Wonderful Thoughts A weblog about latest news and reveiws on technology,science,computing,software and autoblog. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 1 839

Articles from Wonderful Thoughts

Ashley Judd Is Coming To NASCAR, and She Is Bring Her Husband, Whatshisname, With Her 2007-10-04 11:49:56 OK, I’m going overboard on this a bit, but can you blame me? This is Ashley Judd we are talking about here. No, no, no, she isn’t driving a car in NASCAR’s top series next year, but she will be on top of her husband’s pit box.Her husband is the 2007 Indy 500 winner, and newly crowned IRL Champion, Dario Franchitti. He is Scottish by the way. I know, with a name like Franchitti you would think he was Italian or something.Dario announced this week that he will be racing full-time in NASCAR’s top division next year for the Chip Ganassi/Felix Sabatis organization. His teammates will be non-other than fellow former open-wheeler Juan Montoya, and 2nd year man Reed Sorenson. Out of a ride will be David Stremme. As of right now Stremme is rumoured to be considered as the new driver for the 10 car for next year, but he isn’t the only one, Patrick Carpentier is also rumoured to be a candidate for the 10 car too. We’ll just have to wait and see what happe ...

Using mobiles to fight pharma fakes 2007-10-03 16:29:23 You’re the mother of a small child in rural Ghana. Your child has malaria - she’s sweating with fever, then shaking with chills. You send your husband to the nearest big city - Kumasi - and make what’s a huge fiscal investment for you in some artesunate tablets. Artesunate and other arteminisin drugs work rapidly and are often able to control serious malaria episodes. The drug doesn’t work. Your daughter dies, despite the fact that you, as a parent, did everything you could to save her life. She’s one of 1.5 million people a year killed by malaria, a disease that should be treatable in virtually every patient who suffers from it. The pills didn’t contain any artesunate - they contained chalk, starch or acetaminophen. In a recent study in Southeast Asia, 38% and 52% of “artesunate” blister packs sampled contain no active ingredient. Or perhaps the pills included artesunate, just not enough - 10 miligrams, rather than the 50mg needed to cur ...

Get SMS Reminders for your tasks 2007-10-03 15:54:39 There have been many a times when I forgotten to carry out tasks I was supposed to do just because I plain forgot them. I do write them down but sometimes those notes get neglected too. Tasks as simple as calling someone on a specific day or your doctors appointment can be forgotten quite easily. To overcome this I use a simple method so that I can get a SMS message a couple of hours before I am supposed to do something. You do not require to pay anything except if your cell phone provider charges you for incoming SMS messages. Google Calendar is a very popular Calendar tool that allows you to add events and manage them online. Google Calendar also has a nice little feature that sends you a SMS reminder before the event is to occur. Using this feature you can get SMS Reminders for all your tasks and never forget another appointment again :-). Here are the instructions on how you can setup SMS reminders for your tasks. 1. Create and setup Google Calendar 2. Setup your Mobile in Google C ...

Mon nom est Jacques. Je veux aux racers avec vous. 2007-10-03 11:43:28 Loosely translated that means, “My name is Jacques. I want to race with you.” and it is going to happen whether Jeff Gordon, and others like it. NASCAR has given the OK for this, and what NASCAR wants NASCAR gets. This has all of the makings of being an out-take from ‘Talladega Nights’ where Ricky Bobby must face the French F1 star at Talladega. OK, Jacques isn’t quite French, he is French Canadian, but this is eerie just the same. I hope Sunday’s race doesn’t turn into an out-take of ‘Talladega Nights’, I think it would look bad on all those involved including BDR and NASCAR. The most puzzling thing about all of this is, why now? Why Talladega? Couldn’t Bill Davis Racing have waited until after Talladega to debut their former F1 Champion and Indy 500 winner? Yes they could have waited, in fact, Jacques wasn’t scheduled to make his first Cup start until the end of the season in either Phoenix or Homestead depending on wh ...

Trends in Badware 2007-10-02 22:19:23 My colleagues at the Stop Badware project at Berkman have a tough job. They generally interact with people when their sites have been flagged by Google as hosting some sort of badware. The vast majority of people who find themselves hosting badware are unaware that they’re doing so - their site has been compromised, usually because of an attack on their hosting provider. When people discover that their site is listed by Google as hosting badware - and almost 230,000 URLs have been detected thus far - they’re usually pretty upset. And while my friends at StopBadware host the appeals process for Google, they’re not the ones are responsible for making the determination that a site is hosting badware. (And they are certainly not the ones who compromised a site to put the links to badware there - no, those are generally the asshats associated with the “Russian Business Network“.) I’ve written at some length trying to explain what’s going on with th ...

Nationwide Insurance To Be Sponsor of NASCAR Grand National Division 2007-10-02 21:45:22 The number two series of NASCAR, currently sponsored by Busch Beer, will be sponsored next year by Nationwide Insurance.I’m really happy that NASCAR found a sponsor for the series and I hope that they will turn that series into something better than what it currently is - what is it exactly? Is it a driver developmental series? Or how about a technological developmental series? Maybe it is a series for Cup guys to run in to earn a little extra spending cash. Who knows, there is a lack of definition there.My problem with all of this is the fact that it is an Insurance Company that is the sponsor, they must have deep pockets to get that kind of cash to be a multi-year sponsor a racing series. Where did they get that money? From us, that’s where. I know, I know, Busch got their money from us as well, but that is different.At the risk of sounding a bit socialist here, I feel that businesses like Insurance companies, as well as certain financial institutions, should not be allow ...

De-clutter your Firefox Tools menu with More Tools Menu 2007-10-02 19:21:37 Many extensions come with their own menus and all of these are added to the default Tools menu, making it much more harder to navigate through. I personally have a lot of extensions that come with their own menus and with all those additional menus it makes my Tools menu look more cluttered and hard to navigate. Below is how my default Tools menu looks like with all those extensions menu, doesn’t it look so very hard to navigate through. Below is a screen shot of the Tools menu which looks much better now and that of the More Tools Menu which holds the rest of the extension menus making it easier to navigate.    Technorati tags: more tools menu, tools menu, firefox Copyright © 2007 Techie Buzz. All rights reserved. From:Techie Buzz ...

oh no he didn’t… 2007-10-02 08:46:09 click to enlarge Today I got a very nice package from the postman. An iPhone in all its hacked 1.0.2-firmware glory! *^_^* Honestly I didn’t think I would get myself an iPhone, but somehow, I ended up with one! ^_^ Ah well, we’ll see! For now some pictures: looks like it’s weather to stay inside… click to enlarge hardly used! click to enlarge you gotta be kidding me! ^_^ click to enlarge …and of course, the first pic I shot ^_^ click to enlarge From:geek technique ...

Exclude Pages in WordPress list pages 2007-10-02 04:54:08 The reason was that the title was too long and it was breaking the page and that I did not want it to be a part of the main menu. Below is a screen shot of how the page was breaking the entire menu. If you see the page title was not aligning properly with the menu.   WordPress Code wp_list_pages is a WordPress method that allows you to list the pages that are available on your blog, you can add this code to your theme wherever you want the list of pages to appear. In case of this blog I am using the list pages as a navigation menu. wp_list_pages function accepts different parameters and one of them is the pages that you want to exclude from appearing in the list. Get the page id(s) You will require the page ids in order to exclude them from showing up in the list. For this you will have to login to your admin panel and go to Manage -> Pages. The id of the page will be displayed along with the page names, you have to make note off this id, or multiple ids for the pages you wan ...

What my desktop looks like 2007-10-02 04:45:40 There has been a Meme going around the Blogosphere on how one’s desktop looks like. I decided to show off my desktop to my readers without being invited by anyone . Well I have a HP Pavilion widescreen laptop with a resolution of 1280 * 800, my desktop is organized and I have divided it into various parts using every possible screen real estate to organize all the icons. Basically the icons are organized into groups like there is a Media area in the top left corner. Development area in bottom left hand side. IM area takes the spot in the middle at the top, with the middle of the screen making space for quick notes I always want to have handy. With Google Desktop Quick search always ready for use. The middle of the bottom areas have some utilities I use quite often. The top right hand side holds icons for things related to Internet and the bottom area the right holds different folders. I also have three World clocks showing me time from Mumbai In India, the local New York time he ...

The new Jaguar XFat the Frankfurt. Motor Show 2007-10-02 01:56:21 Jaguar unveiled the new Jaguar XF sports saloon at the IAA Motor Show in Frankfurt. The new XF fuses sports car styling and performance with the refinement, features and space of a luxury saloon. The XF will be available with a choice of six models and a range of four engines from the 2.7 litre V6 turbodiesel, to a range of petrol engines culminating in the supercharged 4.2-litre V8 petrol with 416hp. All models feature Jaguar’s proven six-speed automatic transmission with steering wheel-mounted ‘paddles’ for manual gear selection. The new Jaguar XF will cost from £33,900 in the UK.From:Auto Blog - Auto Lah ...

September 2007 Statistics 2007-10-02 00:33:41 Well to start with it has been a pretty successful month for this blog with daily unique visitors going up to more than a 1000 a day. It has been consistent throughout the month and hoping that it increases much more in future. Along with daily visitors the Feed readers had also crossed the 300 mark and is currently sitting with 287 feed subscribers. Blog Statistics For September 2007 Total page views: 51,525 Unique Visitors: 35,049 New Visitors: 89% Average Time spent on Blog: 1 minute 15 seconds Highest traffic day: September 24th with 2567 unique visitors and 4128 page views Google was the number 1 source for sending traffic to this blog with 70.38% traffic coming from there. For October I would like to increase the referral traffic as well as the direct traffic. Most popular posts for the month Watch 20 20 Cricket World Cup Highlights Online Manage Multiple Blogs Release Make Windows XP look like Windows Vista Make Yahoo Messenger XP look like Yahoo Messenger Vista Watch Cha ...

Around the Blogosphere Oct 1 2007 2007-10-01 23:45:17 Well I have been reading a lot of good posts from my friends and would like to share them with you. I will making this a weekly habit so that you can read up interesting posts from my friends and fellow blogger’s. Madhur Kapoor a avid gamer gives you his thoughts about the Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 demo. Shankar Ganesh talks about the Free Download Managers available for Windows. Nirmal tells you about 8 useful Add-ons  for Internet Explorer. Sumesh from Techzilo tells you How to format images in posts beautifully. Kyles tells you how to get a Nice Feed Icon for your blog. Baron Brown talks about FileExtensions.org to let you know your files. Haris tells you how to Restore Desktop Icon in Quick Launch Bar. Ram talks about flauntR a One Click Photo Effects Tool Ashwini Khare from Webtalks talks about the Emails Scams Saying you have Won a Jackpot. Shivaranjan (Welcome back) tells you How to Get more out your Laptop Battery DJ Flush talks about AirPress the Desktop Blogging C ...

Downloadable guide to Conference Blogging 2007-10-01 23:21:41 Blogging is more fun when it’s a team sport. That’s certainly been true for Global Voices, and it’s at least as true when I get to blog at conferences. TED Africa was such a blast in no small part because I got to experience the event with so many blogger friends from across the continent and around the world. I have high hopes that Pop!Tech, which will feature several bloggers writing in their native language this year, will have some similar cameraderie. My favorite blogging partner is the remarkable Bruno Giussani, whose Lunch Over IP blog should be required reading for anyone who finds this blog helpful. Bruno and I have traded notes for some years about the art and science of conference blogging, each learning from the other’s expertise. When I posted my accumulated notes on blogging a conference, Bruno responded with a comment thread, then a post of his own. From:…My heart’s in Accra ... Blogging

Berkman: James Vasile and the rationale of GPLv3 2007-10-01 19:03:26 James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center is a man who chooses his words carefully. That’s a common feature to lawyers who write license agreements, and certainly a useful trait for someone who’s worked on a license as public, visible and controversial as the third version of the General Public License. The Software Freedom Law Center is a non-profit, pro-bono law firm - the Free Software Foundation was their client in creating the most recent version of the GPL. James explains that as a law firm, they are not an advocacy organization, but a support organization, doing work for the public good. James tells us that SFLC had expected to spend roughly a year in public debate to create the new GPL license. In fact, it took a bit more time, in part because the expectations for what a person can do with the GPL may be a bit beyond what’s realistic to expect from a license. “GPL is not a social contract. It’s not the consitution of the free software world. ...