The Utterances of a Peculiar Mindset

After a long time, today i'll be going home, Latur.
So, guys don't expect me to update my blog for 10 more days.
Thanks for reading my blog and do keep visiting again and again and again and........
Well, you understood na?

Bill Gates passes away and goes up to heaven where he is met by God.

"Well, Bill," said God, "I'm really confused on this one. I'm not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you enormously helped society by putting a computer in almost every home in the world, and yet you created that ghastly Windows.

"I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to let you decide where you want to go." Bill replied, "Well thanks, God. What's the difference between the two?" God said, "You take a peek at both places briefly if it will help you
decide. Shall we look at Hell first?" "Sure" said Bill, "Let's go!"

Bill was amazed! He saw a clean, white sandy beach with clear waters. There were thousands of beautiful men and women running around, playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect. "This is great!" said Bill. "If this is Hell, I can't wait to see heaven."

God replied, "Let's go!" and so off they went to Heaven. Bill saw puffy white clouds in a beautiful blue sky with angels drifting about playing harps and singing.

It was nice, but surely not as enticing as Hell. Bill Gates thought for only a brief moment and rendered his decision. "God, I do believe I would like to go to Hell."
"As you desire," said God.

Two weeks later, God decided to check up on the late billionaire to see how things were going. He found Bill Gates shackled to a wall, screaming amongst the hot flames in a dark cave. He was being burned and tortured by demons.

"How ya doin', Bill?" asked God.

Bill responded with anguish and despair, "This is awful! This is not what I expected at all! What happened to the beach and the beautiful women playing in the water?"

"Oh THAT?" said God.
"That was the Screen Saver."



Source:- Friend's forward

Today, when I bought a copy of JAM as usual and started reading it, I had seldom idea that it had a sweet surprise for me.
My first article was there in the magazine. It was an information about the new year trek K2 organised by tekdi on Kulanggad and Kalsubai.
This article has given me extra boost to send more and more articles to this magazine. Anyone there to wish me congrats or All the best for future articles ? ? ?

A guy dies and goes to hell.
There he finds that there is a different hell for each country. He goes first to the German hell and asks "What do they do here?" He is told "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they
lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day."

The man does not like the sound of that at all, so he moves on. He checks out the USA hell as well as the Russian hell and many more. He discovers that they are all more or less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Indian hell and finds that there is a very long line of people waiting to get in. Amazed he asks "What do they do here?" He is told "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Indian devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day." "But that is exactly the same as all the other hells - why are there so many people waiting to get in?

"Because maintenance is so bad that the electric chair does not work, someone has stolen all the nails from the bed, and the devil was a I.T engineer, so he swipes the card, comes in, checks his mails and then goes to the cafeteria..."

It is Rohan’s Birthday today and we (Rohan, Somesh and me) celebrated it in a very different way, having a trek from Katraj to Sinhagad. It was a quite fantastic experience.
We took off from Katraj Tunnel at 10:30 pm and reached Sinhagad at 5:30 am, missing the way a number of times, running out of batteries couple of times. After we crossed a hill, fort seemed to be behind next one and every time it made us wait.
The taste of tea and Kandebhaje after the tiresome trek was just marvelous. And not to mention the Dahi we enjoyed there.
Overall, it was an experience never to forget.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROHAN.

"Lakshyachi Tour Sampli" was the news on front page of today's "Samna". The "Dhaakebaj" leged of Marathi film industry, the "Jhapatlela" king of Lakhs of hearts finally took off for his last journey. He was one of those who used to give me a severe stomach pain due to excessive laughing.
Lakshya, your body might stop working. But the laughs you gave all of us will be forever. May all those laughs become flowers and give you a tribute.
You will always be remembered for the unforgattable contribution towards Marathi Stage, Marathi film industry and Bollywood in the two decade carrer.

A news from Time of India:- worth sharing


SAN FRANCISCO: Pictures of Earth-like clouds were captured by Nasa's Mars rover on Wednesday. Reports also indicate that there's a rock that doesn't look like anything scientists have ever seen.


The Spirit rover, ambling through the Columbia Hills at the fringe of the Gusev crater, has uncovered a riot of rock forms and geochemical novelties, including a mineral called goethite, which had not been found on Mars before.

Goethite is common on Earth and forms only in the presence of water, though the water can be liquid, frozen or vaporous, said Goestar Klingelhoefer of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. Rover scientists presented their latest findings here Monday at meeting of the American Geophysical Union. A chunk of terrestrial goethite about the size of a can of tomato soup, passed around during a press conference, was black and shiny.

Other findings suggest the rocks of Columbia Hills have a history that included either a meteorite impact or volcanic activity, and that water was involved at some point.

Cornell astronomer Steven Squyres, principle investigator for the rover science instruments, said that just this weekend the team spotted a type of rock never seen before.

Scientists haven't yet analysed it and Squyres wouldn't speculate on what it was. But he noted that the exposed rocks of the Columbia Hills, thought to be billions of years old, reveal an extremely complex structure and range of mineral types. "We're stunned by the diversity of rocks," Squyres said.

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.


When i started blogging, i was watching hardik and started writing technical blogs. But, i am not a technical person. So, it was just a Tie Tie Fish.
Later i started writing everything i like maybe technical or non-technical. Then came Devendra on blogs. Reading his blogs, i got new idea about how a blog should be written.

Devendra once gave me link to Salil's blog, which, frankly speaking, is best blog i saw.
Kedar Bhave also joined little late but he stopped blogging, maybe due to exams.
Ruman prefers writing about his literature which i rarely understand.

After reading all those blogs, i've decided to write the blogs in both technical and nontechnical ways.
I will share my views with readers of my blog and also keep you informed with latest in my interested fields...
So please welcome Dinesh- At his worst...

With the Ecotechnology building up, let's check out some of important options to traditional sources of energy..


What is a Fuel Cell?

Technically, a fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. A fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces electricity.
The other electrochemical device that we are all familiar with is the battery. A battery has all of its chemicals stored inside, and it converts those chemicals into electricity too. This means that a battery eventually "goes dead" and you either throw it away or recharge it.

With a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow into the cell so it never goes dead -- as long as there is a flow of chemicals into the cell, the electricity flows out of the cell. Most fuel cells in use today use hydrogen and oxygen as the chemicals.



The fuel cell will compete with many other types of energy conversion devices, including the gas turbine in your city's power plant, the gasoline engine in your car and the battery in your laptop. Combustion engines like the turbine and the gasoline engine burn fuels and use the pressure created by the expansion of the gases to do mechanical work. Batteries converted chemical energy back into electrical energy when needed. Fuel cells should do both tasks more efficiently.

A fuel cell provides a DC (direct current) voltage that can be used to power motors, lights or any number of electrical appliances.

There are several different types of fuel cells, each using a different chemistry. Fuel cells are usually classified by the type of electrolyte they use. Some types of fuel cells work well for use in stationary power generation plants. Others may be useful for small portable applications or for powering cars.

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most promising technologies. This is the type of fuel cell that will end up powering cars, buses and maybe even your house.

Proton Exchange Membrane

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) uses one of the simplest reactions of any fuel cell. First, let's take a look at what's in a PEM fuel cell:


Figure 1. The parts of a PEM fuel cell

In Figure 1 you can see there are four basic elements of a PEMFC:

--> The anode, the negative post of the fuel cell, has several jobs. It conducts the electrons that are freed from the hydrogen molecules so that they can be used in an external circuit. It has channels etched into it that disperse the hydrogen gas equally over the surface of the catalyst.
-->The cathode, the positive post of the fuel cell, has channels etched into it that distribute the oxygen to the surface of the catalyst. It also conducts the electrons back from the external circuit to the catalyst, where they can recombine with the hydrogen ions and oxygen to form water.
-->The electrolyte is the proton exchange membrane. This specially treated material, which looks something like ordinary kitchen plastic wrap, only conducts positively charged ions. The membrane blocks electrons.
-->The catalyst is a special material that facilitates the reaction of oxygen and hydrogen. It is usually made of platinum powder very thinly coated onto carbon paper or cloth. The catalyst is rough and porous so that the maximum surface area of the platinum can be exposed to the hydrogen or oxygen. The platinum-coated side of the catalyst faces the PEM

http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/fuel-cell-animation.swf
(Above URL gives Animation of a fuel cell working

above animation shows the pressurized hydrogen gas (H2) entering the fuel cell on the anode side. This gas is forced through the catalyst by the pressure. When an H2 molecule comes in contact with the platinum on the catalyst, it splits into two H+ ions and two electrons (e-). The electrons are conducted through the anode, where they make their way through the external circuit (doing useful work such as turning a motor) and return to the cathode side of the fuel cell.

Chemistry
of a Fuel Cell

Anode side:
2H2 => 4H+ + 4e-
Cathode side:
O2 + 4H+ + 4e- => 2H2O

Net reaction:
2H2 + O2 => 2H2O


Meanwhile, on the cathode side of the fuel cell, oxygen gas (O2) is being forced through the catalyst, where it forms two oxygen atoms. Each of these atoms has a strong negative charge. This negative charge attracts the two H+ ions through the membrane, where they combine with an oxygen atom and two of the electrons from the external circuit to form a water molecule (H2O).

This reaction in a single fuel cell produces only about 0.7 volts. To get this voltage up to a reasonable level, many separate fuel cells must be combined to form a fuel-cell stack.

PEMFCs operate at a fairly low temperature (about 176 degrees Fahrenheit, 80 degrees Celsius), which means they warm up quickly and don't require expensive containment structures. Constant improvements in the engineering and materials used in these cells have increased the power density to a level where a device about the size of a small piece of luggage can power a car.

Problems with Fuel Cells

We learned that a fuel cell uses oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity. The oxygen required for a fuel cell comes from the air. In fact, in the PEM fuel cell, ordinary air is pumped into the cathode. The hydrogen is not so readily available, however. Hydrogen has some limitations that make it impractical for use in most applications. For instance, you don't have a hydrogen pipeline coming to your house, and you can't pull up to a hydrogen pump at your local gas station.
Hydrogen is difficult to store and distribute, so it would be much more convenient if fuel cells could use fuels that are more readily available. This problem is addressed by a device called a reformer. A reformer turns hydrocarbon or alcohol fuels into hydrogen, which is then fed to the fuel cell. Unfortunately, reformers are not perfect. They generate heat and produce other gases besides hydrogen. They use various devices to try to clean up the hydrogen, but even so, the hydrogen that comes out of them is not pure, and this lowers the efficiency of the fuel cell.

Efficiency of Fuel Cells

Pollution reduction is one of the primary goals of the fuel cell. By comparing a fuel-cell-powered car to a gasoline-engine-powered car and a battery-powered car, you can see how fuel cells might improve the efficiency of cars today.
Since all three types of cars have many of the same components (tires, transmissions, etc.), we'll ignore that part of the car and compare efficiencies up to the point where mechanical power is generated. Let's start with the fuel-cell car. (All of these efficiencies are approximations, but they should be close enough to make a rough comparison.)

Fuel-Cell-Powered Electric Car

If the fuel cell is powered with pure hydrogen, it has the potential to be up to 80-percent efficient. That is, it converts 80 percent of the energy content of the hydrogen into electrical energy. But, as we learned in the previous section, hydrogen is difficult to store in a car. When we add a reformer to convert methanol to hydrogen, the overall efficiency drops to about 30 to 40 percent.

We still need to convert the electrical energy into mechanical work. This is accomplished by the electric motor and inverter. A reasonable number for the efficiency of the motor/inverter is about 80 percent. So we have 30- to 40-percent efficiency at converting methanol to electricity, and 80-percent efficiency converting electricity to mechanical power. That gives an overall efficiency of about 24 to 32 percent.

Other Types of Fuel Cells

There are several other types of fuel-cell technologies being developed for possible commercial uses:

Alkaline fuel cell (AFC): This is one of the oldest designs. It has been used in the U.S. space program since the 1960s. The AFC is very susceptible to contamination, so it requires pure hydrogen and oxygen. It is also very expensive, so this type of fuel cell is unlikely to be commercialized.

Phosphoric-acid fuel cell (PAFC): The phosphoric-acid fuel cell has potential for use in small stationary power-generation systems. It operates at a higher temperature than PEM fuel cells, so it has a longer warm-up time. This makes it unsuitable for use in cars.

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC): These fuel cells are best suited for large-scale stationary power generators that could provide electricity for factories or towns. This type of fuel cell operates at very high temperatures (around 1,832 F, 1,000 C). This high temperature makes reliability a problem, but it also has an advantage: The steam produced by the fuel cell can be channeled into turbines to generate more electricity. This improves the overall efficiency of the system.

Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC): These fuel cells are also best suited for large stationary power generators. They operate at 1,112 F (600 C), so they also generate steam that can be used to generate more power. They have a lower operating temperature than the SOFC, which means they don't need such exotic materials. This makes the design a little less expensive.

As we've discussed, fuel cells could be used in a number of applications. Each proposed use raises its own issues and challenges. Let's take a look at the various applications, starting with automobiles.

Automobiles
Fuel-cell-powered cars will start to replace gas- and diesel-engine cars in about 2005. A fuel-cell car will be very similar to an electric car but with a fuel cell and reformer instead of batteries. Most likely, you will fill your fuel-cell car up with methanol, but some companies are working on gasoline reformers. Other companies hope to do away with the reformer completely by designing advanced storage devices for hydrogen.

Portable Power
Fuel cells also make sense for portable electronics like laptop computers, cellular phones or even hearing aids. In these applications, the fuel cell will provide much longer life than a battery would, and you should be able to"recharge" it quickly with a liquid or gaseous fuel.

Buses
Fuel-cell-powered buses are already running in several cities. The bus was one of the first applications of the fuel cell because initially, fuel cells needed to be quite large to produce enough power to drive a vehicle. In the first fuel-cell bus, about one-third of the vehicle was filled with fuel cells and fuel-cell equipment. Now the power density has increased to the point that a bus can run on a much smaller fuel cell.

Home Power Generation
This is a promising application that you may be able to order as soon as 2002. General Electric is going to offer a fuel-cell generator system made by Plug Power. This system will use a natural gas or propane reformer and produce up to seven kilowatts of power (which is enough for most houses). A system like this produces electricity and significant amounts of heat, so it is possible that the system could heat your water and help to heat your house without using any additional energy.

Large Power Generation
Some fuel-cell technologies have the potential to replace conventional combustion power plants. Large fuel cells will be able to generate electricity more efficiently than today's power plants. The fuel-cell technologies being developed for these power plants will generate electricity directly from hydrogen in the fuel cell, but will also use the heat and water produced in the cell to power steam turbines and generate even more electricity. There are already large portable fuel-cell systems available for providing backup power to hospitals and factories.

Problem: To Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert.



George bush method:
Link the lion with osama bin laden and shoot him!!!

Mathematical Methods
The Hilbert (axiomatic) method
We place a locked cage onto a given point in the desert. After that we introduce the following logical system:

Axiom 1: The set of lions in the Sahara is not empty.
Axiom 2: If there exists a lion in the Sahara, then there exists a lion in the cage.
Procedure: If P is a theorem, and if the following is holds: "P implies Q", then Q is a theorem.
Theorem 1: There exists a lion in the cage.

The geometrical inversion method
We place a spherical cage in the desert, enter it and lock it from inside. We then performe an inversion with respect to the cage. Then the lion is inside the cage, and we are outside.

The projective geometry method
Without loss of generality, we can view the desert as a plane surface. We project the surface onto a line and afterwards the line onto an interiour point of the cage. Thereby the lion is mapped onto that same point.

The Bolzano-Weierstraß method
Divide the desert by a line running from north to south. The lion is then either in the eastern or in the western part. Let's assume it is in the eastern part. Divide this part by a line running from east to west. The lion is either in the northern or in the southern part. Let's assume it is in the northern part. We can continue this process arbitrarily and thereby constructing with each step an increasingly narrow fence around the selected area. The diameter of the chosen partitions converges to zero so that the lion is caged into a fence of arbitrarily small diameter.

The set theoretical method
We observe that the desert is a separable space. It therefore contains an enumerable dense set of points which constitutes a sequence with the lion as its limit. We silently approach the lion in this sequence, carrying the proper equipment with us.

The Peano method
In the usual way construct a curve containing every point in the desert. It has been proven [1] that such a curve can be traversed in arbitrarily short time. Now we traverse the curve, carrying a spear, in a time less than what it takes the lion to move a distance equal to its own length.

A topological method
We observe that the lion possesses the topological gender of a torus. We embed the desert in a four dimensional space. Then it is possible to apply a deformation [2] of such a kind that the lion when returning to the three dimensional space is all tied up in itself. It is then completely helpless.

The Cauchy method
We examine a lion-valued function f(z). Be \zeta the cage. Consider the integral

1 [ f(z)
------- | --------- dz
2 \pi i ] z - \zeta

C

where C represents the boundary of the desert. Its value is f(zeta), i.e. there is a lion in the cage [3].

The Wiener-Tauber method
We obtain a tame lion, L_0, from the class L(-\infinity,\infinity), whose fourier transform vanishes nowhere. We put this lion somewhere in the desert. L_0 then converges toward our cage. According to the general Wiener-Tauber theorem [4] every other lion L will converge toward the same cage. (Alternatively we can approximate L arbitrarily close by translating L_0 through the desert [5].)

Theoretical Physics Methods

The Dirac method
We assert that wild lions can ipso facto not be observed in the Sahara desert. Therefore, if there are any lions at all in the desert, they are tame. We leave catching a tame lion as an exercise to the reader.

Newton's Method:
Let, the lion catch you. For every action there is equal and opposite reaction. Implies you caught lion.

Einstein Method:
Run in the direction opposite to that of the lion. Due to higher relative velocity, the lion will also run faster and will get tired so Now you can trap it easily.

The Schrödinger method
At every instant there is a non-zero probability of the lion being in the cage. Sit and wait.

The nuclear physics method
Insert a tame lion into the cage and apply a Majorana exchange operator [6] on it and a wild lion.

As a variant let us assume that we would like to catch (for argument's sake) a male lion. We insert a tame female lion into the cage and apply the Heisenberg exchange operator [7], exchanging spins.

A relativistic method
All over the desert we distribute lion bait containing large amounts of the companion star of Sirius. After enough of the bait has been eaten we send a beam of light through the desert. This will curl around the lion so it gets all confused and can be approached without danger.

Experimental Physics Methods
The thermodynamics method
We construct a semi-permeable membrane which lets everything but lions pass through. This we drag across the desert.


The atomic fission method
We irradiate the desert with slow neutrons. The lion becomes radioactive and starts to disintegrate. Once the disintegration process is progressed far enough the lion will be unable to resist.

The magneto-optical method
We plant a large, lense shaped field with cat mint (nepeta cataria) such that its axis is parallel to the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field. We put the cage in one of the field's foci. Throughout the desert we distribute large amounts of magnetized spinach (spinacia oleracea) which has, as everybody knows, a high iron content. The spinach is eaten by vegetarian desert inhabitants which in turn are eaten by the lions. Afterwards the lions are oriented parallel to the earth's magnetic field and the resulting lion beam is focussed on the cage by the cat mint lense.


Contributions from Computer Science
The search method
We assume that the lion is most likely to be found in the direction to the north of the point where we are standing. Therefore the REAL problem we have is that of speed, since we are only using a PC to solve the problem.

The parallel search method
By using parallelism we will be able to search in the direction to the north much faster than earlier.

The Monte-Carlo method
We pick a random number indexing the space we search. By excluding neighboring points in the search, we can drastically reduce the number of points we need to consider. The lion will according to probability appear sooner or later.

The practical approach
We see a rabbit very close to us. Since it is already dead, it is particularly easy to catch. We therefore catch it and call it a lion.

The common language approach
If only everyone used ADA/Common Lisp/Prolog, this problem would be trivial to solve.

The standard approach
We know what a Lion is from ISO 4711/X.123. Since CCITT have specified a Lion to be a particular option of a cat we will have to wait for a harmonized standard to appear. $20,000,000 have been funded for initial investigations into this standard development.

Linear search
Stand in the top left hand corner of the Sahara Desert. Take one step east. Repeat until you have found the lion, or you reach the right hand edge. If you reach the right hand edge, take one step southwards, and proceed towards the left hand edge. When you finally reach the lion, put it the cage. If the lion should happen to eat you before you manage to get it in the cage, press the reset button, and try again.

Software Engineer Method:
Catch a cat and claim that your testing has proven that its a Lion. If anyone comes back with issues tell that you will upgrade it to Lion.

The Dijkstra approach
The way the problem reached me was: catch a wild lion in the Sahara Desert. Another way of stating the problem is:

Axiom 1: Sahara elem deserts
Axiom 2: Lion elem Sahara
Axiom 3: NOT(Lion elem cage)

We observe the following invariant:

P1: C(L) v not(C(L))

where C(L) means: the value of "L" is in the cage.
Establishing C initially is trivially accomplished with the statement

;cage := {}

Note 0:
This is easily implemented by opening the door to the cage and shaking out any lions that happen to be there initially.
(End of note 0.)

The obvious program structure is then:

;cage := {}
;do NOT (C(L)) ->
;"approach lion under invariance of P1"
;if P(L) ->
;"insert lion in cage"
[] not P(L) ->
;skip
;fi
;od

where P(L) means: the value of L is within arm's reach.
Note 1:
Axiom 2 ensures that the loop terminates.
(End of note 1.)

Exercise 0:
Refine the step "Approach lion under invariance of P1".
(End of exercise 0.)

Note 2:
The program is robust in the sense that it will lead to abortion if the value of L is "lioness".
(End of note 2.)

Remark 0:
This may be a new sense of the word "robust" for you.
(End of remark 0.)

Note 3:
From observation we can see that the above program leads to the desired goal. It goes without saying that we therefore do not have to run it.
(End of note 3.)


(End of approach.)

Indian Methods

Indian Police Method:
catch any animal and interrogate it & torture it to accept that its a lion.

Rajnikanth Method :
Keep warning the lion that u may come and attack anytime. The lion will live in fear and die soon in fear itself.

Jayalalitha Method:
Send Police commissioner Muthukaruppan around 2AM and kill it, while it's sleeping !

Manirathnam Method :
Make sure the lion does not get sun light and put the lion in a dark room with a single candle lighted. Keep murmuring something in its ears. The lion will be highly irritated and commit suicide.

Karan Johar Method :
Send a lioness into the forest. Our lion and lioness fall in love with each other. Send another lioness in to the forest, followed by another lion. First lion loves the first lioness and the second lion loves the 2nd lioness. But 2nd lioness loves both lions. Now send another lioness(third) into the forest. You don't understand right... ok....read it after 15 yrs, then also u wont !

Yash Chopra method :
Take the lion to Australia or US.. and kill it in a good scenic location.

Govinda method:
Continuously dance before the lion for 5 or 6 hours.

Menaka Gandhi method:
save the lion from a danger and feed him with some vegetables continuously.

Ravi Shastri method:
Ask the lion to bowl at u. U bat for 200 balls and score 1 run

Was eager to know about Pune, its geography, natural phenomenon of Pune
searching on net, i got a site called www.ranwa.org (Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration, Pune).
on this site, there are certain reports regarding different topics related to Pune.
Please go through them.

Geography of Pune Urban Area
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pageog.htm

Fungs
Fungal Genera of the Pune City
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pafungi.htm

Herbal species
Herb Species Richness of Pune City Habitats
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/paherbs.htm

Trees
Tree Diversity of Pune Urban Area: Cosmetic Increase?
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/patrees.htm

Insects and Molluscs
Survey of aquatic insects and molluscs of Pune
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/paaqimsc.htm

Ants
ANT GENERA DISTRIBUTION ACROSS PUNE CITY
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/paants.htm

Butterflies
Butterfly Diversity Of Pune City Along Human Impact Gradient
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pabfly.htm

Fishes
FRESH-WATER FISH DECLINE OF PUNE URBAN AREA
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pafish.htm

Frogs
AMPHIBIAN DECLINE IN PUNE CITY
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pafrogs.htm

Reptiles
Reptiles of Pune Urban Area: Increase or Decline?
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/parept.htm

Birds
Avifauna Around Pune
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pabirds.htm

Mammals
Retreating wild mammals of Pune Urban Area
http://www.ranwa.org/punealive/pamam.htm

However, i don't know how trustworthy those reports are...
But surely a knowledge incresing feast to read..

I am sure most of you spend more time at the coffee shop near your college than inside the classroom. We are coffee people, not tea aunties after all. So if you are one of those who knows every corner of your neighbourhood Cafe Coffee Day better than your own house then you are the one who can help me.

Just tell me, according to you, what is

1. The best thing to eat at Barista/ Cafe Coffee Day/ Mocha/ Qwiky's or any other coffee shop that is your favourite haunt.

2. The worst thing to eat there.

3. The best thing to drink there.

4. The worst thing to drink there.

Thank you

This diwali, Punekars had fireworks of 8 crore. PMC earned 15 lakh 47 thousand. Even the firework traders must have earned lakhs of bucks. It’s all ok.

But if you go to the place near Mhatre Bridge where the fireworks trade was going on, what will you see? A lot of plastic garbage everywhere. Now whose responsibility is it to keep the area clean? Isn’t it responsibility of the traders to take care they don’t throw garbage? Traders had their profit, PMC got its tax, citizens bought their fireworks and everything is over.

People enjoyed the fireworks on the road lying heaps of garbage on the road. Isn’t it our responsibility to take care to clean at least the portion of road we ruined? Isn’t it better we keep at least part in front of our home clean rather than shouting at PMC?

About the events occuring in the sky in Dec. 2004

1) A rare occasion of watching all the planets on one side of sun and in their respective order will appear in this month. Once the mercury passes over Sun towards west on 10th, we will be able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto on west side of Sun. However, Mercury and Pluto won’t be totally visible due to vicinity to Sun. This occasion won’t appear for next 400 years as said by Rogger Cinot of “Sky and Telescope” magazine.

2) On 7th Dec, Americans will be able to see Jupiter hide behind Moon. However, this hide and seek game (called as “Vidhan” in Marathi) won’t be visible in India.

3) The asteroid shower from Gemini will be visible on 13th and 14th. Those glowing yellow asteroids will be seen at a rate of 40 to 50 per hour near the east side of sky. The rate will be maximum during 10 pm to 3 am.

The image says it all.....

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You will want your site to be highly interactive so that users find it easier to navigate. You might want to add menu systems, mouse scroll effects, etc. What you would definitely want is dynamic content. You can download any number of these scripts for free from www.dynamicdrive.com.

Menu and navigation systems

Windows users might prefer having a Windows interface on the Web too. You can satisfy this need by using the menu and navigation scripts available at www.dynamicdrive.com. You can test each script before trying it on your site. Select the one that you like and following the instructions, copy and paste the code into your Web page and hey presto! You have the required menu and navigation effect on your site. You can choose from a range of scrolling, static, and dropdown menu and navigation items from this section.

Document effects

Your HTML pages need not be static. You can add cool effects to it. For instance, you can have a snowfall or flowers moving across the page randomly. Mind you, this looks good but can be irritating too. So add these effects to pages where you have lighter content, for example, a photo gallery or a personal links section.

Free applications

If you want to track the number of visitors to your site, you can add a page counter for this purpose. The other small applications that you could possibly add to your Web site are forums, guest books, log systems, polls, and e-mail forms, etc. Your hosting service might provide most of these. Since all the information is stored on the application provider's server, you don't have to worry about the hosting space for using any of these applications.

Count the visitors

Make use of the counters if you want to track the number of users who visit your site. Some sophisticated counters allow you to track down statistics on user visits month-wise or even day-wise. Microsoft bCentral offers you a counter that tells you exactly how many people visited your site on a particular day in a month.
Visit www.fastcounter.com and you will be redirected to www.bcentral.com. Register and get your passport. A couple of clicks and the site designs the counter and gives you the HTML code. You can copy and paste the code onto your page. All the stats will be stored on the bCentral server and you can log on to your account anytime to view the statistics.

Tracking the stats

You might be curious about which pages on your site are visited the most, what browser the visitor uses, or probably what OS most visitors use. Visit www.extreme-dm.com and register yourself for free tracking code. You will be sent a mail with the code details. Follow the instructions provided and paste the code onto your site. As users visit your Web page, tracking starts automatically and your account is updated with details of the user and his PC. You can login to your account at the site at any time to view your site statistics that are quite exhaustive. You can also restart your tracking at any point in time, but this is at the cost of losing your earlier data.

Soapbox

You can include message boards for free on your site. Visit www.boards2go.com and register yourself for a neat message board service. You can provide a link to the message board from your site or copy the code provided by boards2go.com while you register.

RSVP

You have worked hard to put together your online monument. Wouldn't you like to hear from the visitors whether they liked your site? A guest book is your solution. Some free subdomain name registrars such as Freeservers and Yahoo! Geocities provide a free guest book within the site manager.
Visit www.guestbookgiant.com and signup for a free service. Create as many guest books as you want and customise them from the respective menus. After customising the guest book, click on the 'Get code' link. This provides you two links-one to enter the guest book and the other to view it. Paste these links on to your Web site. Now visitors to your site can use the guest book to send their feedback to you.

DHTML games

Want to spice up your Web page? Then host some Shockwave, Flash and DHTML games. Some DHTML games are available at www.dynamicdrive.com. Download the games and unzip them. Before you upload them on your site, read the instructions provided by the author. Copy all the necessary files on a specific directory on your hosting space and provide a link from your main page to the games section of your Web site. Believe it or not, most visitors get enthusiastic when they see age-old games that they can play online!

Create the blocks

There are sites where you can create logos, buttons and GIFs of your choice. Customise the available buttons and GIFs to suit your preference

Create Logos

If you want a logo for your site, log on to www.flamingtext.com. Here you choose 'Start Here' from the sitemap in the 'New Users' section. You'll reach a page that carries a list of all available designs. Select the one you want and you're taken to a page where you can edit the design-change the text, size, colour, or font. Enter your preferences in the appropriate boxes and click on Create logo. A few seconds of rendering and your logo's ready. Right-click on the image to save it to your hard disk, you can use the image on your site as your registered logo.

Sew that button

There are sites that help you render buttons. Visit www.flamingtext.com and click on the buttons section listed at the top of the page. Choose the style and appearance of the button. The final section of the page lets you add text and change features such as colour gradients, the shape, etc of the button. Make your modifications and click on the Add text button to create your button. A few seconds and your button's rendered and displayed on the Web site. Save it by right-clicking on it.