Tanjore – The web is what you make of it

Another one of Google’s brilliant ads. My favorite still remains this one.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Exclusive Movie Trailer

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” follows title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever … Gollum. Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths ofguile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities … A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.

December 14, 2012

Indian Cabinet Ministers Declare Assets

@Sandy24deo pointed me to this article in The Times of India today, which details some stats about the assets declared by the cabinet ministers under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The list included details of the Prime Minister, 32 cabinet ministers, seven ministers of state with independent charge and 37 ministers of state.

Urban development minister Kamal Nath is the richest cabinet minister with assets worth Rs 263 crore.

[…]

Among the poorest is defence minister AK Antony, with personal assets worth Rs 1.8 lakh and his wife has assets worth Rs 30 lakh.

Emphasis mine

I don’t buy any of those stats. Specially the part about Mr. Pawar having assets of just Rs. 12 crores. The entire list is available at this link.

It looks like Kamal Nath didn’t get the memo.

How algorithms shape our world

Kevin Slavin argues that we’re living in a world designed for — and increasingly controlled by — algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can’t understand, with implications we can’t control.

Fascinating and insightful.

I attended the Camp Icarus yesterday, a mini Barcamp of sorts at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology in Versova, Andheri, Mumbai. The event was organized as a part of their Icarus festival, which incidentally had a super-awesome LAN-Gaming competition the earlier day.

It was a good initiative and was backed by a decent amount of attendees pre-lunch. Even though most of the attendees were students of the same college, there were quite a few outsiders too. There was a substantial drop in the number of attendees after the FREE lunch session, but the spirit did not die down.

There were some interesting session taken at the event:

1. Funding your Startup by Mihir
2. Meri Bhi Website Hogi by Saumil Parekh
3. Promoting and Monetizing your Blog by Manan Kakkar
4. Podcasting by Dinesh Soni
5. Useless Talk by Neeraj Pattath

Unlike the usual Barcamps, this was slightly different in a way that one found himself as a part of the discussion. Everyone was involved in the sessions and there were quite a few questions asked by the viewers.

I carried along my MacBook Pro, my iPhone and my Canon S5IS along to cover the event. The photos taken, as usual, have been uploaded to my Flickr Stream.

I planned to cover the event live through the iPhone, but both Qik and Airtel’s EDGE had good plans to ruin the game for us. The videos were being half assedly uploaded to their servers and anyway, their online UI isn’t that good anyway. I resorted to recording the sessions through my prosumer camera and went on to record Dinesh’s and Manan’s sessions. Thanks to the room with less attendees, the audio isn’t that great.

Here’s Dinesh’s session on Podcasting:

And here’s manan, speaking on Promoting your Blog:

(The video begins half-way through his session)

[ Via TVIMH ]