My new Flip Camera

My friend had gifted me a flip camera. And perhaps after many years I got a bit fascinated by it. I had to pick up a new battery and a tripod and now I am using it for interviews. Its fun.

I have picked up some key points about the camera from Digital Camera Review. 

1. The Zi8 is arguably the best pocket HD camcorder of the last generation, and the only to feature an external mic jack, but it lacks the brand recognition of the rival Flip.
2. Resembles a walkie-talkie than it does that pocket camcorder
3. On either side are watertight ports with locking covers. One contains a mini-HDMI port, USB out and AV jack just below the power button. The other houses the SD/SDHC slot and the removable lithium ion rechargeable digital camera battery.
4. ne contains a mini-HDMI port, USB out and AV jack just below the power button.

 

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The PlaySport offers four recording modes of 1080p/30fps, 720p/60fps, 720p/30fps and WVGA, and one 5 megapixel still option, all rendered through a 1/2.5-inch CMOS sensor. Curiously, you have to switch between the recording modes using the four-way dial. It’s simple, but takes some getting used to as it’s not labeled on the device and most other camcorder include a dedicated button or menu option for switching between stills and video

The PlaySport doesn’t offer much in its menu, sans a few features and camera settings. These include:

• Electronic image stabilization (EIS)
• Face detection
• Underwater mode
• LCD brightness
• LCD glare shield
• Microphone gain
• Volume/sounds
• TV video out
• Date/time settings
• Format card
• Camera info

Each menu item is represented by an icon. They are a bit cryptic at first glance and I had to consult the manual to figure out what each represents and does.

Especially confusing is the underwater mode, represented by the symbol “H2O.” The manual instructs users to “turn on to take pictures/videos underwater.” However, it merely adjusts the picture for underwater shooting, as the device is waterproof regardless if the mode is activated.

Sound Quality
The Zi8 is the only mainstream pocket camcorder with an external mic jack, so I had faint hopes Kodak would include one on the PlaySport. Alas, there is only an on-board mono mic. I suppose underwater audio is all gargles and bubbles anyway, but an external mic option would have been nice for everyday use.

You can set the mic gain in the settings menu, and it gets very sensitive at the highest level. However, the audio quality is no better than that captured by other pocket camcorders, which is far from great.

Sometimes you have to write to figure it out

 

Sometimes you have to write to figure it out…

This advice wasn’t just savvy guidance for how to write — it might be the wisest advice I know for how to live… The way to be okay, we all believe, is to have a specific plan — except may it’s not…

The smartest, most interesting, most dynamic, most impactful people … lived to figure it out. At some point in their lives, they realized that carefully crafted plans … often don’t hold up… Sometimes, the only way to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living— to burst the double bubble of comfort and convention and just do stuff, even if you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead, because you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead.

This might sound risky — and you know what? It is. It’s reallyrisky. But the greater risk is to choose false certainty over genuine ambiguity. The greater risk is to fear failure more than mediocrity. The greater risk is to pursue a path only because it’s the first path you decided to pursue.

 

Chivalry isnt d…

Chivalry isnt dead it just followed the ladies to wherever they went.

Mood Contagion through social networks

All this talk about Facebook manipulating your moods seems to be making news these days.  Our moods are swayed ever single day by the newspaper or book we read, the TV we watch or just the people we choose to deal with.  Here is the take about Facebook.  I don’t see a big deal in questioning the privacy issues and stuff like that. Such experiments equip us with data about our vulnerability so we can handle the way with interact with social media accordingly.

The experiment 

In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we (PNAS) test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.

According to PNAS study

We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

 

Now that you know it what does it mean? make sure you are  emotionally strong. Never let Facebook updates sway you towards anger or good cheer.  Those who get too emotionally entangled with Facebook status updates, messages, and photos and get into orgasmic comments or splats are the ones who are likely to go through an emotional roller coaster by being exposed to Facebook.

Show me your facebook updates and I will tell you who you are…

Now the big tip to end this :

Make sure you transmit good cheer on Facebook.  The world needs it.

ON TEDx Chennai

ON TEDx Chennai

TEDxChennai opened a can of worms, and TEDx in India began to look amateurish, like local events playing dress-up. Rules were being broken all over the country, but the spotlight on Chennai wasn’t entirely an accident. Twitter feeds began to red flag these wrongdoings. Benedict ‘Benny’ Gnanaiah, one of the many vocal TED fans who think TEDx organisers are corrupting what TED stands for, was one of those who tweeted. He, like Kiruba Shankar, was part of the team that organised the third TEDx event in India, TEDxChennai, in November 2009.

Kiruba Shankar says that one ought to give the organisers the benefit of the doubt. “They know the difficulties of putting it together.” Any digressions, he says, “are honest mistakes.” His former associates aren’t as charitable. “TEDx is supposed to be a conference, and it has fallen into the hands of event managers,” Benny said. “Two of the speakers used the stage for their selfish ends. Our funds (for the 2009 event) went unaccounted for. We couldn’t even put the videos online.”

Treating Acid Reflux Disease With Diet and Lifestyle Changes

 

Do you often experience the pain of heartburn or other symptoms of acid reflux? You might take comfort in knowing that making diet changes as well as other lifestyle changes may be all you need to do. Here’s how.

What Kind of Diet Changes Can Help Acid Reflux?

One thing you can do to reduce your risk for heartburn and acid reflux disease is to eat low-fat, high-protein meals. Also, eat smaller meals more frequently; stop eating before you get too full.

Pay attention to foods that seem to trigger your heartburn and avoid them as much as possible. 

Beverages that commonly trigger heartburn or make it worse, include:

• Coffee or tea (both regular and decaffeinated)
• Other beverages that contain caffeine
• Carbonated beverages
• Alcohol

Foods that commonly trigger heartburn or make it worse, include:

• Citrus fruits, such as oranges and lemons
• Tomatoes and products that contain tomatoes, such as tomato sauce and salsa
• Chocolate
• Mint or peppermint
• Fatty or spicy foods, such as chili or curry
• Onions and garlic

What Other Lifestyle Changes Can Treat Acid Reflux?

In addition to acid reflux diet changes, see which of the following lifestyle changes you can make.

• Quit smoking. Smoking increases your risk for heartburn and acid reflux disease in several ways. It may increase the amount of acid secreted by your stomach and interfere with the function of muscles that help keep acid down.
• Reduce reflux while sleeping. These steps will help reduce reflux when you sleep:
  • Put blocks under the head of your bed to raise it at least 4 to 6 inches. This helps keep your stomach’s contents down. However, it doesn’t work to simply use lots of extra pillows because this position may increase pressure on your abdomen.
  • Stop eating at least two or three hours before lying down.
  • Try sleeping in a chair for daytime naps.
• Lessen the pressure. Often, extra pressure around your abdomen increases acid reflux. Try these steps:
  • Don’t wear tight clothes or tight belts.
  • If you’re overweight or obese, take steps to lose weight with exercise and diet changes.

Can Medication Help Heartburn?

Over-the-counter medicine can help neutralize stomach acid. Antacids give quick, short-term relief for many people. If you need antacids frequently, it’s better to also try a medicine to decrease stomach acid.

Medicine that helps block the production of acid included H2 blockers, such as Axid AR, Pepcid AC, Tagament HB, and Zantac 75.  If you have heartburn often for more than 14 days, a third type of medicine — proton pump inhibitors — can help. These include Prevacid 24HR, Prilosec OTC, and Zegerid OTC.

If you find you need to take heartburn medicine for more than two weeks, see your doctor. Also, ask your doctor whether any medication could be triggering your heartburn or other symptoms of acid reflux disease. These are examples of medications that may trigger acid reflux:

• Aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen and other anti-inflammatory pain relievers
• Some muscle relaxants
• Certain blood pressure drugs

 Source : WEBMD

The worst neurobollocks infographics on the web

NeuroBollocks

Regardless what you think of infographics (and personally, I think they’re largely a pustulent, suppurating boil on the bloated arse of the internet) there are some good, useful ones out there. However, these are vastly outweighed by the thousands of utterly ghastly, misleading, poorly-referenced and pointless ones.

Because I’ve been on holiday for the last week, my levels of rage and misanthropy have dropped somewhat from their usual DEFCON-1-global-thermonuclear-war-the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play levels, so I thought trying to find the absolute worst neuroscience-related infographics on the web might be a good way to top the vital bile reserves back up again. And oh boy, was I right. There are some doozies.

First up is this purple and blue monstrosity titled ’15 things you didn’t know about the brain.’ Here we learn (amongst other howlers) that the capacity of the brain is 4 terabytes, men process information on the left side while women use…

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Dating tips from the animal kingdom

The Raptor Lab

Got a hot date?

If it’s with a human, you’ll probably have to rely on the classic wooing strategies: flowers, chocolates, dinner and dancing, smelling good, etc.

But in the animal kingdom, courtship often has a different flavor. I combed back through the archives of New Scientist’s Zoologger, a weekly column about extraordinary animals, and turned up some unusual techniques that other creatures use to seduce their chosen mate.

Bugs stab their sweethearts in the stomach.

Male bed bugs and bat bugs use sharp penises to stab their partners in the abdomen and deliver sperm directly into the blood. Bean weevils, who have huge and spiny penises, also lacerate their mates during sex.

Koalas use a sexy voice.

Koalas bellow to attractive females in an unusually deep voice. Their mating song, which sounds “more like a series of burps and snores,” is 20 times lower than scientists would expect the little…

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Subramaniam Swamy may be an jackass

For those of you who are offended by ‘Subramaniam Swamy and his antics. Here is a thought.  I have not met this man but I really appreciate the role he plays in the democratic process.   He takes on the powers with boldness and grit. He has a smile as a bonus..a smile that is pleasant not wicked. 

Iam not a big fan of Congress or the Gandhis but I really believe that they played a role in stabilizing the country after independence. Good or bad there is some order and democratic process because of congress. So when I saw his latest tweet lashing out at the Gandhis  I was a bit taken aback. But then a man like Subramaniam Swamy has to do what he wants to do, and he must do it his way. 

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Story Telling workshop at chennai

I was quite intimidated by this “World Storytelling Institute”  my mind conjured all the best story tellers around the world sitting in cubicles .. so for nearly 2 years I kept away from them.  Then one day I mustered the courage and sent a mail and the called and then enrolled for a workshop. Trust me it was amazing. It was a real small group and the facilitator Eric Miller was fantastic in teaching. 

Now I want to attend that workshop once again. Here are the details 

A special Saturday morning “Storytelling Workshop for Adults” has been scheduled — beginning Sat 28 June 2014

This would be a 7-session Workshop — meeting on 7 consecutive Saturdays, 10am-12noon.

Location:
Kilpauk Garden (near New Avadi Road), Chennai (air-conditioned).

This Workshop is especially designed for Parents, Teachers, Trainers, Therapists, Writers and Performers in the Entertainment Industry, Tour Guides, Home-Schooling Parents, and People who might like to become Professional Storytellers.

There would be a focus on “Ways of Using Storytelling to Teach and Train Children and Adults”.

Stories participants would tell would include,
1) Autobiographical stories.
2) Folklore stories (such as Animal Fables, Fairy Tales,
Legends, Epics, and Myths).
3) Original Creative stories.

The complete fee is Rs 4,500.

A Certificate of Participation is given.

Participants could also qualify to be certified as Professional Storytellers (please inquire if interested).

You can mail Eric Miller at info@storytellinginstitute.org