Obama TIME Person of the Year

Barack Obama has been named the TIME person of the year. This, perhaps, nicely caps off his achievements this year. But his ascendancy to the world's most powerful office comes with high expectations and high hopes, especially in such uncertain economic times. If all that he said is to be realized, a "brighter day will come".

Henry Paulson, Nicholas Sarkozy, Sarah Palin and Zhang Yimou are the runner-ups.


On the tech front, Apple has announced that it is pulling out of MacWorld.

It's hard to believe 2009 is almost here.

Flickr Photo of the Day: Eiffel Tilt-Shift II

This is a tilt-shift fake.

For those who are interested, here is the depth-map that I created and fed to the lens blur filter and here is a shot of the various layers of the mask before assigning gray-values..

There's also a version in my photostream with the focus set on the École Militaire made from the same depth-mask.

March 2008: A nice fella named Martin has made a comprehensive tutorial on how to achieve this effect

Eiffel Tilt-Shift II, originally uploaded by Hanna María & Arnar

Web Browser Security Handbook

Google has compiled and released a Web Browser Security Handbook for web developers. It is released under the Creative Commons license.

The map is not the territory

I came across this concept called General Semantics.

Which path will you choose?

"Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."
www.startrekmovie.com

See: Frame by frame analysis

The week in recap

President-Elect Barack Obama
The recent democratic election of an Afican-American to the world's most powerful office has resulted in optimists around the world asking if a country's top office can be headed by a person from a minority racial group.

"I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible." -- Barack Obama, NDC 2004

Firefox
2 days ago, Mozilla Firefox turned 4. The next milestone will be the release of Mozilla Minefield, which comes with a new JS JIT engine called tracemonkey.


Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton, one of my favorite authors, passed away last week. Fans may remember Crichton for Jurrasic Park and E.R. drama series. Crichton introduced me to the fast-paced genre of thrillers. His novels had the courage to deal with controversies that often leave the reader pondering over the realism that one associates with life. I will always remember reading "The Andromeda Strain" through the silence of the night into the wee hours of the morning.

Obama Wins

Barack Hussein Obama II is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and President-elect of the United States of America.

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become the 44th President of the United States and the first Black President in U.S. history. He will take the oath of office and become the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

Source: Wikipedia

Change is coming

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

Good Game on Wall Street

With main street, wall street and your street going haywire, Sequoia Capital gives its take. Get the presentation.

It has been almost a month since the collaspe of Lehman Brothers, and this is where we are today.

Photo of the Day: Print Gallery (Escher)

Escher's Print Gallery (lithograph) (1956)

A picture of a picture which contains itself. Or is it a picture of a gallery which contains itself? Or of a town which contains itself? Or a young man who contains himself?

At first glance, it is easy to dismiss this piece of art. But on closer inspection, it brings to mind several provoking questions - what is that white patch in the centre, what is so unique about this work? To ponder for some time brings even more conundrums than answers - a memory trapped within a memory, reality encased in a fake-reality?

If you are inspired, here is a gallery of Escher's works.

On a side note, I have been browsing through Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid", which I chanced across while reading ReadWriteWeb.