Yeti Airlines to give Rs1 per ticket to an non-profit organization "Tewa"

Tewa, non-profit organization committed to philanthropy for equitable justice and peace, is going to get Rs1 per sold ticket from Yeti Airlines, effective from 1 Oct 2006. This also gives a boost to other non-profit organizations to get involved with other corporate organizations. This will definitely have a symbiosis process, in which non-profit organization will benefit if corporate makes high sales, similarly most people will prefer those corporates that are also involved with philanthropic works. All the best to both Yeti Airlines and Tewa for their prosperous future.

Inspirational "Team Nepal"

The story of a passionate team of Nepali footballers representing a youth club from the district of Birjung. This team is given a unique opportunity not often granted to the still-growing community of Nepali football enthusiasts to travel to Sonpur, Bihar in India, to play football in a tournament taking place there. Team Nepal is the documentation of their experiences in Bihar, traveling, meeting and mixing with other footballers, living in a foreign country, and playing the game they love.

This documentary was the last of November film festival, organized by South Asian Film club, which screened 9 documentaries. I missed others. Anyways next time.

After the show, the director of "Team Nepal", Girish Giri (left), was with us for the questions we might have after the show. Besides he shared a little story behind this great documentary, which also received 'Mention de Honor' at the Milan International Ficts Film Festival in Italy in 2005.

Giri also used to play for that club 4/5 generations back. Later when he found out that the things hasn't changed much since his time, he decided to shoot the event.He did editing on his own at his spare time and took around 2 months to complete, while the event duration was 6 days, covered in 32 min of documentary.

Like mentioned in first paragraph, "Team Nepal" consists of local youths from Birgung, who are passionate about football and looks forward to being on the national team. One team member in the documentary mentioned about his rejections from the national team selection, without being given any reasons. He was complaining that many people think Kathmandu is Nepal, and stressed that our vision should be broadened to see that Nepal is much more than Kathmandu. But though they are not in the National Team, people in India would welcome them as "Team Nepal" and they felt like they are actually playing for Nepal rather than for small youth club, which really helped boost their energy. The documentary was also funny at some places. Overall it was a good and inspiring "Team Nepal".

Imagine working 500 hrs to draw a picture in MSPaint

MSPaint is the children's toy. That's what many of us assume. But making such detailed image in MSPaint is beyond our imagination (exceptions though). What makes people do such things? Is that interest? (but I don't suppose another person will be using same or more amount of time to make such picture and using MSPaint). Is it just to get popularity?

If you see the stats,
Views
Total: 218,782
Today: 35,165

Full-views
Total: 771,014
Today: 0

Comments: 775

That's a pretty good number for a single post. Obviously this guy or better this post is getting popular. It's almost for sure that anybody will be thrilled to see such work using MSPaint. But does it really worth?
My first impression was "Is this guy crazy?" I am impressed with his creativity and art and patience. If you can get the same result using other advanced graphics tools and most importantly with less time, would you choose MSPaint? Just imagine working painstakingly in MSPaint on one image for at least 1 hour. 500 hours is beyond imagination.

Freaky Google Video Player

I normally don't download videos. Sometimes there are some interesting videos at google. Watching streaming videos block by block is not fun at all. The alternative is to download to desktop and you need google video player for that.

As far as I remember the last time I downloaded one video (around 2 weeks back or more) I was asked to download updated video player. Again today I was asked the same. Is google always updating its player? or just discouraging people from downloading videos. That won't be much of a concern in the west but it takes around 10-15 minutes to download the player here in Nepal and again then video would take a lot... sometimes even days ( I used internet at night only). I wonder if google would ever think of making downloads through download accelerators. Or maybe they are afraid that their servers wouldn't be able to handle the loads. Google? Overload? I must be joking.

Why does this happen to me? Now the player V1.0.3.3 starts to download the video, the same version that just asked me to download updated player. Freaky.

It's a hangout time

I was in New Road after quite a long time, I mean, with friends. We had street momo and street tea. They were quite good and number of people were also enjoying the same. By the way, I just gave the name street food. They are served in carts, it's actually a moving kitchen. One corner of New Road is quite busy with those food carts after 5 or 6 PM. They are not allowed before that. New Road is the most busiest part of the city all day long, especially in the evening.

The image shows people making momos, steaming and serving. It's quite a fast food.

A lecture at Social Science Baha

There was a lecture on "The Maoists and the Shamans: The tale of Bullets, Hail and Prejudices" by Anne de Sales at Social Science Baha at around 3:30PM. She showed the conflicts between maoists and the shamans in villages. Both trying to show their presence and power. It sounds more of a story. It would have been much interesting if some sort of presentation was used, instead of just reading from the laptop. At the end, Anne couldn't give first hand answers to several queries. Rather she gave her opinions like I would say yes, i would say no. She did not seem to be strong.

Irresponsible act in the should-be-responsible organization

How much do we respect other people's time? Not much. Probably one of the reasons for our present situation. We, in general, don't care about others time, space. That's why we have a habit of appearing at least an hour late than the actual time and mock ourselves saying "It's nepali time".

Today, I went to pay for the monthly phone bill at Nepal Telecom's Naxal Exchange. I reached there 10 minutes after the offical opening time. Only two people were behind the counter, despite the fact that there should be 5 working counters by 10. This definitely shows carefree attitude of Nepal Telecom (NTC), which has the responsibility of connecting Nepal. Are they to be trusted? Monopoly is the major factor for such scenario.

The two queues were pretty long. After staying in a queue for around 20 minutes, a peon came and summoned both the working persons. Upon interogating, they were being called by their boss for a meeting. Meeting at this rush hour? We were shocked. What kind of irresponsible boss is that in such a responsible state owned organization. We were just waiting for them. Some people even went to talk, but in vain. Some were even suggesting to break few glasses, throw away the TV. Fortunately nothing happened. Then we would be no different from them. Finally they appeared after 20 minutes.

Isn't this such an irresponsible act? Is that meeting at such a rush hour important than the convenience and time of customers? Is our time not valued at all? Many people have to take their time off from their office to pay bills, and just to get waited. If there are people who don't respect others time, then they should never be there. This is not just a problem at NTC but virtually in all the state-owned should-be-most-responsible organizations of Nepal.

I wonder when NTC would start online payment or through debit cards. It's very high time that everyones' time be respected.

How smart are you?

I wonder if "How smart are you?" tests really tests the smartness of people. But it's quite hard to answer all the questions correct, hard may not be the right word. How about time consuming? I would read a question, answer right away, check the answer, find my answer incorrect, smile and would ask myself, "Am I really dumb?" It's just a mind trick. We would just let our sub-conscious mind work on it; many of our answers would just come instantly like 2+2=4. Try it yourself.

Good 'ol days

Today i got to meet old frens from St. Xavier's Campus. It was such a sudden event. It was really good to see them, though few (just the five of us). Joking and laughing and mocking each other reminds us of our old days. But things have changed a lot. One thing I noticed among us is the care for our country Nepal. We are in some way worried about the current situation, even discussed on politics on few moments. It's not just us. Many youths are now aware of politics and its importance and its impact in their lives. I take that as a big revolution in our thoughts since recent April revolution. I used to share one common and popular quote on politics "Politics is a dirty game". But now I don't say that any more, instead argue with those orthodox thinkers.

I am very elated to find out about one of few among my blog readers. Thanks Ranjan.

Drupal Community in Nepal is speeding up

Drupal Community in Nepal got born on Software Freedom Day'06. As decided on that day, finally we organized a drupal writeshop on Sunday, 12th Nov. The main purpose of writeshop was not to provide technical solution or orientation of Drupal but to find the ways of making this community active in fulfilling its objectives and getting action plan to start in coming days.

The objectives of the Drupal Community in Nepal are:

• To foster collaboration amongst Drupal enthusiasts in Nepal
• To collectively explore the opportunities that Drupal can bring for advancement of Internet technologies in Nepalese context
• To create an active and vibrant Nepali Web Community
• To create awareness amongst people (students, working professionals) the use of Drupal as a Conent Management System.

Overall the programme was excellent. Participants were very happy with the programme. The google group is flooded with their thankful messages :-) So are we.

The entire proceedings of the writeshop is available for viewing. The success of this writeshop and the Drupal Community as a whole, depends upon how vibrant the community is in future.

Anyone interested to know or join Drupal Community in Nepal may do so by registering in drupalnepal google groups.

I have never seen people hurrying to give blood before

I was shocked to see zeal among ordinary people to donate blood at Blood Donation programme, organized by Leo club of Kantipur on last Saturday 11th Nov. This was the first time I was very involved in blood donation. I was busy entire day.

I was not sure about how and why people would come to donate blood at open blood donation programme. I saw many people, just passing by, came at our place for no apparent reason than giving their blood. There was even a couple who parked their bike, walked to us and donated blood. There were some young girls (somewhere around 20) . One young girl really panicked us, first she got dizzy while giving blood and all of sudden she puked during rest. There was another adult person, sitting quietly, suddenly fell off the chair. I am sure some people gave up the idea of blood donation after such scary moment.

The programme started at 9:30AM and continued till 2:30PM. Among collected 111 pins of blood, 24 were of female donors. Overall the programme was quite successful. The credit goes to all the selfless donors, who came out of blue to donate blood. I would like to thank each one of them from the very core of my heart.

If this is democracy, then we don't need it

Everyone talked about freedom, free speech, free press in democracy. After 19 days of April revolution, we saw a glimmer of hope and more than 6 months have passed, we are still hoping that it will be a little better in Nepal. Maoists are having a mass meeting on Friday 10 Nov. Many people from villages are forced to come to Kathmandu for the meeting, an unauthorized number of 1 million. This shows how insecure Maoists are. They are using excessive power to make this mass meeting successful. And maoists are going from house to house for food and shelter. Each house has to feed around 10 or more maoists cadres, depending upon the house. They are giving a list of people who will come to each house.

Some ICIMOD colleagues are already given the list of maoists to feed. I don't know how long is it going to take before they come to my house. During conflicts, I heard about poor villagers being forced to feed maoists. I thought it's so bad then. Now I realized that how frightened we will be when we'll have to feed and shelter maoists. Already the thought of their arrival gives me panic, some sort of uneasiness, feeling of insecurity. Yet I... we can't do anyhing.

Do we have any other choice than cope with them? I don't see any. Can we, the general citizens, go against weaponed maoists? We can't. Can we go to police, army for help? No use at all.

Nepalnews report: Maoists forcing valley locals to feed their cadres, provide shelter

My new blog: talkict

Well I continued my ict blog that I started in wordpress long back. I hope to give time and energy to talkict.

Has Microsoft altered it warning icon?

The file xyz has been scanned for viruses. Click here to download xyz.

Does that line inform you of any message(s) that may harm you. Well according to Microsoft it should, which would imply that "The file has been scanned for viruses. We don't know if it actually contains virus. Download and open at your own risk. You've been warned."

I don't know if they have realized or not, but they have placed a warning icon next to above information. Technically it is incorrect and misrepresented, unless MS has altered its meaning.

The best paper airplane in the world

Finally I managed to craft the best paper plane in the world. The fun part is I can change the direction of flaps and plane moves in different directions. Aero-dynamics sounds fun to me now. The steps 17 and 18 are quite confusing but there's an animated gif image to help you. It took me 10 looks to finally understand. The image, right, shows my plane, probably the 7th one. I have been trying to make a beautiful one. Each one, I built, flies pretty smoothly. Well the best plane has to!

Sharing your presentation online

Thanks to lifehacker.com for pointing out slideshare.net, I uploaded the one ppt file that I was trying to upload to some shared storage in my previous post. This turned out to be a great place to upload and share ppt files.

Well it looks like I can also embed ppt in my post. Check out.

Cool!!

Gmail is deleting recent spams automatically

I don't know how many of you are actually paying attention to your Spam List in gmail, though spams are not to given attention. I posted about gmail spams yesterday and doubted myself about the automatic deletion of spams. Now I have confirmed that spams are infact being erased without your consent and before getting 30 days old (as gmail claims). In the morning I noticed that there were 3 spams and now at 8:52PM, there are none except those of October. Is it that gmail mistook recent spams as 30 days old? Or gmail spam detection is getting so powerful that it can detect and delete even after getting to your spam list? But why only the recent ones? :-0

I have not deleted spams since Oct 26.

GMail spams surprised me

I was quite used to delete gmail spams every hour or so. Later I thought how come google didn't do anything to reduce the spams ( i was getting very few in hotmail 3/4 per day at max). I decided to gauge the gmail spams and not to delete any spams from Oct 26, 2006. I wonder if google knows about my plan but 5 days after I started, the spam decreased to 1 per day. I don't know whether I mis-seen, but I felt that I have seen 3 spams on Oct 31 but later there was only one. Well google wouldn't delete fresh spams automatically. Maybe my mistake.

Here's the 6 days result

Oct 26: 16
Oct 27: 13
Oct 28: 13
Oct 29: 9
Oct 30: 15
Oct 31: 1 (this one really surprised me)

I will continue for entire November month. That will be a better measure.

People who brightens others day

I have a colleague at ICIMOD. I call her di (di short for didi or elder sister). She is senior than me, 4/5 years older at max. I have never seen anyone like her, I mean in terms of attitude, except in books and dramas. I got the privilege to give her a lift in my bike today and she said bye, greeted walking ICIMOD staffs on the way. I am not talking about hot shots of ICIMOD but sweepers, clerks, drivers, gardeners. I finally asked her "You talk to all the staffs, don't you?". She said ,"Yes, but I don't talk much with the bosses; well everyone is after them. These are the people that water the plants, drive our buses, clean our rooms." So true. Nobody says anything to these people, everyone just takes their services for granted. Now I admire her even more.

She is a good gardener, waters plants everyday. If she doesn't water for even a day, she will feel guilty. She understands life.

The first time I was introduced to her (regarding work), I had little hard time catching up with her. She talks very fast, nonetheless nice. If you talk with her for the first time for a minute or two, you would forget that you just met her in the next 5 minutes. I would say that's her gift, not yours.