The Heart Broken Biker – Vlog 010 – Save the Bees!

Part of adventure last night.

Trying to rescue some bees and help them back to their colony/hives.

Credits:
Intro Music: “In My Own Place” by Yumisekai

Mario Comic for Social Welfare Event

Doodled up quick mario comic for a Social Welfare Event.
Didn’t have time to color it up

Go ahead check out the comic and don’t forget to read the story captions under the image

Note: Mario and other characters in this comic are copyright of Nintendo Co., Ltd. I’m just a fan

Mario keeps searches for his princess…Unaware of the fact that the princess doesn’t really love him!

But One day he comes to know of her true self and that he was just a disposable puppet for her.
So the heart broken Mario decides to do good with rest of his life.

Not just doing good, but also spreading the same attitude to others around him.
He attains joy in helping and serving the true needs of the society.

Other good hearts come and join him in the journey of benevolence.
Note: I know there is princess Peach again in this frame .. its not like she turned good and joined him (LOL, does that happen in reality?) . I just wanted to draw a female character here to signify that there “are” indeed good ones left. May be I should have drawn princess Daisy instead… damn I screwed up in game character confusion

So if you’re reading this small comic, and want to join up in a get together to do good / experience feeling humane in a new way .. then
put your hand over your heart,
say “I want to do good”,
buy a ticket on that link on the last page of the comic,
and be there at the event

Dasha-hara 2012

My last Dussera was tainted with promises(read: false promises) that easily broke.

I am myself not really inclined towards Bengali tradition, and for that matter no other tradition either.
Respect all, but subscribe to none is my motto….. but what really irks me is when people try to follow a tradition thinking it will earn them some bias in life.. which they eventually can’t keep up with and end up breaking/dis-respecting it in a bad way.

Anyway, this time on, it was me, friends and my grandparents. Missed mom because she lives in her native place and missed dad big time as this day was his birthday too (we lost him to a heart attack 9 years ago).
Mom wanted me to offer a sweet box for the Goddessess’ Puja. I think everyone is supposed to mention their name and gotra on a slip of paper and stick it to the sweet box. They’re probably read during the offering.
I for one, don’t like to mention my name on stuff (including gifts, greeting cards etc) and I couldn’t care less about the Gotra either… so cleverly I just said “In the name of my beloved father”

Did I mention that my father too was an atheist , he must be frowning his eyebrows when I wrote that
Nah.. just kidding. He was the first saint (calm) natured person I had ever known…. and the second is a friend living couple of continents away.

Well then, turn back and Whoa! there was loads of food, bhog, people, energy and fun!

Below are some pics for the blog readers and a full set is available on facebook here.

Mandap or Set for the Goddess idols to reside in during Poojas.

The Idols….. the sculptor definitely deserves a praise for his/her skills.

St. Mary’s Cathedral at walk-able distance from the Bengali Celebrations.
Took a friend to show around.

All that walk in the Sun .. and how can we miss the Ice Golas

It is not Bengali food if it doesn’t have this

Burrp! .. excuse me Eaten enough.. now lets go back home

Bangalore trip

Traveled with ChoonMing to Bangalore to take up another PuppetLabs training for OlinData.

Refreshing little break, new place, people with traffic sense, nice weather to sprint and also got treated to awesome lunch at Hotel Samarkand as a farewell for me by Ming.  
Yes guys, I’ve decided to stop consulting and go on full time with my game development (infact already doing it from Oct 1)

Anyway, pics of B’lore trip here .. will keep updating till I return.

ChoonMing and Me – early birds to train future puppet masters… more like more than an two hours early.. yikes!

A view from our conference room

The benefits of being a ‘travelling’ entrepreneur – peace to eyes.

And that looks like me taking a look at attendees puppet code demos’ – a test for them on last day of training.

Who owns a mac and then writes code on a white background text editor … hmmmzz

And that’s it. Sorry guys no more pics of the trip. I forgot my camera in a friend’s bag back here in Hyderabad and Ming’s camera just decided to die on batteries (+ he didn’t get his charger) .. so that’s just few pics from his HTC One X.

Yikes! there is Ratatouille on the Menu .. but didn’t have much confidence in the quality of food after stayin 4 days there.

Apart from all the work, we had good food, and then some days of crappy food at Hotel.
Ming lost some stuff from the room in hotel (which costs like 4000-5000 rupees) and hotel’s Wi-Fi wouldn’t work until he decided to give them a verbal bash and I helped the hotel IT guy with a bit of common sense to change the water dripped Access Point on the floor.

This trip became possible only because a friend decided to watch over my kids (read: my 3 Cavies) and I am very grateful for that.

How long can I stay awake

So I’ve been doing this experiment to see how long I can stay awake.. keep doing it once in a while.

My last personal best is around 49 hours.

Trying again this time.. this is me right now (21:07, Oct 10) with ~34 hours without sleep and tons of physical work done.

Keeping awake with help from my dearest drinks

Keeping myself going on with RedBull … this is one drink that works with my body to give me extra boost of instant energy, but also ends me in this rare peculiar side effect of a chest pain (near heart) after consumption.

Other’s like glatorade, and whatever, tzinga.. blah blah failed to work on me.

Also, today I had trouble finding RedBull in lot of stores.. (someone said their license to distribute as sole entity has expired).. instead offered me Budweiser’s new Non-alcoholic energy drink…. one sip and I was almost going to puke and I disposed it.

Finally, with help of friends found RedBull in a uncanny bakery; stocked up some cans.

Update: Stayed up for 40 hours +5/10 minutes and the crashed

Study on “Preventing Hair Loss and Regrowing hair Naturally”

People always said I’d lose hair from forehead (probably due to the u-shaped hair, heredity from Dad).
Most of these people were either troubled by their own hairloss and doing something to prevent it .. and predicting that other’s will lose hair seems to comfort them (The Oh! I’m not alone.. so its good as long as everyone has same issues!.. attitude of making yourself feel good)

Fact is, I’ve known that my overall hair density has been reducing (and not from forehead unlike the ‘predictions’) and I didn’t care balls about it.
A week ago, I went to get a hair cut and noticed in the barber shops back to back mirrors that I’m actually losing more hair from the center and spreading.
(Earlier, there was just a tiny patch where hair would be less dense due to an injury I had in 9th grade, by falling off bicycle pillion seat and landing head first on a granite stone)

I decided I do something about it now (just like I’m doing with some other aspects of my life)

Problem Facts list:

1. I don’t comb my hair, I care a fuck about hairstyle .. dont even have a habit of looking at mirror
2. I don’t massage my scalp (unless I’m pulling my hair in frustration) and I dont use hair oil.
3. I wash my hair daily during bath (only water) – This should go in Good Facts list but it’s here because the water is hard-water from shower and not soft drinking water.
3.1 but don’t use shampoo (may be once a month or once two months)
4. My diet includes mostly meat (bizarre foods, people close their ears/faint/run for life when they hear what I eat) and very very less of good food(micro-nutrients) that we will discuss later in this post.
5. I worry too much about stuff in life, keep thinking of past issues, and constantly keep worrying about my life goals.
6. I don’t sleep/rest enough due to (5) above

Good Facts list:

1. I wear helmet compulsorily and with a hairwrap/balaclava in it (no matter how small the distance of drive is) – protects from dirt.. although my primary reason is to survive longer and do something better with my life.
2. I don’t have to travel in traffic to office daily – luckily. (benefits of running in-home startup – thankyou life for that.. touchwood)
3. I like to keep hair as short as possible .. so there is less sweat residue sitting in the hair daylong. (but I keep forgetting about haircut, until someone reminds me)

The geek within took some time off work and studied bunch of articles / case-studies to learn what works.. and compiled a list of do’s/don’ts …and knowledge is wasted if not shared….. So here goes:

My small study (couple of hours) on Preventing Hair Loss and Regrowing hair Naturally.. Let’s get it on.

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Foods to Eat
————-

1. Nuts, Soybeans (Try replacing cow milk intake with soymilk – Folic Acid)
2. B3 / B complex syrup or tablets (check with your physician before buying tablets)
3. Eggs (vitamin B12, B7, iron, Zinc, Omega6 fatty acid)
4. Walnuts (zinc, iron, B1, B6, B9, protein)
5. Carrots, Tomatoes, Peppers, Salads, Eggs, Liver (Warning: Read in vitamin A section below)
6. Leafy Greens, Lettuce, Spinach, Whole grains (Warning: Read in vitamin E section below)
7. Red and green Peppers, Citrus fruits, Oranges, Lemon ( Eat as much as you want – makes hair follicles stronger)
8. Green Peas (group B vitamins)
9. Oats/Oatmeal (zinc, iron, omega6 – find the ones that are not processed and packed if you can.. they are much better than the ones that come in shiny packets/boxes with stickers of fat-free and health and other balls)
10. Shrimp (vitamin B12, iron, zinc – Dammit, I’m allergic to shrimp.. it cause me red rashes on skin about 30 mins after eating… if you’re good with shrimp njoy )
11. Low Fat Dairy products – Skim milk, Yogurt (Calcium)
12. Water – The hair shaft is comprised of one quarter water. Drink at least 4 to 8 cups of water a day to stay hydrated and grow healthy hair.

————————————————————————————————-
Reasons for people who are in good habit of asking ‘Why’ rather than blindly accepting stuff:
————————————————————————————————-

- Complex B-Vitamins / Folic Acids
Folic acid promotes healthy cell growth which in turn produces healthy skin regeneration, and of course hair regeneration or hair regrow. Taking folic acid vitamins for hair loss prevention can not only greatly decrease your chances of experiencing hair loss to begin with, as well as help to prevent future hair loss.

- Vitamin A ( Warning: Eat in Moderation)
Vitamin A is plays a vital role in maintaining healthy hair, skin, and vision. But A word of caution, too much vitamin A can actually cause hair loss by increasing the sebum in your hair follicles. Sebum is a substance produced by cholesterol which in normal amounts is conducive to healthy skin and hair, but too much can encourage the growth of bacteria at the follicle level and thus actually cause hair loss.

- Vitamin E ( Warning: Eat in Moderation.. little more than Vitamin A intake is fine)
Vitamin E is essential for promoting healthy blood flow, it contains valuable antioxidants that help to keep the immune system up and encourages blood circulation to the scalp area.

- Vitamin C ( Note: Eat fully)
Vitamin C is an antioxidant vitamin, it isn’t directly associated with hair loss. However, low intake of vitamin C can result in dry or splitting hair, it may make your hair prone to hair loss.

—————
Stuff to Do
————–

0. Include food listed above to your regular diet (See Warning lists)

1. Scalp Massage: Massage stimulates blood circulation. Good circulation in the scalp keeps hair follicles active.

A few minutes of daily head massage by hand. Circulation through massage may be improved by using a few drops of lavender or bay essential oil in an almond or sesame oil base with massage.
(I was surprised none of the sources said ‘coconut oil’ which I believed since childhood to be THE thing; FSCK)

Heat it up so that it is “warm but not too hot”. The important thing is to massage it into your scalp, then put on a shower cap for about an hour, then rinse or shampoo out the oil.

Massage scalp thoroughly with oils daily – olive and lavender oil are excellent – then using a palm held short bristled brush – soft natural boar bristles for non straight hair and stiffer for straight hair.
Do it quite vigorously so you really feel it stimulating scalp. 90 /100 strokes or even more each day focusing on where loss is.
After scalp adjusts you can increase brushing. Will unplug blocked hair ducts indicated by painful small spots like pimples and a cause of hair loss and It will grow faster, thicker and It will force the new growth.

Try rubbing your scalp with garlic juice, Onion Juice or Ginger Juice atleast once a week(you can either of one out of three, Do not mix any of two or three.

2. Meditation: Most of the times, the root cause for hair loss is stress. Meditation can help in reducing that and restore hormonal balance.

ok, now for some pure gyan from me
Stop thinking of ex-girlfriend/wife or past that causes tension; if you have a current one may be better to lose a big headache.
Other ways of taking stress out include
- open a pic of harassing boss and show it the middle finger like 10 times.
- Shout out in lonely places whatever you couldn’t say to morons on their faces.
- If you have a boxing bag, take your stress out on it.
- There are other..a’hem .. ways of taking stress out, which I don’t need to mention here
- Listen to soothing stress relieving music once in a while other than rocking/screaming songs. (more the better)

Being honest and Upfront Attitude: Most tensions in human life comes when you have to manipulate things between lot of people, something like a small harmless looking lie/hiding actually grows bigger and people need to keep covering their asses again and again for the same stuff.
Be frank, honest and do good… that way you dont have to keep thinking of “what if” questions, keeps conscience clean and hence no tensions.
Stop thinking of what/how others think about you, and stop shaping(read: badshaping) your life for others .. when your brains stops thinking of pleasing morons around you.. your cpu load comes down, hence the stress.

Practise Benevolence, it help attain inner peace.

3. Prevent Dust on Hair: Stay away from road dust / construction dust by tying a kerchief / cloth to hair .. Wear helmet when you drive, Roll up car windows when you notice slow moving traffic/jam or dust in air, Stop rolling in mud if you have the habit of

—————–
Mistakes to Avoid:
—————–

Here are a few common mistakes that severely damage hair

1. Excessive stress and some medication are conclusively known to retard hair growth and promote hair loss.

2. Cut down on the use of hair spray, hair gels, and styling creams that contain harsh chemical ingredients, which can dry out the scalp and cause the formation of flakes. Also harsh treatments such as perms, colours, relaxers etc take a toll on the health of your hair.

3. Avoid changing your shampoo and conditioner constantly. Stick to one good mild cleansing shampoo for six months before changing.
Try using hair cleaning powders like brand “Meera”; if it suits you.

4. Excessive exposure to the sun, pollution, rain water and dust without proper protection makes the hair dry, brittle and limp. Use a live in conditioner during the rains to protect it from the humidity and wash and oil it regularly to maintain a healthy scalp.

5. Smoking and Drinking Causes Hair loss; so if you are .. might wanna cut down.

Hope this helps people facing hair loss issues; feel free to let me know if it worked/didnot and of any other solid/scientifically backed tip you have in comments.  Please refrain from adding stupid tips like “wear a ring with this stone / perform this puja or ritual / any other superstition”.

Disclaimer: I’m not a specialist in Medicine nor have a Medical Degree. I am an Engineer who asks a lot of “why” and “why not” and took biology classes seriously during High School.
Consider my advises on your own risk. Consult your physician. Don’t force yourself to intake something you have side effects to, just to grow hair.

Study on “Preventing Hair Loss and Regrowing hair Naturally” by Srikrishna Das (a.k.a krish – facebook.com/das.srikrishna) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at Multiple Sources on Internet/Doctors/Yahoo answers of people who have actually achieved it.

The “Why I don’t need” list

After spending nights after nights in the darkest, loneliest and scariest places I could find.. and thinking on and on of the past betrayal in life, every second rewinded from the last 10 years, every minute detail dug up, every wound and scar of my heart made alive and opened up.

I just finished re-living the last 10 years weighing the pain vs happy moments and so sadly pain goes miles ahead in life’s scale.

Made up a “Why I don’t need someone” list .. stuck it up on the wall, right on the front of my desk… so that I won’t forget even for a split second.

Does this mean I will forgive and let the people who gave me scars on my heart/put daggers in my back just go about their lives happily?

Testing via Gnome-blog

Does this work..

Darn no good desktop blogging software for linux.

Which newspaper do you read?

Had a heartache early morning.
Yes thats right. Having surrendered a policy yesterday to catch on the market upward trend ..NIFTY doing aroun 5300+ and SENSEX soaring 17700+ …. imagine what happens when you pick up your newspaper and see 1250+ points down on SENSEX!
I was like WHAT THE F*** ON EARTH!

**For someone who doesn’t understand markets, the above statements mean loads of money lost overnight.. puff in the air.

Thanks to stuff being available online .. was quick enough to check Google finance and nse’s own site.. blood pressure back to normal as I find that it was a printing mistake by the newspaper.

Wait a sec…. Déjà vu! I’ve seen this before.
Quickly pulled up the pile of news papers and compared from Feb1 and Wolah! These guys have been printing same values many times over without realizing/correcting. WTF again!

So which newspaper should we read?

The above pics show 2 days of printing mistakes, where SENSEX was actually doing above 17200+ and NIFTY was 5000+ easy.
Not just 2 days, they have printed this more number of times.. I used up some papers for my guineapig pet flooring.. so they’ve already pissed on it.
Anyone who has copies from Feb1, is ought to find atleast 3 days printed with exactly same Gold,Silver rates, Indices and exchange.

To the Newspaper: Please correct it!  .. Not mentioning your name/brand in the blog.

To readers of my blog: Enjoy this commercials…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5plfaHRkdi4&feature=fvsr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtfopgTy6Ws&feature=related

 

Acer P166HQL Monitor review

Insomnia is keeping me awake despite weakness and so I thought hey! this monitor’s been lying around for quite sometime, lemme set it up.

I got this new Acer P166HQL before I fell sick and it’s been eating dust since then.

Unboxed it – No this is not an ‘Unboxing Video post’

Acer P166HQL - Glossy Monitor 16''

As soon as I finished setting it up, I realized that this was a mistake!
I had got sold into the wide spread name of ‘Acer’ brand and the contrast ratio of 1M:1

Not that acer is bad, but this monitor!!!
Glossy, Glossy all glossy.
Weak Plastic – I almost believed that it has no ’tilt’ mechanism because it sounded creaking when I tried.
I later googled it up and got some confidence that it may tilt and then tried again.
And when I tried to tilt, I could see the gap forming between the bottom edge and screen – I went Yikes!!!

Using Vitamin C Tablets to adjust monitoring viewing angle before I could figure out that it was tiltable!

So let’s weigh it’s pros and cons

Cons:
1. Very Glossy – finger print magnet
2. 1M:1 Contrast Ratio isn’t so big a thing. Don’t get sold by it.. atleast it doesnt matter to me as I’d use this monitor on a server.
3. Cheap Plastics
4. Not great build quality
5. Model is not listed on India site / US Site Yikes again!!!
6. 10 minutes of inactivity and monitor will go to sleep. Good thing. BUT before it does that it will display “No Signal” message…. which I think should be Either “Going to Sleep…” or “Power Saving…”.
“No Signal” is kinda not what users want to see!
7. Control buttons and OSD menu are not to great to use.
8. Brightness 200cd/m2 (Good LED’s should have 250cd/m2 atleast)

Pros:
1. Affordable – below $75 after bargain and having ‘connections’
2. Light Weight
3. The power button is on the right of the screen – size of a thumb… which looks futuristic and is cool.
4. 3 years on-site Warranty.

Would have liked:
1. HDMI port as the Monitor says HD! FTW!!! False HD

Please Note: BenQ G610HDAL was available at the same price. Has 250cd/m2 brighness, contrast ration 50,000:1, better build quality, Matte finish (no worry about fingerprint), comes in a brown box. Not sure if the box says HD – if you wanna buy false HD that is.
I’ve pretty much made an ass out of myself by getting sold to 1M:1, Acer brand vs BenQ AND the Box that this monitor came in was pretty beautiful.. Green with White.
Don’t do the same thing to yourself