The world as I see

Along with a regular face pack and face scrub regime, I have added a face spray to my daily skin care routine. I have found this miracle product - a natural face spray with  Rosewater and Glycerine. I use it daily and within a week of use I see remarkable difference on my face. The wrinkles around my eyes have gone and dark circles have vanished. Skin looks so refreshed and youthful. I love it!!

Now my face needs a scrub. And I started searching for a natural options. This is what I found on the Apsara Skin Care blog. Another simple, natural, 3 ingredients face pack with Vitamin E Oil, Brown Sugar and Olive Oil. Here is the proportion: 1 tsp of Vitamin Oil 1/4 cup of Brown Sugar 1/2 cup of Olive Oil After mixing all ingredients, rub it on your face for 2-3 mins and then wash it off with warm water. My face had a glow. This scrub removed the dead cells. I am impressed yet again!

All my life I have been using regular face packs readily available in drug stores and online store. The results are great but a slight problem. They contain a lot of chemicals that may not harm you right away but slow exposure to some of these carcinogens can impact your health. Some of us may live longer with no health issues but for some of us exposure to these chemicals can cause some gene mutations and that could lead to some serious health issues. Hence since last few years of my life I have been doing my by best to remove exposure to chemicals from my day to day life. That includes perfume, deodorants, make up stuff and hair dyes.Of all these I miss the hair dye the most because I loved experimenting with my hair color. Also miss my Channel perfume, I simply loved its subtle but intriguing fragrance. Past few days my face was looking dull and full of wrinkles. So I missed my face packs and face peels. I was online searching for some natural options when I bumped into Apsara sk...

Yesterday I did some yard work. Was very rewarding. Started by loosening the soil, taking out weeds and then trimming the trees. I also mowed the grass first time. It wasn't bad. I think I did a good job. The yard looks amazing. All cleaned up and beautiful.

Which is better - singly linked list or doubly linked list? What are the pros and cons of using each? In a Singly Linked List each node has pointer just to the next node and hence can be traversed  in only one direction whereas in a Doubly Linked List, each node has pointers to both previous and next nodes , hence can be traversed in both directions.While this kind of traversal makes deletion of nodes easier from a doubly linked list , because we now don’t have to traverse from head and keep track of previous node but it consumes more memory since it now has to store two pointers as compared to one in case of Singly Linked List. function remove_node_singlyLinkedList(head, node)    tempnode = head    while (tempnode->next != node)        tempnode = tempnode->next    tempnode->next = node->next end function          Time Complexity - O(...

Windows Azure is the Microsoft's Cloud Computing platform that enables hosting of applications on cloud without being bothered about adding new clusters to enhance their scalability in future.I like the ease with which a web app can be deployed/published to a cloud.MS makes it so simple and developer friendly! Here is a great presentation by Scott Guthrie,

Yesterday, I got Sky Drive and Google Drive clients installed on my laptop and things look pretty cool ! I now have 2 GB (Drop Box) + 5 GB (Google Drive) + 7 GB (Sky Drive) = 14 GB of could storage That means anywhere I go, I can access my source code, photos, videos, audio, docs.

If you are a web developer and need to validate your markup, here is a tool by W3C which is really helpful. http://validator.w3.org/ And if you are struggling with your regex and need help testing it, use the following.Its a cool javascript tool. http://regexpal.com/ Sometimes, we are in need to convert our VB.NET code to C# or vice versa, I find below tool quite reasonably helpful. http://converter.telerik.com/ Enjoy your coding!!

I have to admit I am in love with this song.The verse, the rhythm , the voice, somehow everything seems perfect.Its like those delicious death by chocolate desserts you wish to eat again and again. Every time I hear this I discover some interesting aspect of the song.It has depth in its verse, resonance in its sound that wrenches your soul and rhythm that agitates your mind and then soothens it.Ahh and that philosophical touch too! Hope you enjoy it :-)

Infinity - how did this concept come into existence.This is my take on it.Man as he began to evolve felt the need of numbers, basically some way to count things.Hence various number systems were devised by various human civilizations across the world.So as man started counting, he would have somewhere realized he could go on and on and on forever.With this the concept of infinite would have come into existence.A very very huge number that is unending.He would have started using this concept of endlessness or eternity to other things as well, like our universe, time, etc. Now that we had conceived this idea of infinity we needed a symbol to represent it.So the symbol of infinity slowly came into existence.If you closely observe its basically a twisted closed curve and if you travel across the curve you will realize you end up traveling forever.

We were connecting to a DB2 database through our ASP.NET application.So we decided to use IBM.Data.DB2 dll and added DB2DataAccess and DB2DataReaderHelper classes.Everything was set and we started constructing our Data Access Layer, keeping our approach simple - connect to the database, get a datareader / dataset,use a mapper method to populate our custom classes / business entities with the data and close the connection.Slowly the number of mapper methods grew.Considering the fact that we had around 111 Business Entity Classes and even if we had to populate 50 % of these classes from the DB and some cases we could map more than one classes together in single method, we would still land up in around 40-50 mapper methods.So we did a bit of an introspection to understand if writing those many mapper methods was worthwhile our effort and time, not ignoring the fact it could make our lives hell during maintenance. Hence the...

Our previous project was a web application with high security requirements.So we decided to use validations to validate the input and prevent user from entering harmful data or data that could make an application behave unexpectedly.We choose to use both client and server side validations on our pages because there was a possibilty of user disabling javascript on the browser and hence bypassing client side validations.Hence Regular ASP.NET validation controls were used and we had Required Field Validators, Regex Validators, Range Validators and Custom Validators across our pages.We set the EnableClientSide property of the validators to true to make sure client side validations fire.Once client side validations passed, on every postback event we were again checking for Page.IsValid property before proceeding to our event handling code.Now to evaluate Page.IsValid property, ASP.NET fires all validations again on the se...

in those dark nights filled with thick clouds when the street was so dark and all dogs would just bark there would be some light shining from a little star amidst those clouds it would just stand apart on one of those nights there was a small girl returning from work finding her way back home the day had been hard her garlands were not all sold eyes were filled with sadness as she glanced over her basket in that dark night as she walked her way back she saw this little star shining so bright she wondered how it was to be a star at night separated by large distance from its own brethren did it even know it would help a human to find its way home or did it just shine whatever be the intention it has created a reason for that small urchin to look up and smile often

It was Hubble Telescope's 20th birthday and Google shared some of the pictures on its Google Earth blog at http://earth.google.com/ hubble20th. The pictures look amazing revealing that beautiful and mysterious side of our universe.It appears as if someone is playing some fireworks out there.I guess that is how the idea of a divine being would have come into existence.But now we all know and understand there are laws and scientific reasons governing all these phenomenons.This universe has still so many mysteries yet to be resolved and some pieces of puzzle still need to fit together to figure out how everything works and what makes universe strive that perfect balance which is the true essence and charm of it and which often leaves us in awe and inspiration to know further more. Wish space tourism would finally become affordable.We could see all these ourselves;-)

Holi the festival of colors!! Well in down South , you wouldn't even come to know it is Holi except when you see few North Indian kids working here putting some colors so soberly.This reminds me of how this is so unlike up north where its like some fight, rage or battle to be won...people chase the victim, color him ruthlessly or dunk him taking all revenge on his hair, face or whatever part of the body they can catch hold of...but its fun to watch till you are not one amongst them;-) I am not a big fan of Holi but I enjoy watching people play it...from a distance. So it was all a peaceful working day for me till I reached back to my place and found my friend smiling and waiting for me on the door.In that dim night light, I couldnt see any evidence of colors on her which would have probably warned me of her intentions but finally I had it all over me....my hair,face....dress,bag everywhere....and I stood there wondering what to do next:-)  After seeing her off, while I wa...

O' dear friend of mine, you are like that sunshine; who fills my little life, with some warmth and light; making it a delight, with some sugar and spice; those little moments of life, that we shared together; all those funny, silly jokes, and those colloquium of thoughts; that laughter and its echoes, those tears, that flowed in silence; when you are gone i would want, your memories to be afloat; near me and all around, all words and every sound; because i don't want to loose, the treasure i have found; so what do you think of me, and this little poem of mine; will you miss my words, when i have flown like bird; to the world far beyond, to find answers of my mind; O friend i believe , your dreams will come alive; you will see the flowers bloom, from little seeds, very soon; that you sowed in the hearts, of people from all walks; so never loose your heart, believe in what you start; cheer your little sel...

Emailing has become an integral part of our lives.We communicate with our colleagues, friends and family using this wonderful invention.From our regular updates to any formal communication we use it incessantly. But have we ever wondered what will happen to our inbox and all our mails after we die.Yes we all know and understand death is an inevitable truth of our lives.So what will happen to all the bank statements lying in our inbox or any sensitive, important data our kith and kin may need in our absence.And sometimes we save that first email from someone special.Won't it be a good idea to let the person know how we felt about him/her after we die. Well I am relieved to find out that most of the popular email providers and networking sites do have a policy regarding this.Our next kin will get access to our account once he/she submits all the necessary documents to the providers that prove him/her to be our kin.More details can be found on respective provider's suppo...

Got an invitation from a friend to Google Wave.Explored some of it features and its actually cool.Its basically a collaborative tool integrating services like e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking into a one single product.I guess it was time for regular email-instant messaging to evolve into something like this. Basically you can create a thread of conversation or something known as a 'wave' wherein you can add people from your contact list and there you are...ready to go.You can start instant messaging and as you type, people on the other side can actually see what you are typing. You can also add your own attachments to the conversations just as in your regular email.So its basically like a dashboard where you can share images, video, audio and text.At any point of time you have an option of following or un-following a wave. Besides regular formatting features you have feature like striking your text,highlighting it, instant spell checks, editing of con...

'Incredible India' campaign has won World Travel Award for the year 2009.Now isn't that something to feel elated about. I mean I understand we have much serious issues still dangling over our heads, in our overly populous and poverty stricken country and have a long way to go but doesn't this give a confidence of an improving, growing India. Well "Incredible India" was an initiative started by Government of India, way back in year 2002, with an effort towards reviving tourism industry, when it was hit by a slump. Attack on World Trade Center, the war on Afghanistan and the attack on the Indian Parliament had hit it badly then. It was Amitabh Kant, the former joint secretary in the ministry of tourism, who realized that India still gave a mixed and confused picture to any foreign visitor.So he along with his colleagues came up with this idea of branding India as Incredible.The work was not over by just making few videos.It had just begun.Apart from a meaningfu...

It was a fresh, radiant morning.As I gently placed my toothbrush on the parapet of my terrace and began splashing water on my face, I saw a crow hopping towards my brush.I stood still making sure not to disturb him.It quickly looked around in all directions and then swiftly landed its beak on the brush getting the taste of the toothpaste.As it flew off, I couldn't help smiling to myself. I started brushing my teeth wondering how little I knew about birds.As I looked up in the sky I found some crows flying hither and tither.Looking further higher were some eagles gliding happily. And how could I forget these sparrows all around me, comfortably seated on wires, chirping endlessly, as if they had so much to say and nobody had time to listen.Back home in Delhi, I remembered a cuckoo used to sing so beautifully in the backyard of our quarters during summers but the best I enjoy is watching those huge bunch of gray and white pigeons on old Delhi streets, flying in unison in a pat...