2008 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar

01	2008 FORMULA 1 ING AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX (Melbourne)	14 – 16 Mar
02	2008 FORMULA 1 PETRONAS MALAYSIAN GRAND PRIX (Kuala Lumpur)	21 – 23 Mar
03	2008 FORMULA 1 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX (Bahrain)	04 – 06 Apr
04	FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO DE ESPANA TELEFONICA 2008 (Catalunya)	25 – 27 Apr
05	2008 FORMULA 1 PETROL OFISI TURKISH GRAND PRIX (Istanbul)	09 – 11 May
06	FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2008 (Monte Carlo)	22 – 25 May
07	FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX DU CANADA 2008 (Montreal)	06 – 08 Jun
08	FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX DE FRANCE 2008 (Magny-Cours)	20 – 22 Jun
09	2008 FORMULA 1 SANTANDER BRITISH GRAND PRIX (Silverstone)	04 – 06 Jul
10	FORMULA 1 GROSSER PREIS SANTANDER VON DEUTSCHLAND 2008 (Hockenheim)	18 – 20 Jul
11	FORMULA 1 ING MAGYAR NAGYDIJ 2008 (Budapest)	01 – 03 Aug
12	2008 FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE (Valencia)	22 – 24 Aug
13	2008 FORMULA 1 ING BELGIAN GRAND PRIX (Spa-Francorchamps)	05 – 07 Sep
14	FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO SANTANDER D’ITALIA 2008 (Monza)	12 – 14 Sep
15	2008 FORMULA 1 SINGTEL SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX (Singapore)	26 – 28 Sep
16	2008 FORMULA 1 FUJI TELEVISION JAPANESE GRAND PRIX (Fuji Speedway)	10 – 12 Oct
17	2008 FORMULA 1 SINOPEC CHINESE GRAND PRIX (Shanghai)	17 – 19 Oct
18	FORMULA 1 GRANDE PREMIO DO BRASIL 2008 (Sao Paulo)	31 Oct – 02 Nov

How to Improve Your Clarity of Speech

original article: http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Clarity-of-Speech

  I found this article while searching on the net for the basic differences between how Indians and Americans pronounce words. It is just something I get teased a lot by my nieces. I just came back after meeting one of them.. and the subject came up, so I thought of searching about it. I did not find what I was looking for; but found something else which I found interesting.

  I am pasting the content from the original site, so that I have it at one place.

Steps

1. Practice jaw exercises to enhance clarity of speech. Use a mirror to aid you in this step. Here are three exercises to help. These also help relax the jaw, making speech a lot clearer:
   • Make wide chewing motions while humming gently.
   • Stretch every muscle in your jaw and face. Open your mouth as wide as possible (as if you were about to yawn), while moving your jaw in circles, and sideways.
   • Open your mouth wide, as in the previous exercise, and shut it again. Repeat 5 times.
2. Another good way to improve clarity of speech is practicing tongue twisters. Start off slowly, and gradually build up until you say them at normal conversation speed. When speaking them, overexaggerate the words, making your tongue, jaw and lips work hard. As you become more sure of them, begin to project your voice and overexaggerate the words more. This helps you gain skill.
3. Another activity is to try having a conversation with yourself in front of the mirror. It may sound silly, but it does help. Again, overexaggerate your words as you speak.
4. Gargle some lukewarm water with a pinch of salt. This helps relieve tension in the throat.
5. Avoid speaking with clenched teeth.
6. Don’t rush when speaking. Talk deliberately, but not so slow that you are a robot.
7. Swallow excess saliva. Saliva left in the mouth can result in mumbling and distortion of consonants such as "S" and "K".

Tips

• A Few Jaw exercises:
• Say "AW"- (like "Arkansas" — drop the jaw).
• Say "EE"-Pull the corners of your lips back and say "Eeeeee…."
• Practice these vowel sounds by adding any consonant like,"paa paw poh poo pay pee pie, saa saw soh soo say see sigh.."
• Demosthenes, a Greek thinker, used to speak with rocks in his mouth to improve his stuttering. It might be worth trying with something clean, safe and edible, such as cookies or ice cubes. Be careful!
• You may feel a little a little weird or even amused while doing some of these exercises, but the more you practice them, the easier and rewarding it will become
• Another excersise is to write a few sentences on a piece of paper, then underline the last letter of each word. When you read the paper, exxagerate the last letter, the npause for a few seconds. You could aslo put commas between a lot of the words.

The Truth table approach to RNAi

    I recently saw a show on pbs which talked about topics like

      1. Memory training by exploiting the wonderful concept of brain plasticity. (This is a reminder for me to read about it later)

      2. The underlying concept about RNAi and why it is so important. (I’ll write about this a little later… I just wanted to jot down the salient bullet points from what i remember)

             * cell -> nucleus -> DNA

             * DNA does not replicate

             * RNAi is like a scriber which copies the DNA’s code and sends it out to cytoplasm (i need to check this.. it could be rhybo-thingy)

             * cytoplasm, just makes copies of the DNA code created by RNAi (they are nothing but proteins) for your cell

             * the DNA code could be manipulated at RNAi level, and multiple copies could be made of the new code (mutation)

             * there is another defense mechanism, which restricts the changed code to reach the cytoplasm. It basically looks for certain patterns, and if it does not like them, then it just destroys that copy. If these copies were left alone ,they could become potential viruses.

             * This defense mechanism can be used in a positive way to play around an understand which gene controls what aspect of the subject.

             * By turning on and off certain genes, you can probably find cures of many ailments.

 

I think the above bullet points serves a good way for me to further read about these topics… without losing continuity.. will update this blog.. once i read more…

 

as a starter, will read about it here later…

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02.html

MBTI test result – ISTJ

Hmm… now this is interesting (atleast to me)… I was just chatting with a friend of mine.. who is doing his MBA at present.. He is very excited about a course on Organisational Behavior. Yeah… he too is a geek!! You can spot us from miles away!! Since he was excited about it and I owe him a lot for all the crash courses he gave me during the exam times during college… I played along with his banter (just kidding..he’s a nice helpful human being)…it doesn’t hurt to get some free information…so I participated in his case study… I am not a huge fan of these tests (the test in question – Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), I believe they are just mind pleasers…and always approach them with a pinch of salt. These mind pleasing tools are in fact, very effective in putting across a thought to the diverse masses….I give them the benefit of the doubt (I am still relatively young and not yet senile….to just completely ignore these suggestions)

    So I gave this seemingly garden-variety test. After finishing through these questions… I was thinking.. damn.. are they going to show me, my 29 dimensions of compatibility…lol …. Thankfully, this test is geared towards your career .

   The good thing I got out of it was that I am a ISTJ type personality and the field of computer science is one of the possible profession for me. Wow!! Pop open that bottle of champagne!!  Since I am already in the computer science field and I love technology, this test was a total waste of my time, and that too on a day when I am running a fever. This test just reaffirmed that I am in the right field. If I had done a case study on it, I would have concluded that this test is EXTREMELY USEFUL for students in high school. This test should be made mandatory for them and should be taken in 10th, 12th grades and once after the first year of Bachelor’s degree.

    My mouth feels salty now… I wonder why. I am now intrigued, is this some kind of a scandal, just like astrology (scandal is the wrong word here, its too negative.. I just could not come up with another word), which I ‘think’ says the same thing for everyone. Most people will just read their own sign and then move on. If you read weekly forecasts of every sign.. I have noticed that they are more-or-less the same. Now, does that mean… instead of ISTJ , if I had got anything else, it would still say computer science is one of the fields you should be in. If you look at the economic/social structure outside, you can no longer escape technology. So, the best thing to do is, to motivate people to follow the technology field. Maybe, I am being too simplistic and narrow minded, and I apologize for that. (I can feel my fever acting up again… I better lie down for sometime… maybe..God is saying, what is this sacrilege that you are committing by writing about MBTI tests, thou shall not write thy blasphemy )

Developers and Startups

This is a reminder to myself… I need to read this on Sunday evening… just copy pasted text from a blog by Brian Haveri titled – 7 Must Reads for Developers Turned Entrepreneurs

I just waste too much time over the weekends… need to generate passive income

1. How to Start a Startup
   I encourage reading all of Paul Graham’s articles if you haven’t already. This just happens to be my favorite
2. Sometimes it is Just Time to Pull the Trigger
   Cornwall’s a professor at Belmont and the guy knows his stuff. I’ve been linking to him for awhile in my blog’s footer.
3. James Hong: On Having Balls, Part II: Staying Hungry
   Co-Founder of Hot or Not writes: "We stopped all dividending of profits. This money is now better used being reinvested into the company. What this basically means is that my income for the year just dropped from ‘x million’ to ‘ZERO’."
4. Creating Passionate Users: Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company!
   My favorite line: "…support people in doing what they’re trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way."
5. Ian Landsman’s Weblog v2.0 – 10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur
6. Why You Have To Work For A Startup
   Follow-up: Why You Have To Work As A Consultant
7. Pull! 10 Signs You’re Shooting Down Good Ideas.
   Numbers 2 and 4 are particularly noteworthy:
   2) Your competition is your main source of ideas.
   4) You only want BIG ideas.

Confusion between Fact and the Truth

          This post is just to quickly capture one of my thoughts to state the obvious. Fact is NOT the truth. Most of us are guilty of committing this mistake. We are trained from childhood to deduce; to find the hidden logic; to solve puzzles; to ascertain a pattern. All of these by themselves are all desired traits that we should all proactively try to learn and follow, but with caution and due diligence. Approximation – a necessary evil, causes us to derive at a result quickly, but we should then know that it could be wrong.

           But facts can sometimes be misleading, and may not point you to the truth which lies hidden due to some fallacy in our reasoning or narrative brainwashing. We all know this, but we’ll still knowingly ignore it. Maybe its in our human nature that we find ourselves compelled to revisit and believe in something that we think is true.

           Fact is something which seems to be there right in front of our eyes. It is upto us to question it or accept it as it is. It is said that Philosophy of one century is common sense of the next century, but I sure hope so that, within the timespan of a century this ‘philosophical idea’ in question is truly questioned and tested. Otherwise, the premise for the common sense of the next century is flawed to begin with. Same is true in our everyday life, marketing for example, the advertisements are true if we want to believe in them. The marketing pitches are true, as long as we want to believe in them. Once you question these facts (by definition, if it is a fact, most people will not question it) you may end up concluding, whether it is a fairy tale or the truth. Funny… marketing and gossip are interchangeable. I guess, Gossip is the viral version of marketing.  It’s interesting to note, that old adages don’t die (adage by definition tells us that.. I am just stating the obvious).. they live on forever, for example : ‘Ignorance is bliss’. It’s a popular ‘negative’ ‘cliche’, I am sure it has ‘positive’ connotations as well, or vice versa (it depends on how you look at it)

           How do you define Truth? Its something which is unknown. Some things are simple to define, and some things are difficult to put down in black and white. Sometimes, the same entity/concept is simple to define and some times it’s not. It depends on the context in which we talk about that entity.

      (I’ll leave this line of thought here.. will try to capture my thoughts later.. right now I better do a reality check… office is tomorrow… that’s a fact and the truth… and that is good for the time being..I’ll forget what I actually wanted to say right this moment.. so I guess.. this post will remain like this… scattered.. I wanted to consolidate the thought I have.. for myself.. but its just too vast right now.. in my mind.. I cannot assimilate it)

interesting people with interesting thoughts

   I was just looking at some videos on a popular online video sharing site. Clicking through the overwhelming cornucopia of videos, a pattern emerged. The end product, a list of names.

   I ended up with the following names of people, who have done some interesting work. The names Edwards Tufte, Seth Godin and Ray Kurzweil were known to me before, I ended up adding following names to my pseudo-mental list.

 

• Peter Senge – Organizational Learning
• Edward Tufte – Information Design
• Peter Drucker – Business Management
• Russell Ackoff - Systems Thinking, Learning
• Seth Godin – Marketing
• Ray Kurzweil – Health
• Stephen R. Covey – Organizational Psychology
• W. Edwards Deming – Quality Management
• Brian Greene – Quantum Physics and String Theory

 

(pseudo mental list : most of you who know me, would have noticed already that I try not to remember daily activities. My thinking behind that odd behavior: if you are involved in some one-time work, which does not affect your life (professional/personal) in a big way, don’t try to remember it for a very long time. It might just end up curbing your creativity, or may kill whatever creativity is left within you. Keep your brain free for ideas to bounce around within that mind of yours.  Another side effect is that you always get excited/motivated to solve the problem you might have solved 3 years ago in some form or the other, so you get to relive the challenge. Many people try to remember things to impress others. It’s not about impressing others, it’s about what makes you and keeps you happy and calm. Having said that, I agree, it’s not always about impressing others; sometimes just remembering something obscure makes you feel happy about yourself. )