click here to view in full screen

Nala Dhamayanthi & Swan

About a month back I read Nala Dhamayanthi story in Dinamalar "Aanmeega Malar". They gave a detailed picture about Nala Dhamayanthi and Swan's previous birth. When I read that I wanted this story to be known to all. Today I came across a story book for the kids about this episode. I am happy sharing this story with you all.


Click Here for Better View

The train that will not stop..........running ..........running

Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-Lun has an innovative idea to make train transportation even more efficient: get rid of the stops. No, he's not proposing that passengers are thrown on and off of fast-moving trains or that passengers are eliminated from the equation altogether. Instead, Yu-Lun envisions a small separated car perched atop the train. When the train enters a station, this car slides along on elevated rails that smoothly and gradually remove the car from the rest of the train and bring it to a stop. 
Another identical car travels from these elevated tracks and gradually slides along the top of the train to pick up speed for boarding passengers. The end result: a train with no need to stop at stations. 
Check out the video demonstration below, in Taiwanese, of what such a train would look like: 
Sure, regenerative braking – the process that converts the energy typically wasted as heat when slowing down and storing it as electrical power in batteries – is a terrific energy saving solution. Many hybrid cars, such as the Prius, use regenerative braking and it's starting to appear aboard hybrid diesel/electric trains as well. But more efficient still is to maintain your momentum and dispense with a train's need to make stops. 
Huge amounts of power go into bringing an entire train's mass to a halt at stations and then reaccelerating it back up to speed. By keeping the main portion of the train on the move, the energy savings could be huge. 

Some Interesting facts about Train

A train is a connected series of rail vehicles that move along the track. Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate locomotive, or from individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Most trains carry a revenue load, although non-revenue cars exist for the railway's own use, such as for maintenance-of-way purposes. The railroad engineer or engine driver controls the locomotive or other power cars, although people movers and some rapid transits are driverless

In 1854 the British Colonial Government in India started building a rail link from Kolkata to the coalfields in Bardhman district. This was the second railway line constructed in India after the first one from Mumbai to Thaney in 1853. The line started from Howrah, then a small town on the west shore of the Hooghly River.

The first locomotive, shown below christened “Multum in Parvo” (barely visible on the wheel casing), which was used by the East Indian Railway Company in 1854 on its 23-mile line from Howrah to Pandua.

Mumbai suburban Railway carries more than 6.9 million commuters on a daily basis and constitutes more than half of the total daily passenger capacity of the Indian Railways itself. It has one of the highest passenger densities of any urban railway system in the world. Transportation in India depends heavily on railroads. The railway system, owned and operated by the government, is the largest in the world under single management. Each year, more than 4 billion passenger journeys are made by rail. Railroads also carry about 60 percent of India's freight traffic (421 million tones) every year.

Indian Railways highlights (2007): 
route total: 64,000 km (17,000 km electrified; 12,617 km double track) 
broad gauge: 40,620 km 1.676-m gauge 
narrow gauge: 18,501 km 1.000-m gauge; 3,794 km 0.762-m/ 0.610-m 
gauge track total: 1,07,000 Track Kilometers 
Passengers travel per day: 1.7 million 
Stations: 6,977 
Fleet of trains: 7,000 for passengers and 4,000 for goods 
Wagons: 207,176

நான் இன்று கற்ற புதுப் பாடம்

Today I received a mail from one of my e-friend and learnt a new word as “Netizen”.  This made me to browse more articles on such similar words. One among that is “Internaut”. 

Internaut is a common term for a designer, operator, or technically capable professional user of the Internet.

An internaut is cyber slang for an online veteran who is ultra-familiar with the Internet as an entity, and with cyberspace in general. The word is a combination of “Internet” and “astronaut.” Other terms roughly analogous with internaut are cybernaut or netizen, though each has its own connotation. The common thread among them, however, is an implication of experience and knowledge of the Internet or cyberspace that goes beyond the casual user.

An internaut is online savvy, normally through years of online experience, with a thorough knowledge of how to use search engines and search strings, Internet resources, forums, newsgroups and chat rooms to find information. The more someone knows about the Internet, its history and politics, the more likely the term “internaut” fits them. The less he or she knows the more likely a different term would be more fitting.

Cybernaut is probably closest in meaning to internaut in terms of in-depth knowledge of the online world, but which world? 'Internaut' might be a more academic term, relating to knowledge of the Internet itself and information in general. Cybernaut might be closer associated with being skilled within online gaming communities, virtual worlds such as Second Life, and other fantasy or role-playing worlds. Though there are no hard and fast rules to slang, “cybernaut” suits people who grew up with the Internet, while “internaut” might be more closely associated with those who took a hand in building it and/or in witnessing its growth.

A netizen, or citizen of the Internet, also has a specific connotation that implies someone familiar with netiquette. Enthusiasts of USENET newsgroups and Web forums realize that these forums rely on voluntary cooperation. Before participating in a forum, a good netizen will read the frequently asked questions (FAQ) and general charter in order to participate within the community (group) in a way that supports it. An internaut or cybernaut would also know to do this. A netizen, however, may or may not have any special knowledge of the Internet or of gaming………………..  Courtesy Wiki

யார் உயர்ந்தவர்?

துறவி ஒருவரைச் சந்தித்த அரசன் ஒருவன் “தந்தை, அரசன், இறைவன் மூவரில் யார் சிறந்தவர்?” என்று கேட்டான்.

அதற்குத் துறவி “அரசே தந்தை பொன் போன்றவர். அரசனோ வெள்ளிக்கு ஒப்பானவர். இறைவனோ தானியம் போன்றவன்” என்றார்.

“அப்படியானால் இறைவன் மதிப்பில் தாழ்ந்தவர் என்று பொருள் தானே ? “ என்று வினவினான் அரசன்.

“அரசே பொன்னும் வெள்ளியும் மதிப்பில் உயர்ந்திருந்தாலும் அவையில்லாமல் மனிதன் உயிர் வாழ முடியும்.  ஆனால் உணவு தானியமின்றி மனிதனால் உயிர் வாழ முடியாது” என்று சொன்னார் துறவி

-நன்றி குமுதம் பக்தி ஸ்பெஷல் 

நந்தகோபன் கண்ணன் பதம் பணி தினமே

ராகஸ்ரீ சாஹித்யம் 

ஸாயிநாதர் அவதாரம்

 - Prof. ஸிட்னி ஸு்ந்தரம் அவர்கள் 

Dust to Mountain or Mountain to dust

Shall we bite some interesting information about BYTE

Dust is a general name for solid particles with diameters less than 20 thou  (500 micrometres). In geology, a boulder is a rock with grain size of usually no less than 256 mm (10 inches) diameter. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In common usage, a boulder is too large for a person to move. Smaller boulders are usually just called rocks or stones. Dust, boulder, rocks and stones make a mountain.  Like wise the bits, byte, kilobyte, megabyte mount to petabytes viz. a mountain size of data.  Are we adding that much of garbage in the outer sphere and satellites.

The term byte was coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz in July 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. Originally it was defined in instructions by a 4-bit field, allowing sixteen values and typical I/O equipment of the period used six-bit bytes. A fixed eight-bit byte size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360.The term byte stems from bite, as in the smallest amount of data a computer could bite at once.

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications. It is an ordered collection of bits, in which each bit denotes the binary value of 1 or 0. Historically, a byte was the number of bits (typically 6, 7, 8, or 9) used to encode a character of text in a computer and it is for this reason the basic addressable element in many computer architectures. The size of a byte is typically hardware dependent, but the modern de facto standard is 8 bits, as this is a convenient  power of 2. Most of the numeric values used by many applications are representable in 8 bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage. Signal processing applications tend to operate on larger values and some digital signal processors have 16 or 40 bits as the smallest unit of addressable storage (on such processors a byte may be defined to contain this number of bits).

Humanity’s total digital output currently stands at 8,000,000 petabytes - which each represent a million gigabytes - but is expected to pass 1.2 zettabytes this year.  One zettabyte is equal to one million petabytes, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 individual bytes.

There is a huge increase in video and digital photography storing. In the old days people would take one photograph, now they can knock off 20 photos and rather than store just one, people store all 20. Then there is the fact that the number of devices where information can be generated and stored has also increased.

The rapid growth of the “digital universe” has been caused by the explosion of social networking, online video, digital photography and mobile phones.  Around 70 per cent of the world’s digital content is generated by individuals, but it is stored by companies on content-sharing websites such as Flickr and YouTube. The latest survey confirms that current size of the world’s digital content is equivalent to all the information that could be stored on 75bn Apple iPads of average storage capacity of 30-60gb.

In one side man is demolishing the mountains to granite / blue metal stones to construct buildings and roads.  In another side small bites pouring into the satellites by way of digital outputs amounting to petabytes,  nothing but a mountain of digital data.

See the "Broken Hills' dust. Is this dust becomes Mountain or Mountain is crushing to dust.

Murudeeswara (முருடீஸ்வரா)

249 அடி உயரமான கோபுரமும்    123 அடி உயரமான சிவனது உருவமும் உள்ள முருடீஸ்வரா கோவில் நம் நாட்டில் உள்ள ஒரு வியத்தகு இடமாகும். அங்குள்ள மலை மீது ஒரு குகைக் கோவில் ஒன்றினை ஏற்படுத்தயுள்ளர்கள். உள்ளே சென்று பார்த்த பொழுது நம்மை பரவசத்தில் ஆழ்த்தியது, அங்கே சிலை வடிவத்தில், ஸ்தல மகிமையை நமக்கு வழங்கயுள்ளர்கள். நான் ரசித்த காட்சியினை படம் எடுத்துள்ளேன். அதனை வீடியோ காட்சி போல தொகுத்துள்ளேன். ஸ்தல புராணத்தினையும் வீடியோ தொகுப்பினையும் கீழே வழங்கியுள்ளேன். நீங்கள் எல்லோரும் ரசிப்பீர்கள் என்பதில் ஐயம் இல்லை. 

BRAINUTER ??

A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data and provides output in a useful format.

The first use of the word "computer" was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued to be used in that sense until the middle of the 20th century.

The defining feature of modern computers which distinguishes them from all other machines is that they can be programmed. That is to say that a list of instructions  (the program ) can be given to the computer and it will store them and carry them out at some time in the future.

In 1970s IBM computers viz. 1401 and 360 entered office and business enterprises with punched cards.

In 1980s with the advent of Electronic Data Processing minicomputer and desktop computer started coming the market.

Slowly the hard disc capacity started scaling up with memory size. Computers with MBs slowly pushed to GBs and now it is rocketing to TBs.

By multiprocessing and networking the naming of generation came and now we are slowly crossing the fourth generation and leading to theoretical / experimental computers viz. Quantum computer, Chemical Computer, DNA computing, Optical Computer, Spintronics based computer.

Now Where are we ?

Whether the computer can overpower our brains ?

Whether we can call this as desktop or laptop or tablet or wearable or ????