Seemanta’s Blog

A very happy new year to you all and I wish that the new year brings you more joy, happiness and prosperity.

Well, I got to celebrate my new year in a bit more special way than usual. A day late, but my new Dell Studio 14 laptop arrived on 2nd Jan. Actually it had arrived on 1st Jan itself but since that was a holiday and also since I had given my work address for delivery I was able to pick it up only on 2nd. I specifically wanted a small sleek laptop rather than a bulky one. Also I wanted it to look a bit different than the scores of inspirons that we have out everywhere. So I went for the Studio range which is a trade-off between the lower end inspirons and the high end XPSs.

And here is my configuration, not too fancy but decent enough:

- Intel Core 2 Duo(T5800), 2.00 Ghz, 800 FSB , 2 MB cache
- 3 GB DDR2 RAM
- 320 GB SATA HDD from Western Digital, model no. WD3200BEVT
- Integrated 2.0 MP Webcam with lateral array microphone
- Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed (I installed Ubuntu Intrepid later on, of course)
- 1280×800 pixels TrueLife(tm) 14.1” WXGA screen.
- In built 8-in-1 SD card reader
- Dual Headphone jacks.
- Slot Load 8X DVD R/W Drive with dual layer write capabilities
- In built wireless network catcher that can be used to detect wireless networks without powering up the laptop.
- Travel remote that slides into the express card slot.
- Dell Wireless 1397 802.11b/g Half Mini Card
- Dell(TM) Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
- In built 10/100/1000 Gigabit ethernet
- Pair of Creative Noise Isolation ear buds (EP630) supposedly free and which costs about 1300 INR in India.
- All OS, drivers and utilities DVDs. This is very important and not offered by any other laptop manufacturer that I know of.

I had ordered it on 19th Dec. My hands had already started to itch starting from that day, ending only on 2nd Jan. I am really happy with my laptop and here are some snaps that I took of it:

Also here is a YouTube video with me reviewing the various aspects of the it. I have tried to cover as much points as possible but in case there is some aspect you feel I have missed out, you can drop me a comment and I would be happy to help you.

And one more thing, the video is split into two parts since YouTube restricts all videos to 10 minutes.

So here you go, enjoy and do write in your comments:

Part I

Part II

admin My Creations, Personal, Tech DELL, Laptop, Review, Studio 14

If you ask me what is one of the most precious human quality that I would hate to lose, then my answer would be just one word: ‘Curiosity’.

I have always had a deep seated belief that it was curiosity which has led us to evolve as we have, over the millennia.

Was it not curiosity that led Copernicus to spend hours in his research to realize that the earth is not the center of this universe? Was it not curiosity that led Galileo to delve deep into nature and was it not curiosity that led Newton to postulate his famous laws ? Was it not curiosity that led Columbus to sail across the Atlantic ?

And believe me, it is curiosity that will lead humans to venture out to space one day, leaving behind earth, in search of the unknown.

But alas, these days, such curious people are hard to come by. This is very tragic and in fact shows the progression of mankind from a knowledge seeking species to a wealth and power gathering species.

I think, I am fortunate to still have that curiosity alive in me. This has fuelled my numerous quests for knowing all that I can. Needless to say, I am not able to understand everything, but as long as this curiosity is alive within me, I shall continue to learn new things and continue to look at this world with childlike wonder.

Hence, the title of this article. Poor curiosity was framed. It was ignorance which killed the cat.

Which is why curiosity is the best cure for ignorance.

~Seemanta

admin Non-tech, Personal, Thought provoking philosophical

I recently came across this excerpt from the ‘Pale blue dot’ book by Carl Sagan. I do not want to provide my own comments on this, but would leave upto you to deal with the thought that it provokes.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Original link where I came across this: http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/voyager/pale_blue_dot.html

admin Personal, Thought provoking astronomy, carl sagan, popular astronomy

I recently read in a national newspaper that two of our TV news channels have been issued notices by some court for mis-use of their channel to promote superstition. I, for one was very happy to note that.

The question raised was the recent LHC(Large Hadron Collider) experiment and the so called prediction of doomsday.Many TV channels displayed rampant and dramatized news programmes on how the world would come to a catastrophic end. In fact, due to this one village girl even committed suicide. Ignorance has it price, after all.

But I would like to take it back further by about a month or so, when almost whole of India experienced a partial Solar Eclipse.

One news channel(happens to the one which I dislike the most) went as far as prescribing ways to prevent the ill effects of this Solar Eclipse on pregnant ladies. The solution prescribed was to smear a layer of cow dung mixed with cow urine over the abdomen during the eclipse. And the TV channel hired some ‘renowned’ astrologer to promote this gimmick. It made me sick to the core and I felt ashamed on our very existence as Indians.

On one hand, we boast of launching 10 satellites with a single rocket and on the other, we have weird notions about things we do not understand. Or rather about things we do not *want* to understand.

These news channel rather than play their part in removing ignorance and promoting scientific temper, are doing more damage than ever possible. With the reach of DTH (Direct-to-Home) broadcasts to interior villages across India, one can only think of the devastation these bogus broadcasts are causing.

And given the irony, that the whole notion of eclipses as per Indian astrology is based on the existence of another planet called ‘Rahu’ which in fact does not exist and is nothing but the Moon’s orbit intersecting the earth’s orbit in space. So much for this so called ’science’, huh?

I would really love these news channels being brought to justice. Enough damage is already done. But future damage should be prevented.

~Seemanta

admin Current Affairs, Personal astrology sucks, ignorance, superstition

Finally! Here it is! My own blog. I have been thinking for some time now to start it. But it was sheer laziness that prevented me from taking the first step.

So, now that I have done it, let me welcome you to my blog. This blog would be a place to showcase my creations, views, opinions and anything and everything under the sky.

And being a true techie from the bottom of the heart, I have titled this blog ‘Hello, world’. Anyone remember the first C program from K&R book?

And last but not the least, I am not going to make this a tech-only blog. You can expect posts from various facets of life in here.

So stay tuned! Until the next post, good-bye!

regards,
Seemanta

seemanta Non-tech, Personal introduction