Has anyone heard of/noticed the strange,alien, "red"-storm over the city of Sydney that is currently taking place? If not visit this flickr gallery for an ethereal experience. I wish I could've been there right now. Things look so spooky !

For sci-fi fans, anyone remember Dune ? Sand worms? The blue eyed prophet?

 

There I said it. Call me a liberal doochbag now. I'ma let you finish, but President Barack Obama has arguable one of the best sense of judgment that overlooks race and color.

I was out vising the website of Bangladsh Shilpakala Academy (The National Academy of Fine Arts in Bangladesh), and noticed three strange links at
the footer of the page. They pointed to AHEM! "Suspicious" (or should I say, Tabooed?) websites and should never have any place in the official
website of a country's "National Academy of Fine Arts". These links pointed to "Escort Services" in Los Angeles. My first impression was, this has to be an online ad blunder, where an unsuspecting website upon placing javascript
based, auto-rotating ads like those from Google Adsense might come across a few ads that don't quite mesh with their policies. But then I thought,
WTF! this is a govt website, maintained and developed by govt employees.These website aren't supposed to show commercialized content like these !
The whole thing got even weirder as I inspected the code and found no evidence of a 3rd Party ad-content provider. That means these links were
placed their deliberately, one by one. This isn't just a twisted turn of luck. Can anyone explain what is really going on?

 As an evidence, I present these two screencaps. Enjoy. Click the images to get a bigger view.

 You can also visit the website of BSKA to see it for yourself.

The colonel is already here. I for one welcome our burgeois overlords. More obese people for my eyes to see and ridicule for perverse entertainment.

I came across this amazing Greasemonkey script today that blocks off all those pesky quizzes and 3-rd Party application updates that your friends are littering your frontpage with. No more would you have to tolerate mindless questionnaires like "Which herbivorous rodent were you in your past life?" or front-page updates that involves a contact of yours finding which movie villainess she resembles.

 What this script does is it filters your front-page news items, strips them off the 3-rd Party quiz/apps nuiscense and leaves you with news items of/related to original Facebook apps (like status updates,photo uploads,event updates etc ). Here's what you should do:

 * Install Greasemonkey.
* Install "Facebook Purity". Don't worry it's a harmless javascript file. Tested and cerfied.
* Browse Facebook minus the annoyance.

  
Power Tip: The author of the script suggest you keep an eye on the scriptHomepage for regular updates. I know I sure will.

First of all, first thing first , from now on I'm going to discontinue my previous 'formal' attitude towards blogging . I've had it with long, arduous and boring blog posts that stresses over and over again the more 'subtle' aspects of the subject in question and experiments with English lit. The NEW ME would post short, possibly humorous posts. These so called 'short stints' would be far more casual and 'regular' ( I must stress ) than before.

 Ok, onto the actual jig. The other day I was looking for a way to download "Spell of , an awesome book on the Sundarbans. After a number of nudges here and there, I was left with a few options. The first 'obvious' choice was the Google Book Downloader. Then I found out that I had to install the latest version of the .NET framework which I was somewhat allergic to. So scratch that.

 Then I did what I always do when left with no other option with which to exploit/manipulate web-service like "Google Books", turn to Greasemonkey. It turns out that there's a very potent GS script out there (also ironically called Google Book Downloader ) that might help freeloaders like myself to do our bidding. Here's how you can use Greasemonkey and a compatible script to download your favourite book from Google Books :

 1) Install Greasemonkey if you haven't already.

 2) Install the Google Book Downloader script. Don't worry, this piece of JS-code is fang-less.

 3) Browse to the book of your choice in Google Books. A "Download this Book" dialogue (shown below) will become visible. Click that fat, pale button.

 

 4) The dowload will progress (shown below). Once done, you can now download individual pages as .png files or use the FlashGot extension to download all pages at once.

 

  
Productivity Tip: If you want to make a nice PDF file out of the image files downloaded, I recommend using doPDF which happens to be an excellent 'anything to pdf converter' and its totally free!

 Phew, who knew writing 'small' can be tiresome as well :(

 Why slap them in their cheeks with some lemon and butter off course :)
There are several ways to do so:

 * Use an online cloaking service, like Hidemyass ( http://hidemyass.com )
to achieve your means.

 * There are literally thousands of online proxies, cloacking services and
what not to aid you in your quest for online freedom. Take Youtube proxy
for instance (https://youtubeproxy.org/). You can read more about such
'ways' in the wired post:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/howto_evade_tur.html

 * Use a 3-rd party site that uses the open API of your 'favourite site' to
index/catalogue/display the content (i.e., video,mp3 whatever) and then
use another 3rd Party site to download that content. For example, if
youtube is blocked in your contry, use Truveo (http://truveo.com) to get
the URL of the video of your choice and Keepvid (http://keepvid.com) to
generate a download link..and VOILA.

  

 

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be
reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

 - Mahatma Gandhi

 Why slap them in their cheeks with some lemon and butter off course :) There are several ways to do so:

 * Use an online cloaking service, like Hidemyass ( http://hidemyass.com ) to achieve your means.

 * There are literally thousands of online proxies, cloacking services and what not to aid you in your quest for online freedom. Take Youtube proxy for instance (https://youtubeproxy.org/). You can read more about such 'ways' in the wired post: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/howto_evade_tur.html

 * Use a 3-rd party site that uses the open API of your 'favourite site' to index/catalogue/display the content (i.e., video,mp3 whatever) and then use another 3rd Party site to download that content. For example, if youtube is blocked in your contry, use Truveo (http://truveo.com) to get the URL of the video of your choice and Keepvid (http://keepvid.com) to generate a download link..and VOILA.

  

 It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

 - Mahatma Gandhi

I'm personally so jacked up. There better be body parts...and blood...lots of it..WITH KICK ASS SOUNDTRACK. No indie, "Juno" crap.

 IMDB sure showing a good sign.

 

 The poster is 'promising'.

 

 A trailer is out too...with Brad Pitt sporting a ridiculously comical, fake "Gen patton"-esque accent. This is shaping up nicely.

 

  
PS: Also, Diane Kruger! Dangnabbit.. DIANE KRUGER