Ginger :: Friendship's Untold Stories !

Scene 2 : Through to Mid-Day!

The class room went silent; Anna ma’am rushed out of the classroom dragging all three gangsters. I was surprised to see Manoj cry when he was being taken into custody!  He was literally holding ma’am by leg to stop him from being taken to the Principal.  Ray was shocked by this incident as anyone else in the classroom. Sreejith was the only eye witness, he sat next to Rajesh.

Once ma’am was out of sight, the buzz started in the class, everyone was covering up Sree like flies; Ray didn’t dare to move a hair, he has never seen such bloody incident, he just sat back to his seat. Adarsh, who was sitting next to Ray also rushed near to Sree as he was trying to explain his mates about the incident.

Ray found himself lucky to be in his seat, as George sir came in quickly to the classroom; the buzz we made after Anna ma’am left was exponential! But order was restored in seconds, everyone ran back to their seats hearing the loud and strong instruction from George sir was:

“Silence please! Next one seen out of their seat will run round the ground 3 times!”

His voice was quite heavy and no student ever dared to look into the eye of the lion. He is our physical training teacher, a muscular figure and he was already infamous for his cruel punishments. He made Ray remember WWE star Goldberg, George sir was very closely in resemblance to the super star. Everyone in high school had their share of George sir’s punishment streak. Ray wasn’t an exception; he remembers the 30 minutes prayer time where he had to stand on his knees through the prayer time, reason being late for 15 minutes. It was not his fault, the regular bus that dropped him was late, but who would dare speak to George sir!

Adarsh was restless, so he took out his text book on to the table and mocked reading the text and whispered to Ray:

“It was Sujith, he hit Rajesh”

“That rogue! But why did he do that?”

“Hitler George, he didn’t allow Sree to complete”

Suddenly they felt like George sir was looking at them. So both Ray and Adarsh stopped their act and moved back to books. George sir sat on the chair and asked Sreejith to write out what he saw and asked him to give the paper to him. Ray tried hard to read the textbook but he couldn’t. He had known Rajesh for the past 3 years, ever since he joined the school from his hometown. Rajesh was quite interesting guy; he had a charm and was always the centre of attention, one who loved entertaining the crowd around him. The crowd of 5 guys!

Some called him hero wannabe but who cares, he was already a hero for the 5 friends that stood around him.

Rajesh, Ray, Salim, Adarsh and Rijo – they were glued together by this school. Each one looked odd in the pack but still something made them stick together, play together and at times fight together. At school, you will never miss them at intervals, you will never see any of these guys alone in libraries and the only thing that separates them is the class room benches and after school hours.

But now this terrible incident that broke the centre heart of the gang; he was bleeding and taken out of the class room and the team was made to sit silently. Ray turned to right side and glanced over to see what Salim was doing, but to his surprise Salim was looking back at him…

To be continued…

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Ginger :: Friendship Untold Stories !

Day 1

First hour of the school, everyone sat in their positions facing the black board and eyes on the door. Ray was sitting right in the middle of the room and he was watching the blackboard. In another two months the summer vacation was due. Something good to hope for!

Its almost 9 past 5 minutes, English teacher was due to come and she never used to be late. Ray as his friends called him had the tag, Raymond Jose; class Xth B as in roman letters. Ramya had already cleared the board clean and it was black to the purest, with date and class name to the left box and subject of study on the centre and the Roll number and list of absentees on the right. She had made this into an art ever since she was elected as the class leader. And she was pretty when she used to do this. Ray always made sure that he was on his seat before she does this cleaning and writing part.

Teachers foot step were heard that made the back bencher's to stop the noise they were trying to initiate. Rajesh, Sujith and Manoj were the main guys there, the three back bench gangsters. They ruled the class and had their own gang wars sometimes with the rebels inside the class and otherwise they took it into other sections or seniors in the school. Ray never went in touch with them; he would simply slide by them and avoid an eye contact always!

Anna ma'am entered in with a set of white sheets and our English text book, this was that time of the year when we were to prepare for the models and then finally enter the main exams. As soon as she entered everyone stood up and sang "Good Morning Miss ", she nodded on this and smiled back with a soft good morning student's line. This is the routine which continued for the past 10 years of every child in this school.

So this wasn't unexpected, they had a test today. But Ray was trying hard to pick the English text book from the bag may be a final peak through the lesson before the test went out. But no, Anna ma'am started her glance through the class room, checked back at the list of absentees. Made a note of the count and look back at Ramya, she seems to be in spell as she gradually got up and went to ma'am wished her again and collected the white answer sheets and started distributing the pages from left, Ray got the paper after she had distributed 5 people already. He was trying to smile, but Ramya was too busy with her work that she rarely noticed this. It's not that she completely ignore him, she just made casual looks and smiles. But Ray quickly erased this sweet part and looked back to the teacher. She was making a final glance at the questions she had prepared. Everyone who had their papers were eagerly waiting for the questions to be distributed.

Finally that happened; she went on to write the first question on black board:

"1. Who does Lencho have complete faith in? Which sentences in the story tell you this?" 

Ray looked at the question, chapter 1; "A letter to God" glanced before him. He knew the story like the back of his head and he was quite sure about the answer. He was the first to scribble in back in the paper. The class was so silent that the even the heart beat was clearly heard to the next person. Everyone quietly started writing the answers as soon as teacher went ahead with the questions on board. Ray was sure that the gangsters were doing something nasty as he could hear the papers being crippled and thrown from behind. The class test went on peacefully but something nasty happened behind the benches and all students rushed in there. And to Ray's surprise, Rajesh was taken out from the mob bleeding right out of the classroom...

To be continued...

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Creative, Expressive and Photos: Best and Cheapest Prime :: Nikon 50mm 1.8D

Creative, Expressive and Photos: Best and Cheapest Prime :: Nikon 50mm 1.8D: "The prime lens Fixed focal length lenses are a must for all true photo enthusiasts and professional photographers. The pictures taken throu..."

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Best and Cheapest Prime :: Nikon 50mm 1.8D

The prime lens

Fixed focal length lenses are a must for all true photo enthusiasts and professional photographers. The pictures taken through prime lens presents an unmatchable quality of pictures, the quality which it places is tough to be achieved through zoom lens. For Nikon, it starts with 50mm 1.8D a full frame prime which delivers the sharpest images compared to any lens from Nikon.

What is a Prime Lens?

A prime lens is a fixed focal length lens. This is opposed to the zoom lens which does have varied focal lengths. The advantage of having a prime lens in your bag is the added low light capability. Most of the prime lens comes with an F value of 1.4-1.8, which is a ultrawide opening to your aperture. Since the optics are simpler to the design of a zoom lens, the prime can maintain a larger aperture. The prime lenses are available in the following focal lengths: 20mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm, 135mm, 200mm, 300mm, 400mm, and 600mm.

With each upgrade in focal length there is a increased cost and the 600mm Nikon lens which has the aperture of f/4 comes at a price of $8700 or 388000 (approx.). So thats lot of money you spend for the glass. And when you have a 600mm prime, the quality of images that you will be viewing will be of superior quality.

Coming back to 50mm 1.8D

The lens costs around $150 or Rs 7000 (approx.) and this is extremely small lens or a pancake lens. But once you start shooting with this little wonder, you will want this clarity on every lens you shoot with.

To start, once you have the lens you will notice an orange marker on the aperture markings. Align the marker to 2.8 and the lock will slide in. Once you have this lens mounted you should be good to go.

The lens doesn't have a AF motor or VR to its belt, but for 50mm you won't really need the VR unless you have shaky hands. Also the lens would not autofocus on SLR's like D3000, D3100, D5000 and similar models lacking the internal focusing motor. Also with DX-type or cameras that are not full frame, this lens works as an excellent portrait lens giving you clarity and zoom close to 74mm.

The lens can also be used to take macro shots, which involves attaching a reverse coupler in front of any zoom lens and attaching the 50mm lens to the front. This creates amazing shots, but I personally don't think this is a good method as you won't get a sharp shot as in normal Macro lenses.

So do give this a try. Have a good day!

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Cloud Computing : The review - Chapter 1

The Cloud Computing

Virtualization was a concept developed when we found that the hosting servers were not even using the 10% capacity of what they can normally do. The virtualization developed better options for using your dedicated server and also maintaining hosting on low costs than what it used to be, with maintaining dedicated servers. The developments in virtualization finally gave way to the new and innovative concept, the cloud. The cloud said to be an adaptation from telecoms industry where the exchanges used to manage load and deliver services without the end user knowledge, the concept as described in Wikipedia is similar to what electricity is to normal people, we generally do not have to have the know how and still use the max about it.

The cloud was quite widely accepted for the simple reason said above, the services were delivered quicker, at low cost. With the cloud it also became a scalable option to develop your network rather than to plan how the next hardware should be or to plan how the settings should be. Another point that went about it making the concept hit was the remote management option for the services, one could easily use any web-enabled mobile/stationary device to get this managed. This was new as normally in earlier days, DC visits had to be done on changes in hardware or server root settings. Another plus that came about with public clouds is the use of proprietary software's available through the cloud as if it were installed on to the local system. Also the services were delivered through a common point so the management was set much better.

So that's how the cloud is .. the next name for convenient hosting! Lets gear up!

What is Cloud Computing?

Image via Wikipedia

The above diagram describes cloud the best, it is nothing but a cluster of servers which is bound together to provide services through a front-end and hiding the infrastructure involved in the process. But this is different from the classic clusters in the sense that the services offered by a cloud server is available to all clients and they will be able to use them simultaneously, thus cutting the cost for the client as they pay for the service they use and also for the host in the sense they do not need multiple licenses for a common software!

That is the interesting part, again the data is not located on a static area like on usual hosting, it is distributed making this more reliable in terms or recovery.

Basically the software systems on cloud are a set of services that do communicate with each other over a Application Programming Interface or API and the web services are maintained over a 3tier architecture. 

The Concept

The concept of cloud is simple, there are individual components that do work best on a particular service and these are combined together over a common interface. Does this sound similar? Yes, your body itself, you have your eyes doing the best they can, you have your mouth doing the best they are supposed to do and they work on the common interface that is the human body.

So once the concept was laid, the cloud service development was simpler, you do have your infrastructure engineered to do so. The system designed was split into two parts :

i) The front-end - This is what we see, when we use Zoho or Google office or similar, the front-end interface that directly interacts with you. So this is the part most of us are concerned with and this is the first important part when it comes to Cloud computing.

ii) The Back-end - This part is what is hidden from us, the underlying hardware, the applications and the storage, that acts as backbone for the cloud computing. 

The very concept of cloud computing was developed in 1960 by John McCarthy, and as you will find this was much earlier than the concept of virtualization that happened. Douglas Parkhills had a through study on the concept of cloud computing in his Book, The Challenge of the Computer Utility.

Image via Wikipedia

Its not far when you will be able to view a cloud design of this nature where you have all applications and all services combined up to make up a inter-cloud, as once happened to the Internet!

Why the name Cloud?

The name was borrowed from telephone exchanges which had certain apps which were used to switch calls to maintain load on the network. The very first use of the word Cloud was by Prof. Ramnath Chellappa, in 1997 in his work : Intermediaries in Cloud-Computing, presented at the INFORMS meeting in Dallas in 1997. 

The quote was made that : "computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone." 

which now tends to be getting in as true. Amazon was one of the first providers to explore the opportunities, they found that their data center, the-dotcom bubble was not using even 10% of the total traffic that it can handle and there were only occassional spikes on the network. And finally in 2006, Amazon was able to develop Amazon Web Service or the AWS which went on to use a cloud computing for external apps development

In later stages, Google, IBM and the few universities initiated the research on Cloud computing. In 2008,Eucalyptus - the first opensource AWS-API for developing prviate clouds was launched followed byOpenNebula, which was an RESERVOIR europeon union funded project, the software helped in the development of private and hybrid clouds and this was again an Open source software.  The later days of cloud computing saw the QoS developments for the cloud platform.

I will try to cover more technical grounds in the next chapter. Hope this was simple!!

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Euthanasia : Mercy OR Crime?

Today while reading through the news paper, I glanced over this topic; Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug a victim of Sexual assault by wardboy, who is currently in the state of comma and has been so for the past 37 years – Pinki Virani, a friend to Aruna had requested the court to permit active euthanasia on the patient as she is currently surviving on medical equipments. The incident is elaborately described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aruna_Shanbaug

Considering this special case, court has permitted an assited suicide or passive euthanasia which involved cutting off food, medicines and withdrawing medical aids. Although the government of India has voted against this and opposes the rule. There is a large space in this rule which could be utillized by people to proceed with these killings for wealth, this iswhat the claim goes from the goverment. So the permissions will be required for the process each time there is a plead, and the permissions should be granted by respective courts.

Oregon, Washington, Montana, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are the only jurisdictions around the world where Euthanasia is legal and almost every other country is against this concept. The obvious reason is the medical ethics and the oath doctors take to protect life to the limit they can. 

The patients council quotes that

“Oregon and Washington passed laws and Montana’s Supreme Court determined that assisted suicide is a medical treatment.(1) The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg permit both euthanasia and assisted suicide. Although euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in Switzerland, assisted suicide is penalized only if it is carried out “from selfish motives.”(2)”

so basically the concept is too complicated to be laid down flat and define rules. 

What is Euthanasia?

Euthanasia is an act in which a third party is involved in death of a patient, this involves giving lethal medicines or suffocating the person using medical equipments, this is considered crime in all countries except the one’s mentioned above. 

Another option available is known as assisted suicide, which is when the patient is involved in triggering the cause of death and the doctors assist in the process by setting up the scenario or equipments needed for suicide. This again conflicts with IPC ( Indian Penal Code ) 309 article which considers suicide as a crime. But again, the patients will is what matters. 

Do we need Euthanasia?

On a normal ground every citizen will oppose this rule, but for patients who are sufferring from extreme pain and where the cure is at infinity, it is always best to releive them from pain. No government or people can ask a person to suffer. So if the option is advisable for the patients who live their life on machines, suffer extreme pain and where the medical cure is impossible. The patient has every right to plea for a assisted suicide. But again this should be done under specified guidelines and I feel court should be involved to decide whether the permissions should be granted. The shear reason to prevent misuse of such an option to cheat a person from his wealth or similar. In a country where every law is being bend down for the use of criminals this will be essential.

This is a hard thought, I dont know if I have arrived at a conclusion yet, but the question still holds whether you wish your loved ones to suicide in front of you or will you want them to live until god decides ?

Read more: http://socyberty.com/issues/euthanasia-is-this-mercy/#ixzz1GHw8boqy
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