Time convertor

How easy to convert a pacific std time to your local time? What if you need to deal with the london time too. Adding the 'day light saving' factor will increase the fun in the conversion.

I wish we have a simple plugin (mainly attached to the email client), that would scan through the document and highlight timestamp in different time zones.

Color synchronizer

Opposite to our house is quite an interesting house. It is occupied by five mallu girls. Quite a time pass to watch them together on their terrace or strolling in the front yard with their mobile and occasionally meeting in the streets.

Apart from the mundane task of watching these college girls, I made another observation. Their dress. Not only when they are wearing, but also when they are dried up in the cloth line. The dress colors are similar on most of the days. Indicating that the girls have been wearing same color on the previous day or so. It is as thou they decide earlier on what to wear. Or it could be subconsciously the roommates synced up in some ways and picked the dress with same color shade. I would equate this concept to "menstrual cycle synchronization" when girls stay together.

Whatever it is, definitely worth doing a research on this topic. If anyone is on it, I can volunteer to provide vital data for the project.

yErTram

yErTram is a method/tool for retrieving water from well. While writing the post "Chain of thoughts", I googled for this word and failed to find a description. Even a picture was not available. So, I asked my art master to help with providing a sketch.

A huge stone path is placed upon the center of the well. It would form a narrow path for a person to walk over the well. At one side of the path is a fulcrum setup which holds a hefty wooden beam. The extreme end of the beam is tied with rocks for balancing purpose. The other end is connected to a stick with a bucket. The stick and the bucket go into the well for collecting water. The person has to hold the empty bucket, keep pulling down the stick so that the wooden beam comes down towards the well. Once the bucket reaches the water level, the bucket is filled with water and the stick is drawn upwards. During this process, the person would have to walk from the outer edge of the well towards the center (walk on the stone path) and walk back after collecting the water.

The slow child

When an animal gives birth to smaller ones, immediatly the junior would move, spot the mom and starts sucking milk. In few days, the puppies or other offspring would run around, understand the world around, pick a fight with its sibling, try to chew anything that is available. What a fast track life.

Compared to that human child is very slow. After three months of looking after it, we are very happy to hear some noise out of it. With few more months, it starts pushing itself around - making us immense proud. Another six month to stand, try to walk, play with words. Would have to wait for four to five years to reliably be on its own and cross the mid-teen to be productive and able to lead a life.
This difference between animal growth and human always puzzled me. Reading Bill Bryson's book clarified the doubt. Giving a passage from his book:

Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and a greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while its brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding.

May be the smaller brain allow us to learn the stuff after birth. Wheareas animals comes with almost pre-moulded brain and the scope for them to learn is limited. So, our hardwork in terms of taking risk and going thru immense trouble paid off well.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

As the title says, almost all corners of Science is touched upon. Right from the formation of universe, rocks, volcanoes of the earth, ancient creatures, DNA structures, and more are discussed in a laymanistic simplicity. The flow of these topics are also wonderful. Had thrown lots of light upon life of the Scientists who worked in different eras. Amazing to peek into their personal life too, like who the 19th century chemist foolishly inhaled poisones gases, the enemity between different researchers etc.
A very good read for anyone curious to know our origin, stuff we are made up of, where we are and other Scientific inquiries. The book is by Bill Bryson.

Ellu juice

While being in a village, thought of having a cool drink. While checking the availability, I was puzzled by the menu item 'ellu juice'. There was a language barrier too, and the server couldn't explain more than that ('ellu juice' is something made out of 'ellu'). Out of curiosity, I asked for the same. What I got is sesame milk juice! Never had or heard about this before. It was quite tasty.