Beautiful Night Shots

For all photography lovers, check this out: Beautiful and stunning night shots.

The story of Brooklyn Bridge - An Inspiring story

An engineer named John Roebling was inspired by an idea of building a magnificent suspension bridge connecting New York with the Long Island. He had put forward his idea to the bridge building experts throughout the world but no one was interested even to think about it further and asked John to forget about it. According to them, it was a very difficult task, something, which had never been attempted before and is not practical.

Roebling however was determined and would not think of ignoring his dream. He thought about it day and night and wanted to share it with someone who would believe in his idea. John’s son Washington was a naïve engineer then. He trusted his father’s vision and believed that the bridge could be built.

John and Washington, working together for the first time, developed concepts of how the bridge could be built. A big challenge lay before them, but they were ready to face it as they had excitement and inspiration deep in their heart. They hired their crew and the construction of their dream bridge began on January 3, 1870.

The project started well, but after a year, a tragic accident at the site took John Roebling’s life. Hence, Washington took over and was in charge of the bridge. However, after few months Washington too suffered a paralyzing injury, which left him with certain amount of brain damage. He was not able to walk or talk. With no one to supervise, the construction stopped.

Everyone around the world was negative about the future of the project and felt that it should be taken off as only the Roeblings knew about the plans of construction of the bridge. These remarks hurt and shocked Washington, who lay still on the bed of his hospital. His desire and enthusiasm was still alive. He wanted to get up and continue his work, but his physical condition did not allow him to.

Washington could move only one finger and this gave him an idea. He called his wife Emily and tapped on her arm indicating her to call back the crew and the engineers. This worked well as Emily started understanding Washington’s indications by just the tapping of his finger. She conveyed his instructions to the engineers and soon the construction of the bridge was back at full swing.

For next 11 years, Washington gave instructions by tapping on Emily’s arm and she patiently decoded his messages and relayed them to the crew. The bridge was finally completed and opened with a big celebration in May 1883.

Today, the 5,989 feet Brooklyn Bridge stands over the East River as a tribute to the victory of John and Washington’s strong spirit, will power and determination. It is also a tribute to the engineers who had faith and trust in a man who was half paralyzed and was considered silly by half of the world. The bridge also reflects the love and affection of Emily towards her husband.

The story of Brooklyn Bridge portrays a very good example of having a vision, believing in it and then pursuing it with a never-say-die attitude. No matter what obstacles you face, if you have a dream then go ahead and fulfill it. Have strength of mind and be determined in life.

The names of John Roebling, Washington Roebling and Emily Warren Roebling are inscribed on the bridge as its builders.

Microsoft's new search engine - Bing

Just a few days back I had posted on Wolfarm Alpha, now here is another post on Microsoft's new search engine Bing. This seems to be a better version of Windows Live search. On the contrary to Google, when you open Bing, you'll see a beautiful picture in the background.

One cool feature of the Bing is when you hover the mouse on the vertical bar next to the search result, it shows thumbnail of the site.

Within a few weeks of the launch, Bing has overtaken Yahoo! as the number two search service after Google. Try different searches such as Web, Image, Video, Map and see yourself the result and the kind of options you get to fine tune the search.

Way to go Bing!

Height of Opportunism

What is the height of Opportunism? Ask Kumaraswamy, and you'll get the answer immediately! He holds the master degree in that! Perhaps, he deserves the doctorate! You don't agree? Let's see the sequence of events.

• Kumaraswamy forms the government with BJP in Karnataka and becomes Chief Minister.
  
• He refuses to lend the support to BJP after 20 months of ruling saying BJP is communal! Poor man, He was not aware of it when he took the support!
  
• It's Loksabha election time. He vows to maintain equal distance from both Congress and BJP.
  
• At the time of the election result, he pays a visit to Sonia Gandhi to offer support to UPA (with an intention of ministerial berth). The reason for the change is again BJP! He wants to keep communal BJP from power!
  
• When he was sure that he'll not get a ministerial berth, he vows to maintain equal distance from both Congress and BJP (from the latest news)
  

If you closely observe the events, it is more than certain that Kumaraswamy cannot digest to be in the opposition. He always wants to be in power by hook or crook!

Definitely, we can not blame him! He's what he is! We don't have to expect him to change. The blame should be on the people who vote for him despite all these dramas! Either these people should be ignorant or foolish! I don't see any other reason!

Wolfarm Alpha - New way of searching!

Here is a new search engine "Wolfram Alpha". Unlike Google, this search engine make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. If Google returns the list of pages which will have information about the knowledge you are searching for, Wolfarm Alpha gives you the calculated results instead of referring to the pages. Let me explain with some examples which should clear the difference between Google (for that matter any search engine) and Wolfarm Alpha.

Let me try with a place name: Bangalore.

If I search in Google, it returns the list of pages which contains information or reference to Bangalore. If I search in Wolfarm Alpha, it gives me the stats about Bangalore like, Map, Coordinates, Country Name, Population, Current Local Time, Current Weather (I found it incorrect), and Approximate Elevation.

Let us enter any date (you can try with your birth date). Google returns the list of pages which has reference to that date. Wolfarm Alpha returns the data with respect to the date such as Time difference from today, Observations, Notable events that happened on that date, when sunrise and sunset happened, and the phase of the moon! I tried giving future date, the "Notable events" got changed to "Anniversaries". That's intelligence!

Let me show you how useful this engine will be. I would like to know when is the next solar eclipse. I just enter "next solar eclipse" and hit enter. Here you go! You'll get loads of information such as Eclipse time, countries in the path of eclipse, etc.

This ambitious project is driven by Stephen Wolfram. As of now, Wolfram Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. And as they say, this is just the beginning. More to come in the future and it will change the way we search for the information and get the desired data.