I haven't read the book by that name, supposed to be a good one, about the new Ireland of Celtic Tiger boom economy of increased employment, soaring prices, new spending habits, changing priorities - live in general in the Ireland of the 21st century.
Anyway, the photo here is from Phoenix Park, 1752 acres of beautiful woodlands and park, right in the middle of Dublin. One of my favorite places in Dublin.
The large cross in the background is the Papal Cross where Pope John Paul II held a mass for over a million people in 1979. Remember, total population of Ireland around then was less than four million!
This photo has been shortlisted for Schmap Dublin guide. I have never heard of them before, no need to prepare my acceptance speech just yet!
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Pope's children!
.. . the full story of course! The church's lack of understanding of majestic sea creatures meant they decided to twist the tales to completely take them out!
Newly found ancient documents shows that the The three kings intially set off following the star, but soon, the sky went totally cloudy and they got lost in the vastness of the desert. Not like they had GPS sysems or anything, and the Camels where poorly trained as well! They then used their powers and sought the help of the supremely intelligent sharks to show them the way. This species of sharks could fly and they were later hunted down and exterminated by the armies supporting the Church as the Priory of Flying Sharks stood in the way of Church's version of the Bible stories.
Anyway, on a serious note, I am about two thirds into Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, and I think he makes a lot of sense. Growing up in a relaxed yet Hindu family, I have to say, the Abrahamic religious ideas never appealed to me! I could never understand the idea of a 'God' person (Bruce Almighty-ish all knowing all seeing God guy). Over a period of time I was getting comfortable with the idea of God as 'collective goodness in the universe' (and evil the opposite), but Dawkins has thrown a spanner in that idea too. I think he calls my stand apologetic fence-sitters or something - grrr, well I have to agree, fence sitting is not same as opposing, and it probably is more close to supporting than opposing, blind religious rules by various interests, almost all of which is really are the reasons for most of the major conflicts in known human history, and present!
Coming back to 'The God Delusion', I find it a tough read. It started off with Mr. Dawkins making his position clear, and making sure that he sets your expectations straight - this is going to be a straight taking book with mild rhetoric tone. Read it if you like, or give it to someone else right now. I kept going of course, even if I don't agree with the rhetoric tone, I was curious about his side of the argument. So far, I agree with almost all of what he has to say! Not sure if I will be a 100% atheist by the time I put the book down, but I am sure I am more an atheist now than I was - was never a theist to start with, so it wasn't too difficult anyway!
A random point that I can recollect now (it sparked a 'Ahhaa' moment when I read it..)::
Human brain is programmed to survive - we more likely to mistake a shadow for a burglar, than a burglar for a shadow!
Verdict: Good read, if you have the time, interest and patience!
PS: A timely (almost) discussion on this topic over at Dilbert: The Atheist Who Thought He Was God.
The Sunny Coast!
.. or 'Costa Del Sol' in Spanish, the south coast of spain lives up to its reputation here!
Its sunny, even in the middle of winter, which is nothing new to someone from the tropics like myself, but living in Ireland where Sun is usually referred as 'the strange fireball in the sky', or one dry sunny day is the difference between 'average summer' to 'brilliant summer', a warm sunrise like this on a December morning is better than sliced bread, better than threesome on The Maltese Falcon!!
Costa Del Sol, with its fine weather, fine selection of restaurants that cater all kinds of food, with prices just fraction of whats common is UK and Ireland (Western Europe in general), the unstoppable mass migration of retired people from UK and Ireland to South of Spain has been going on for years now. The coasta is now so built up, tall, tasteless apartment complexes, beautiful but soul-less stree markets, shops and restaurants - its not Spain anymore - its more like a knock-off UK or Ireland, with good weather and cheap food and drinks! Property boom in UK & Ireland, cheap fares airlines Ryanair offering to get you there for less than your taxi fare to airport doesn't help the situation either!
Fuengirola, as seen from the sea here, probably has more English residents that Spanish.
Away from the proxy-Engerland, nearby town of Malaga has a lot of history to show off, The Alcazaba, the Moorish castle. But due to my own carelessness, I lost this memory card with about 300 shots! Well, an excuse to go back there again!! :D
Haven't been here since I bought a Canon 400D.
Jet d'Eau, familiar backdrop for the dancing couple of an average Bollywood movie in last few years. Apart from that sort of abuse, the place, Geneva, is as beautiful as anything else swiss. Life looks perfect around Lake Geneva - skiing all winter, water sports in summer, crystal clear water, fresh air, beautiful houses with green lawns and fantastic views to die for, snow capped matterhorn mountains in the distance, worlds best public transport, low tax, high average income, relaxed and healthy lifestyle, top class education system, universities, research and development jobs, finance and banking related jobs and a very stable, very matured economy!!
On the downside, accommodation is extremely expensive if you can find one at all, and it usually is an apartment. Eating out, insurance costs etc are a bit on the dear side.
Over many visits to Geneva, most striking thing that comes to mind is that I never saw a police car or a police officer around, which I think is a darn good sign of how things are! Especially considering the hotel is right next to the ""business"" or red light area of the town!
Tops my list desirable places to live. Just have to be careful to not to bump into Bachchans or Kapoors, thats all!
Friday, September 22, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
When going gets tough...
Its fairly tough with me at the moment personally, but if I toughen up and get going, that might hurt some others, which I don't want to. Now does that make me weak? I will think about it. For now, I am busy finding out and getting indulged in new distractions to keep me busy. My camera gets a lot of abuse lately. This one from this morning when I wandered out (very) early upto the nearby Bettystown beach.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Here's a small thing you need to know to get Java WebStart (JWS) to work over https connections.
If you try to launch a browser and start a JWS application over a https connection, it would prompt you to the standard security dialog and if you chose to trust the source, JWS still fails to launch the application.
Apparently this is because JWS is not very good at handling certificates. The work around is to add the certificate manually to the JWS keystore. Here’s how to go about it.
Step 1: To start with, you need to get hold of the certificate you want to put in to your JWS keystore. If you are using a self-signed certificate, you can export it out of your keystore as a .arm file etc.
Step 2: Locate the JRE your browser is using. If you are using Windows OS, you can do that using one of the following
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Java Plug-in
Start > Program Files > Java Web Start
Usually, its under C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4xx
If you are in a *nix environment, I am not sure how to figure this out – try â€ï¿½which java’ or â€ï¿½where is java’ in console. Or check you browser settings.
Step 3:Import certificate to the correct keystore.
Once you have located the JRE home that you browser is pointing to, there should be a folder called â€ï¿½javaws’ and under that there is a keystore called â€ï¿½cacerts’. This is the most misleading part – Ignore that keystore because adding the certificate there does not work.
Instead, under JRE home, look for â€ï¿½lib\security’ and the â€ï¿½cacerts’ keystore. If you import the certificate here, that should do the trick. You can use the following command to import a certificate into the keystore.
keytool –import –alias <enter an alias> -file <full path to the certificate file here> ?keystore cacerts –trustcacerts
Keytool will prompt for keystore password. Default is 'changeit'.
JWS should be able to see it from now on.
Some useful links:
Java Sketchbook: Digging into Java Web Start [java.net]
Java Web Start and Code Signing [dallaway.com]
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Last week I was talking to someone I had just met. She's a doctor with a number of specialisations and seems to me that it's quite an achievement for her age – either late twenties or early thirties, I didn't ask!
She sure knew her stuff, and she knew she know her stuff, becuase soon we were discussing all sorts of things under the Sun and above the operation table – scary stuff like ebola viruses and even scarier things like oral hygiene etc!! I was soon reduced to a listener, though I am good at it, I couldn't let someone run all over me like that for ever! When she was about to take a very high-speed fly-by near the cancer research and grid computing, I noticed my chance, my last strand and I shamelessly held onto it for another ten minutes, well, okay, bit longer than that! Oh yes, the miracles of grid computing and how we all can contribute to making the world a better place tomorrow, with better medicines, less doctors to go on about things, that doctors usually go on about, and stuff like that! Brutal, I know, but I am allowed – I am an IT guy!
Anyway, long story short, may be she realised she should throw a bone my way to keep me from going hostile - she pulled this laptop out of her bag that she hadn't been able to use for a very long time! Apparently she is amused by the friendly strangers on her PC, personally guaranteeing a excellent value extension surgery to a penis which she didn’t have and extremely annoyed by the fact that she is extremely popular and considered as a friendly foreigner by everyone in Nigeria and most parts of Africa and South Asia, where people want to pay her a few millions of dollars as 'generous commission' that always seems to belong a dictator or rich general who died either in a plane crash or in a political unrest. She also seems to win lotto every time she opens the computer! Who could ever think one will get tired of all the good fortune!
She is not the only one though – almost every other person that I know who has a PC at home, connected to the Internet etc, seems to have similar stories to tell! Well then guys, I don't mind fixing all your PCs once. Or twice. Okay even third time for a pint. But next time when you see an offer to 'wipe your mortgage clean', do the following before you ask me out for a pint.
Install (and UPDATE and USE) these FREE software:
AVG Antivirus
Its free! Don’t forget to update the virus definitions and scan the whole PC once a week. http://www.grisoft.com
Spybot Search & Destroy
Its free! Don’t forget to update the spyware definitions and scan the whole PC once a week. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
Stop using Internet Explorer and use Firefox instead. Its better, relatively safer and its free. If you use Outlook, look into about Thunderbird as an alternative.
After all these, if you get yet another 'Hot Latina babes' popup in your screen (when you are not looking for 'Hot Latina babes' of course), let me know!
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Space Shuttle Discovery, with seven astronauts on board, just flew past over me a minute ago. I didn't see it, because I don't have a telescope. Even if I bought one, I wouldn't know how to use it. Now, even if I learned that, I probably wouldn't remember to do get out and check the skies on the only day when the sky is clear here in Ireland - because it would be February 30th! But some informed brains have put together this site which does a nifty job with a familiar google worldmap and shows exactly where the satellites are!
You are into satellites for the free German sex-toys channel, or because you hope to peep into some alien chicks bedroom, anyways, they have some of the night sky misteries solved for you. The site automatically figures out your location (using IP2Location db - check their FAQ) too!
[n2yo.com] Space Shuttle Discovery
Monday, June 26, 2006
I am sure you have heard about him? Wealthy American business man, Warren Edward Buffet, with an estimated worth of around 44 billion dollars, second richest person in the world according to Forbes, is just after announcing that he is going to give away 85% of his fortune to various charity organisations!
My first reaction on this news was, well, is it really true? Apparently it is!
Is he really that rich? Well, apparently he is, and he didn't make it by printing green paper in his basement or by selling Columbian talcum powder either!
Was he born rich? Apparently not! He started off as an average American Joe, worked hard and lived the American dream!
Okay, is it the old age, has he gone a bit, Barney!?
Answer is a resounding no. Have a look at the wikipedia page on the guy. He was a good man all his life! He is known as "Oracle of Omaha" or the "Sage of Omaha". He still lives in a 30 thousand dollar house he bought back in 1958, and its now valued at half a million dollars, dare I say, me, Mr Nobody McHasNothing paid nearly that much for the pleasures of home ownership (part blame to the Irish house prices, but that's another topic on its on).
Wikipedia: Warren Buffet
Honestly, I am baffled why someone would do something like this, and at the same time, I am mighty impressed by Warren Buffet's kindness, compassion and courage! He, in my humble opinion, is as fit as anyone else to do major feet - like start a major religion, a new system or establish a nation etc. Well, when you think about it, who else thought America is a big too big..?
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Living it!
Little did I know it had a mind of a ninja, and it was scheming up its own little rebellion its own corner of the world! One day, without any kind of warning what so ever, it just went BOOOM... well, BLOOOM to be more precise - it was as if it made up its mind about the meaning of life, universe and everything, which is 42 to us, and decided it had enough of the defensive thorns and stuff, and set out looking pretty and making everything around it look ugly, in a hurry!
Well, tell you what, no pun intended, but between those pricks, it has mind sharper than some world leaders, and I am not talking about Al Gore either!
Monday, June 19, 2006
Going beyond the beyond!
Heres a story for you and me!
While we seems to be forever stuck in a rat-race, to maintain a work-life balance, to earn what makes us feel better than our neighbour, heres a thought-provoking true story of a man, that will make you pause for a second and think how the miracle of human mind works; especially how it work in the face of that end-of-everything-feeling, the human equivalend of a an 'event horizon', from where there is no going back; and the amazing ways of how it mends itself - in the process, much of what we take for granted, or wish for is beeing proven not as important as you or I would think it is!
Long read, but consider yourself lucky if you can master it in a lifetime!
Link: An Interview with Michael Hutchison
View from Malin head, Country Donegal, Ireland.
View from MalinHead, Country Donegal, Ireland.
Apparently, on a clear day, one could see Scotland from here, and the day was pretty good for Irish standards and, ah well, may be I lacked the imagination!!!
The cliffs on the other side really dramatic though and altogether a fantastic place to visit!
Fact: Haggis can kill you with a single peck!
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Ardgillan Castle, near Balbriggan, Co. Dublin, Republic of Ireland is a large country residence (build in 1738 by Rev. Robert Taylor (for more history check here).
These days, the castle and the ground is a fantastic picnic location for the thousands of residents of Dublin's popular commuter towns, Balbriggan, Skerries, and even Drogheda. I was test driving a brand new Opel Astra for the weekend, and the fantastic weather this morning give me an excellent opportunity to try some of the country roads around Drogheda, which eventually lead me to the magnificent Ardgillan Castle. Honestly, I was not prepared for it, and it was a brilliant surprise!
Just look at grand location of the castle – overlooking the Irish sea, and acres of well maintained lawns, various kinds of flowers in the Victorian style garden, it’s a fantastic place to spend a warm summer day!
The castle also does guided tours (thats for another day), and even have a 'tea room' - give you a unique chance to sit down and do something usual, everyday thing -like pouring a perfect cup of tea and dip a biscuit in it (as compared to walking around and ogling at things), and it gives you a chance to notice, and may be understand, how who ever lived here would have spend a few minute of their life here.
I am sure I will be back there soon!
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Matt Groening and team has managed to pack in so much punch into scene after scene, its just sheer geek tv! I happened to watch a older version (I know all versions are old, they haven't restarted production yet), and the 'GodFellas' episode is where I got my latest spiritual high.
God: "Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket."
Bender: "Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!"
God: "Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing.
God: "Bender, When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
I found this place for Futurama lovers - Can't get enough of Futurama?.
1 out of 1! Thats 42 for pathetic non-binary carbon-based life forms!
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
A nostalgia inducing shot of a charukasela in a kolaya of a typical tharavadu.
This veranda, and these chairs have seen many generation growing up, moving out, visiting again after years, and the inevitable, mourning around it. The house itself is approximately 120 years old, and my father, who is now in his late sixties, has fond memories of growing up there. He has spend much of his free time sharing the same corner of the veranda, with six of his siblings and with anyone or anything that walks, flies or crawls in there seeking shelter from the scorching summer sun.
I have felt the wrath of that sun too, and the tranquillity of lying back on one of these chairs, and put your feet up, and watch the world outside standing almost still in the summer heat, even birds taking shelter under banana leaves, squirrels making a dash across the courtyard to pick up a freshly fallen mango, or a hen and a bunch of chicks enjoying a bit of loose mud in the shade, and how the mother hen gets frustrated with her hyperactive chicks running around and issues stern warnings to come back to under her wings, how the cows stands still as if they are dreaming, while almost mechanically munching away the fresh hay that one of the servants spread in front of them, how the dog or dogs curl up at the far corner of the veranda and sleep without a care for anything, but if a bird chirps unusually, hen sends a warning to the chicks or if a crow lands too close to the veranda, he somehow seems to know that and spring into action pacing around the courtyard, looking furious about whatever happened was not without his approval, but only to come back in minutes and to lie exactly where he was before and to slumber into another sleep with a sigh.... This goes on till I fall asleep, postman calls in, which is not often, or one of the elders calls me over to join for tea in the dining room, it would be almost four in the evening by then, and the sun a lot weaker, and the life back to its normal speed.
As you can probably tell, I do miss those days, the days when I could sit starring into a empty courtyard and no one would worry about my time, things to do, or my state of mind...
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Grote Markt or Grand Place, Brussels is the central square in Brussles. Its smaller than I imagined from reading about it, but still very royal, very European! The gothic town hall is straight out of Doom or Unreal or some such fantasy game maps! Unreal, thats the word! Raspberry beer turned out to be quite nice - a beer version of Spanish sangria!
Manikin piss turned out to nothing but of a wee boy taking a piss, or may be Belgians taking a piss on tourists, you wouldn't miss much if you it a miss!