No:The-Me

Desktop Wallpaper April 2011

The colour of the month is Blue, because India entered the ICC World Cup 2011 finals. As a token of my support to the Indian Cricket Team, I have chosen a blue coloured bird to adorn your desktops.

The bird in the image is the Tickell's Blue Flycatcher (Cyornis tickelliae)

This month, the image will not have the calendar on it. I tried putting it at various locations, but it was spoiling the entire image.

Also, I have uploaded only 3 files, with the following sizes:

1. 1920 x 1200 (16:10)
2. 1920 x 1080 (16:9)
3. 1024 x 768 (4:3)

These days a lot of new laptops and new screens come in HD resolutions, i.e. 16:9 ratio, older screen came in a 16:10 ratio. If your monitor is a newer full HD monitor you can download the file number 2, if your monitor is a little older, you can download file number 1. If your monitor is of the real old type, square screen, please download file number 3.

And in-case neither of them fits your screen, please let me know the screen resolution, I shall custom make one for you and send it across.

To download,
Firefox users: Right-click on the appropriate link and click “Save link as” to download.
Internet Explorer users: Right-click on the appropriate link “Save target as” to download.

India tiger estimation 2010 released

Source: http://www.moef.nic.in

The National Tiger Conservation Authority in association with its various partner organisations declared the official tiger estimate in India for 2010. This estimate which is conducted every four years was launched by the Minister for Environment and Forests, Mr.Jairam Ramesh.

Click here to download:

tiger-broucher.pdf (1.02 MB)

Click here to download:

tiger-ppt.pdf (2.2 MB)

Earth hour - I don't understand!

What I do not understand is, by switching off lights for one hour for one day in a year, how does it help? It is not just symbolic gesture! I believe such gestures are of no use.

By we switching off power for one hour, the power plants burning coal are not going to halt productions. Nor are they going to burn less coal in that one hour. The amount of coal being burnt is going to be the same. Hence the smoke or deadly gases they produce is going to be the same. In India please note all power plants work at full capacity every single day. We generate much less power than the demand. In order to make some difference, you need t follow Earth Hour on a daily / regular basis.

Follow a few things every day and you will help in making the change.
1. Switch off your electrical appliances when not in use. Keeping them in stand-by mode does not mean switching off, they still consume power
2. Judiciously use water, the more water you use, the more number of times will the water pump be switched on to top-up your over head tanks.
3. Don't keep your cell phones hanging to the wall socket all the time. Remove them from the charger and let them discharge completely before hooking them back up. This way the battery life increases.
4. Make sure your AC is set to ambient temperature. If you over-cool or under-cool, you end up making your AC compressor run more and consume more power.
5. When you run your washing machine, make sure you put in the optimum load. Less load means, you are consuming more than required power, more load means, the motor works harder hence more power consumed.
and many more such small things will help.

Follow this everyday and celebrate Earth Hour / Day every day, rather than one symbolic hour / day.

The Real "Sweet" French Toast

A few days back I was viewing madmanweb's flickr stream and came across the photo of 'French Toast with Blueberry Jam'. The words, "with blueberry jam", triggered my interest, as I knew, French toast was not supposed to be sweet. A little google and a small twitter discussion with friends, informed me that I did not know what the "Real" French Toast was.

Today I googled and found out some recipes of "The" French Toast, and as usual I did a little re-mix as I did not have all the ingredients the recipes online suggested.

My re-mixed version of the french toast:

Ingredients
1. 2 Eggs
2. 1/4 cup Milk
3. Cinnamon Powder as per taste
4. Nutmeg Powder as per taste
5. 1 or 2 spoons of Finely ground sugar
6. Little Honey
7. Stale bread (All recipes suggested usage of stale bread, no fresh bread)
8. Oil

Method
1. Put milk in a small vessel, break eggs into it.
2. put the sugar and spices into it and beat the mixture like you would beat it to make omlettes
3. Heat some oil in a pan
4. Dip bread into the egg mixture, let the bread soak a little of the egg

I guess I had added too much milk to the eggs, so after making some 6 toasts, I still had some egg mixture left, which I promptly made into omellete! (Note: I added a little more than 1/4th cup, I have made corrections in the recipe above)

My final breakfast looked like this: French Toast + Sweet Omellete + Grapes + Black Coffee!

A discussion on Twitter about French Toasts!

This post is a compilation of a short discussion I had on twitter with a few of my friends on Twitter.

Hence I figured it out and to see my re-mixed recipe, click here

Complaint format for unsolicited messages / calls to DND Customers

There are times when I get unsolicited SMS's and Call's, I generally register a complaint in the following format via email.

I am a subscriber of Idea Cellular, so I send emails to 9822012345 AT idea DOT adityabirla DOT com

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Format for unsolicited calls:
I received a call on my mobile no. 9XXXX XXXXX, which is DND registered for the last couple of years now.

Details of the call:
Number: +912067245500
Time of call: 16:17 hrs
Date of call: 5th October 2010
Call made by: A representative of barclay finance offering some personal loan.

I don't have any account or have never delt with the above mentioned company nor have I authorised anybody to call me.

Kindly take action against the erring party.

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Format for unsolicited SMS:
Hello,

My number is 9XXXX XXXXX, which is DND registered for the last couple of years now.

I received a spam sms:
from: BZ-EUROGOLD
msg content:
"BZ-EUROGOLD Launching European Healthy & Tasty Quality Bread in Pune Oven Fresh Gluten & Yeast Free For Daily & Weekly delivery at home contact EURO GOLD 9xxxx xxxx8"

Date and Time: 19:46 09-04-2010

Kindly look into the matter and take appropriate action.

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After a few days, I generally get an email from Idea Cellular informing me of the complaint number and then a call from the
customer care department that action was initiated and a warning or fine was imposed on the erring party.