Notice: after planning it for years, I moved this blog out of blogger/blogspot (which google has abandoned long ago) to wordpress on a fine evening in Dec 2024. This notice will stay here to warn that things might be broken. Let me know if you find anything.
I just found an excellent blog – Indian Current Affairs, which has been keeping a note of everything happening in India, day by day. It can be of great help to IAS aspirants.
Indian Current Affairs
Go there and see it for yourself.
It must be read along with
Discover It
which is a compilation of essays about particular items.
Also, don’t forget to check out
Resources for Preparation and
Glossary
Most people have google as their home page. And it’s cool if you are a guy who just makes a google search about that thing which he needs to buy, checks his emails once in a while, and checks scraps at orkut.
But what if you are a person who has multiple blogs, twitter accounts, facebook, myspace and hi5 profiles; and you need to check your earnings at adsense or adbrite, the statistics of your blog at analytics, your broadband usage, your email account at hotmail, your unread feeds in google reader, the latest cricket scores, and your girlfriend’s scrapbook to see whom she is chatting with?
And you don’t want to forget doing any of these?
Do you know that I do all that without ever having to type a letter in the address bar, and not even an extra click in the Bookmarks folder.
That is what an offline home page has done to me. It has worked as a to-do list as well as a bookmarks folder, at the same time helping me saving a lot of time ease-wise.
Want to try one? Here’s help.
The first step is knowing a bit of html.
hyperlinks work with a simple html tag “<a>…</a>”. The page to which it is linked is shown by “href”. And the text which should be shown in blue is written in between the “<a>” and “</a>”.
That is, if you want to link to Change, the html tag will be “<a href=”http://asdofindia.blogspot.com”>go to Change</a>
and it will show up like this:
go to Change
Learn more about linking here, and practice linking here.
Now, that is all the background information you need. (Actually you need not even that. But when it gets messy with underlines getting under every wrong word, you will actually need those.)
Now, you need to create an HTML file with all the links you have. For this you can use Notepad, or MS Word or anything that suits the purpose.
In Notepad, you will have to type out the html tags one by one and it will soon turn out to be a cumbersome task. So, it is better to use MS Word or such softwares that has features which allow easy linking.
And to make things even simpler, you can use gmail or blogger too. If you are a blogger, create a new post (which you can discard later). Or in gmail, compose a new mail. Now copy those links you need. When copying take note of one thing you can actually select a linked text and press Ctrl + C and then paste it into your mail, post or MS Word document and the text will be pasted with the hyperlink remaining intact. That is, when you copy Change and paste it, it will automatically be linked.
To make the best of this feature I am giving a few links applicable to anyone, which you can just copy and save time.
Myspace Facebook Hi5 Blogger Orkut Twitter
Google Yahoo! Torrentz
Gmail Hotmail
Flickr Youtube
eBay Amazon
Wikipedia Wikibooks
adsense adbrite
Cricinfo live cricket score
Blank Page
(Now, a part of that, I took from the start page of Green Browser, which is an excellent online alternative to this offline home page)
Now, if you use orkut
Orkut Scrapbook Communities
Now don’t forget to add to that the scrapbooks of your dearest friends, or the forums of your favourite communities
And if facebook,
Facebook Profile Inbox
If you have many blogs, add similar links to new post, edit posts, edit layout, view blog, etc.
Similarly add links to all those pages you visit once a week at least.
Now is the bit tricky part. If you used MS Word for creating this you can just save it and set it as your home page. But what if you used Gmail, or Blogger? Of course you can copy from them again and paste it to MS word and save it. But a far better alternative is to use the “Save Frame As…” option found in the file menu of Mozilla Firefox. (Oh, aren’t you using Firefox, then switch to it immediately). By saving the frame, you save only the text box in which you typed in the links. And thus you get exactly what you want.
Now, don’t forget to add Change to your offline home page
Related Posts:
How to Make Sure That You Blog Daily or Regularly
So, you’ve set up a blog. And you’ve had some nice posts, and a decent amount of followers. Everything is going nice except for one thing. Once in a while you forget about blogging. You are so immersed in twitter or facebook or orkut that you forget to check out new comments in your blog.
You know you love to blog, but you forget to love. How do we start loving our blogs again, daily?
The solution to this is setting up your browser or PC to help you blog easily. When you need to go to your blogger dashboard to create a new post, that is an extra step and you’re most probably not going to do that every time.
So, let me introduce some tips that can make blogging easy for you.
That’s it from my side. What other ways do you have to make blogging a piece of cake?
Wherever you live, whatever you are, you’re never living in a perfect world. One or the other, there will be defects in the system of which you are a part of.
If you’re a doctor think of uninspired staff, inadequate facilities…
If you’re a teacher think of lazy children, poor environment…
If you’re a student think of crazy teachers, small school, small playground…
If you’re working in an office think of office politics, gossips…
If you’re a politician think of dirty colleagues, baseless allegations…
Yeah, in whichever field I choose, I can find imperfections, because after all, the world can never be perfect.
So, how do we define life in this imperfect world. Life is nothing but constantly trying to perfect the world around us.
Try and fail. Try and win. Try and half win, half lose. But try. Try to change your world, and you will gradually learn the art of living happily and peacefully.
How?
You are going to perfect the system. You can’t do it alone. So you ask for help. You organize. You team up with people. You get to know about their feelings. You understand the way others think. You may get enemies, but more importantly you will get friends (and if you don’t get any, there is something wrong with you or your asking). Convince people to be a part of your team.
And when you have a team ready?
Start the revolution. Change the ways. The old ways were made by your predecessors, as THEY like. You are a different generation, a different group. Your thoughts and emotions and world have changed. And the ways too need to change. You needn’t change yourself to suit the old ways, you can change the ways to suit the new you.
So, you and your team change the world around you. And you strive for perfection. Constantly you do so. Until at last you will call it a day one day. And on that day you will know that you LIVED your life.
“There is nothing in this world that a small group of inspired men cannot do”
This is the question which has shaken my base of atheism. And this is also the question which clearly demarcates atheists from theists.
The Big Bang, Evolution, Quantum Mechanics, Conservation of Energy…
Agreed. Everything is right.
But do you think that all these happens by chance?
Would you be feeling better attributing a designer to all these, or thinking that it all happened by chance?
This question has shook me in the last few months. I don’t know where I heard it from, for I always thought it was like “The Human Brain is very very complex, so don’t you think someone should have made it that way?” But when the term ‘chance’ was involved my mind started conflicting with itself.
For everything else in this physical world, we know the cause, the reason. An apple falls to earth, it is the gravity. Drinking water is essential, water serves various purposes in the body. Rain, evaporation and condensation. War, greed of power.
For everything else, we either know the cause, or we are eager to know it.
But for the cause of “everything”, we (I mean the atheists) don’t know and we don’t care.
We know it all started from the Big Bang. But we don’t know what was before it.
We know it all came from a single cell. But we don’t know why it is evolving.
We know the electrons carry a charge, and protons yet another. But we don’t know how their charges are different.
And we attribute it all to chance. “It so happened.” “It is such. “
Why? We never said an apple fall to earth because it is such. We never said it rains because it rains. We never said people wage war because people like war.
But we say that “evolution happens”, “there is no time before Big Bang”, “protons carry positive charge”. We say it but we don’t know the reason.
Why are we partial? For everything else, we are ready to find a reason, but regarding creation, we like to answer that it all happened by chance. Isn’t that double standards?
——————————————–
P.S. : But the question “Who created God” still exists. And that is why I remain an atheist.
“OMG! Will we ever reach an answer?”
Will Smith says in an interview how running and reading become the keys to life.
Well, it is a video worth watch.
Now, I’ve got something to add on to this part of his interview. On why running he said the following:
When you get on the treadmill you deprive yourself of oxygen. What kind of person you are will come out very, very quickly. You’re either the type of person who will say you’re going to run three miles or you stop the treadmill at 2.94 and you hit it and you call 2.94 3 miles, or you get off after a mile, or you’re the type of person that runs hard through the finish line and when you get to 3.0 you realize, ‘God, I could really do 5,’ and you go ahead and do two more. And that little person talks to you and says, ‘Man, do you feel our knee? We should stop. I feel we should stop ourselves right now. This is not healthy anymore.’ When you learn to get command over that person on that treadmill, you learn to get command over that person in your life.
And this is something really true. There IS a voice which talks to you always. And it talks to you more, when you are doing something long and grueling (like the 24 question mathematics assignment which I just finished doing).
The moment we start talking with that voice, our day is ruined, we are not going to finish what we started. We’re going to be stranded halfway through. We know we mustn’t have, yet we can’t resist it. That is the power of this voice.
It is a wonder. You are doing something you should be doing, and suddenly out of thin air you get thousands of reasons why you shouldn’t be doing that thing. And you know what, sometimes it is not the bad things that are luring you from doing something you need to, but the good things.Yes. For, whenever I think of completing my assignments, I feel like putting a post in my blog, or exercising the whole body, or solving a sudoku puzzle, or reading the newspaper, just not doing my assignment!
And how do we escape?
Avoid the voice.
Ignore the voice.
Accept whatever the voice says to be true, but tell it that you really have to do this thing right now.
Just concentrate on what you’re doing. Don’t give a chance for that voice to be heard.
Just forget about answering whether you could be doing something better.
Just Live in the Task.
Yeah, you said it. Firefox has crossed the billion mark and it’s still going strong.
Now for all those who want to know how much a billion is, here is what one billion + you says,
A bowl big enough to fit one billion goldfish would be as big as a stadium.
One billion stacked coins would reach nearly 1,000 miles high.
One billion centimeters is approximately the distance from Chicago to Tokyo.
Every new version of Firefox brings you lot more security, functionality and speed. So, switch to Firefox (and upgrade).
Happy Firefoxing
Here’s a bird’s eye view of the map of all the paths that could be taken in life.
Remember what Frost said
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Choose wisely.
(Click on the image for a larger view)
|| 2-49 ||
doorena hy avaram karma, buddhi-yogaad dhananjaya
buddhau saranam anviccha, kripanaah phala-hetavah || 49 ||
Swami Chinmayananda began:
“Doorena – by far. hy – indeed. awaram – lower. karma – you are sweating and toiling at your actions, your selfish actions, prompted by your ego and ego-centric selfish desires in which the millions are sweating and toiling from morning till evening. That karma, it is only prompted by instincts and impulses. It is like animals suffering or running about. It is pure labour. he’s not the man of acheivement. mere labourers, doorena by faaaaar lesser is this unnecessary sweating and toiling in the world outside. Complaining of the tension stress and strain of life.
That is not real work.
Work is inspired. Where the worker never understands tiredness, exhaust. The joy of that work itself replenishes the true worker. Doorena hy avaram karma.
Buddhi-yogaad dhananjaya. Hey Arjuna please understand, as compared with the Buddhi-yoga, buddhi-yoga where you’ve got an ideal and you’re pursuing to reach the ideal it is an inspired enthusiasm with which you’re living. That joy of true work is any day nobler than all the amount of buckets of sweat and toil that you bring out of you, exhaustion and fatigue you bring about physical. That is only labour, that is not work.
buddhau saranam anviccha. my dear boy, work in the world outside who said no but buddhau saranam anvecha. maintain your ideal and work on and on i say. and when you’re maintaining an ideal let not the ideal be a small ideal. Say that 1 million dollars i want, if the moment i earn one million i am retired. hey because you make it. Thereafter in life you’re dead, you’ve nothing to do. Never. Keep the goal highest. So high that you will never reach. “Swamiji why should i keep an ideal which i cannot reach” ha reaching the ideal is not the goal. striving to reach it, that is the moment when you grow. Once you’re reaching your goal your ideal everything is ended, thereafter you’ve to enquire how to die decently, because you’re finished, everything has been done. Never should you reach the goal. Keep the goal high. Don’t say that is an impractical method. No. Because reaching the goal is not the goal. striving to reach there is the goal. Try to reach out to the goal. You grow day by day week by week. Buddhou saranam anvecha.
kripanaha phala hetavah. those who are seeking only the phala the result.and wanting only that you sweat and toil only to get something. They are kripanaha. krippanaha meaning miserly. miserly means mhmh. miser is a guy who’s got money in his pocket but even though he is very hungry, he doesn’t want to eat. he goes in front of the restaurant and smeells the various food [sound of smelling] because that is free. why don’t you go and eat if you’re hungry. “look, it’s a new note 20 dollars, if i eat i will have to break it. no keep it. ” why? to spend the money is painful, therefore you keep it. And drink cold water from the local tap, why? “anyway i’m going in the evening home. home there will be food. so i will eat there. till then you suffer” this is called a miser. a miser is one who has the ability and capacity and yet he doesn’t use it because he doesn’t want to give up that money or that what you’ve got.
There is a wonderful chance of living your life of inspired enthusiasm at all times at the peak, and yet you and i will not do that. why? because of our attachment to the ego and selfish desires and make a mess of our own life. YOu’re kripanaha. OK
when you’re inspired under working you won’t know the exhaustion of work. ha ha. Doctors will have to take ECG to understand whether I’m overstrained or not. YOu ask me I am never overstrained. why? i am inspired in this work i am doing. anybody who is inspired, they won’t have worries and anxieties.
ha ha. In our own homes when there is a marriage aiyayaa the ladaies work work day and night and night and day with over enthusiasm and when the marriage is over and the girl has walked away you find everybody collapsing in wherever they are standing. For three days they won’t get up from there. Neighbours will have to come and feed them. How is it that at 8 am you collapse but till 8 am you are all enthusiastic. ha that is because the shaadi. the marriage. and that the girl has now gone haaa bhum.
is it?
inspired work, you work but you will not know the exhaustion or the fatigue. tirelessly you work when you’re inspired. “
Thus spake Gurudev
This is another of the things I am going to do in the future.
Of course I will become a doctor. Then, I will start a hospital. This hospital will not be like ordinary hospitals. Ordinary hospitals are designed in such a way as to just get the patient out of ailment. But my “Freedom Center” will not just do that. We will make sure that the patient has a totally new lifestyle by the time he leaves “Freedom Center”. Such that he will never have to visit here again.
In the “Live Longer” section, we will also have a gym, ( a swimming pool, ) a library, and a forum for people and especially youngsters to think and talk about what they like and need.
We will have music running continuously in the background everywhere inside the Freedom Center.
Yeah, and people will love to be inside the Mini City. And people will live longer. And they will get freedom from the sorrows of life.