I'm Arjun, live in London, UK, and ever since I've left India, I miss it even more. I'm an entrepreneur, a creator, and strive for new ideas. Have been lucky to put a few in place and make them work. This is a blog about everything I love and think about!
I’ve always loved the Howard Stern show, to the extend that everytime I log on to DailyMotion, that is my first search. The guy’s a lucky basta**!! Look at the girls he’s got on to his show and what he has made them do..
Well, I guess all previous records are now broken. My fav Sandra Taylor (Sandi Taylor or Sandy Taylor or Sandi Korn with love) was on his show and this is what she got up to – Getting all soaked in a wet T shirt with her friend Alana (not sure is its the right spelling). I guess she wanted to promote something and Howard Stern make it sound like she was one of the usual guests. Sandra, as usual was very sporty and down to earth. Will post the video as soon as I get my hands on it!
There are 100s of blogs out there with photos of Sandra Taylor, but I guess few have the ones from Howard Stern this morning:
Here are some exclusives that I almost died searching:
This morning on Howard Stern show soaking wet t shirts with friend Alane.
This morning on Howard Stern – Love that smile.. and the body!
Old pic – Sandra Taylor 1
Old pic – Also known as Sandi Korn, posing for a charity (i guess)
After that, Sarah Palin tried to improve her image – you know, the $150,000 makeover and appearance on Saturday Night Live? That did it for some and they started loving her very much, just like those idiotic racists in the wild west. Somehow it didn’t crack it for me and a few of my readers, so I went out hunting again.. and this time I found some more anti Sarah Palin t shirts, bermudas, shorts, CDs and other merchandise. Not everything satiated my hatred for her, so here’s a selection of stuff I recommend for you.
The International Monetary Fund – IMF has agreed to lend $16.5 billion (in loan) to Ukraine to help it sustain its economy and financial stability, after the international credit crunch rendered the country’s currency and stock markets plunging.
“The authorities’ program is intended to support Ukraine’s return to economic and financial stability, by addressing financial sector liquidity and solvency problems, by smoothing the adjustment to large external shocks and by reducing inflation,” Dominique Strauss Kahn, the Managing Director of IMF said. “At the same time, it will guard against a deep output decline by insulating household and corporations to the extent possible.”
In recent times, Ukraine’s capital city Kiev had seen an expansion boom thanks to availability of loans or mortgages for properties. It was coming up as one of the best markets for international investment. Now, because of credit crunch that originated in the United States, very less or no banks are willing to lend money, resulting in decline of property prices.
Ukraine’s currency Hryvnia has taken a massive dip in the last 2 weeks and because of the country’s reliance on steel and price reductions, Ukraine is now in desperate need of of the 16 and a half billion dollars.
World economy lowdown – Help IMF!
After the recent USA government’s intervention of 700 Billion US dollars to help the American economy led by Neel Kashkari, followed by a 2.1 billion dollars’ loan to Iceland by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – Pakistan, Hungary and Belarus are on the verge of major economic collapses. All three countries are at advanced stages of talks with the IMF.
Countries least affected are those with least economic interactions with the United States. Except for India and China, there aren’t many.
The clocks went back 1 hour in the UK today (midnight, 26th of October 2008).
In the US, day light saving time (or time change) ends this fall, on the 2nd of November this year (2008). Day light saving time changes every year and depends mostly on earth’s rotation.
If you have questions regarding your local time, just do the following:
Go to Google.com and search for “Time YourCity”. For example, to check out the present time in London, click here.
What is daylight saving time?
In layman’s words, because winters have shorter days and longer nights (especially in Europe and America), in order to have maximum day light when you’re awake, the clocks are moved back an hour. Because of this time change, you start work at 8, when normally you’d have started at 9, and finisish at 5 when normally you’d finish by 6. This lets you spend more time awake when the sun’s out. Daylight savings time was created to let afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less daylight. In the start of spring, clocks are adjusted 1 hour ahead (obviously because the summer has longer days) and adjusted 1 hour back just after autumn. Intelligent time change!
Which countries use DST? (daylight saving time)
DST was proposed by William Willett, an english architect/builder to make best use of sunshine. Many countries have tried using the DST (daylight saving time) but at present most countries, except ones in the American continents and Europe, don’t use day light savings.
The world over, countries that do use DST move their clocks by a maximum of 1 hour forward or backward. List of countries that use the Daylight Saving time:
1. All countries in Europe except Iceland. Iceland has moved its clock backward 1 hour permanently, so you can say that the country is in permanent DST (and I guess it has to, considering it is one of the coldest countries with very scarce sunshine.
2. USA (United States of America) – This year in fall, 2008, the daylight saving time begins on the 2nd of November 2008 when all states move their clocks back an hour. Well, if you use Windows XP, Vista, IPhone or any other new phone, you phone or computer or laptop should do that for you automatically. If you do, however rely on a wrist watch, better tune into the radio once a day 😉 For exact details for each state and city in the United States, please go to: Wikipedia
3. Australia – Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia will observe it on the last Sunday of October 2008, whereas Tasmania has started on the first Sunday of October 2008.
4. New Zealand – Last Sunday of September each year, daylight saving time begins in New Zealand and end on April’s first Sunday.
5. Canada – Most Canadian states conform to the US DST rules. (pretty obvious to me)
Jennifer’s mother Darnell Donnerson, 57 years old and her brother Jason Hudson, who was just 29 were killed in the shootout and her 7 year old nephew Julian King was reported missing.
Jennifer with mom Darnell
Jennifer and Darnell Hudson (mother)
Jennifer Hudson’s kidnapped nephew Julian King
Julia Hudson – Wife of William Balfour (the suspect) and sister of Jennifer Hudson.
William Balfour – The suspect and step father of Julian King and husband of Julia Hudson
Jennifer Hudson with mother, sister Julia and nephew Julian King
7 year old Julian
Jennifer’s nephew Julian King, abducted
Jennifer Hudson was supposedly in Los Angeles and immediately flew to Chicago as she heard the news of a shooting where her mother and brother were killed. The police have released a warrant against a guy named William Balfour and are considering him as the primary suspect. This is the worst nightmare for anyone and my heart goes out for Hudson and I wish God gives her strength to deal with this loss!
The shooting took place just about 5 miles from Barack Obama’s place (he just creeps into the news somehow everytime). Jennifer Hudson is an Obama supporter and made this public in Denver, when she sang the National anthem for the Democratic convention in august.
The police have called this a “domestic incident”.
Hudson’s 7 year old nephew is missing after the shooting. His name according to some news web sites is Julian King. Lets all pray for his safety, I hope the innocent kid is safe.
“A missing child was possibly abducted from the scene and may be in the company of William Balfour, a suspect in [this] double homicide investigation,” the Chicago police said in a statement, adding that the suspect was “armed and dangerous”.
Crime rate in Chicago has never been out of news and with this incident at a celebrity’s place and close to where Obama lives will definitely spark the safety debate again.
Jennifer Hudson had tried moving her family out of South Side in Chicago, which is home to the largest black population in the US but her mother, brother and other family members refused.
Obama lives in Hyde Park, Chicago which is probably one of the posher areas of Chicago, whereas Hudson’s mother Darnell Donnerson and brother Jason Hudson lived in a grittier district called Englewood.
Jennifer Hudson’s mother’s and brother’s bodies were found next to each other at South Yale Avenue where a large crowd had gathered last night.
Jennifer Hudson, after being rejected from American Idol, went on to win an Oscar award for her performance in the Dreamgirls (musical, released 2006) and was a celebrity and role model for millions of Americans and an embodiment of the American Dream.
Last year, at an interview with Vogue magazine, Jennifer Hudson that her mother Darnell Donnerson was responsible to encourage her to participate in the TV show American Idol. On other occassions, Hudson had said that she was very close to her family.
“My faith in God and my family, they’re very realistic and very normal, they’re not into the whole limelight kind of thing.”
My deepest condolences for Jennifer. This is a tragic loss for her and I hope God gives her strength to deal with this, and I hope the culprit, whether it is William Balfour or anyone else, is brought to justice.
News UPDATE
William Balfour has been arrested by the police but not yet charged. He is the step father of Jennifer Hudson’s nephew Julian King (the abducted 7 year old boy) and fell apart from the Hudsons when he was asked to leave the family home last year. He has been convicted in the past for attempted murder and carjacking!
The police have found that Jennifer’s brother Mr Jason Hudson was shot when the shooter fired through the door. The shooter killed her mother Mrs Donerson after entering the house when Mrs Donerson entered the room where the attacker was.
New UPDATE 2
Friends of the family have claimed that William Balfour had threatened to take Julian King (the boy) away if Jennifer Hudson’s sister Julia Hudson didn’t stop “playing him”. The couple is said to be in a dispute over the ownership of Julia’s car.
Julia Hudson - Wife of William Balfour (the suspect) and sister of Jennifer Hudson.William Balfour - The suspect and step father of Julian King and husband of Julia Gudson
NEWS UPDATE 3 – Jennifer Hudson Nephew Found – DEAD?
The police, in what is being widely believed, found the body of Julian King, Jennifer Hudson’s nephew in the same SUV that was on alert. The SUV belonged to her brother Jason Hudson. Jennifer Hudson had announced a prize money of 1 hundred thousand dollars for anyone who gave a tip about her nephew’s whereabouts.
This is very sad. Although the authorities haven’t ascertained that it is Julian King’s body, it is being widely believed that it is him. The hunt for the young boy has been stopped by Chicago police.
Ashley Todd, 20 was attacked at Bloomfield, Pittsburgh. This happened when she was getting some cash from an ATM, the police said. A mirror image of the alphabet “B” was carved into her face in a ruthless way. Ashley Todd, who’s a republican supporter, volunteering for John Mccain in this 2008 election was robbed and mutilated.
Channel 4 reported in the Action news program that Todd was robbed near Liberty Avenue (pearl street) just before 9pm after being threatened to be stabbed by a person carrying a knife. Diane Richard, reporting for Channel 4 confirmed that she was robbed of 60 dollars.
The robber, it’s claimed, saw the Mccain supporting label on Ashley Todd’s car and used a tool to write B (mirror image) on her face. The “B”, as is obvious is being widely believed by a Barack Obama supporter. Ashley Todd was also punched and kicked (the image makes the dark circles around her eyes very clear).
Surprisingly, Ashley Todd refused to be treated for her wounds when asked by the police. Hopefully, the entire incident has been record on CCTV cameras and the guilty will be punished. The culprit, reported a male, was a black man, very tall (about 6 feet 4 inches) weighing about 100 kgs and with brown eyes. He was wearing a black undershirt, shoes and perhaps a dark colored jeans.
Update:
Ashley made this story up – Read comments for more.
You’re a Hockey Mom if: “Your life is about Hockey, and also about being a Mom, partner, and woman.” Yes, that’s what Sarah Palin was before this election campaign.
Ever after being chosen as John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin has experienced the following changes in her life:
1. A taste of limelight – Sarah Palin has literally become an overnight celebrity (I personally think that’s all credit to her extremely intelligent (pun intended) ideas and point of views)
2. The campaign jet!
3. A safe future – She won’t really have to worry about finding another job once Obama is elected. There will be many TV channels willing to use her as THE judge with stupid comments (out of many) on a TV show. Just like you have Simon Cowell being mean to to contestants on X factor for example.
and…
3. A $90,000 wardrobe including a $2500 Valentino outfit, $3000 Louis Vuitton hand bag and $3000 for hair styles and makeup.
Sarah Palin before and after
The 150k wardrobe?
Complete makeover
Mccain promised to auction the wardrobe for charity
Same Biden, new Palin
A dream for most hockey moms, Sarah Palin’s red jackets don’t come from her home in Alaska, plush hair dos and fancy makeup doesn’t come from her pocket. It’s all coming from the Republican National Committee – The account you republican supporters fill up! Add to this Sarah Palin’s recent shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue worth US Dollars 75 thousand and 50 thousand respectively. Whoooho!! Who remembers the embarrassment John Edwards faced after his 250 dollar haircut? Sorry John, we were wrong, we didn’t know Sarah Palin then!
Guess how much Ms Sarah Palin is provided per week to spend on her wardrobe, makeup and hair dos?
A whopping 37 thousand 5 hundred dollars per week.
Yes, Mr McCain, that’s more than an average plumber’s yearly salary!
If you’re as annoyed as me on this utterly useless spending, then there’s some relief – John Mccain’s spokesperson Tracey Schmitt said:
With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it is remarkable that we are spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.
Hope that makes all of us feel better.
And if you thought that’s all, here’s some rule breaking. Sarah Palin has been exposed on various occasions spending campaign money on her son Trig’s baby ware. This amount totals many thousand pounds.
Campaign rules #1 – Use of campaign funds NOT ALLOWED for personal use!
Are we just going to stand here and do nothing about it? Are we still going to vote Mccain despite all this law breaking and utter waste of our money? (haha).. well, who cares.. When it’s Sarah Palin in question, there’s bound to be stupidity!
I’ve been reading about Winslow ranting about the facilities at Browns, and he’s damn right..
In an ESPN article by one of my fav writers James Walker, Browns pro bowl tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. has revealed that he has been hospitalized because of staph infection (pronounced “Staff”) for the last 2 two weeks. No one in the Browns team knew about this as the management decided to keep it a secret. Winslow was quoted saying:
“Nobody knew that I had staph on the team because the Browns didn’t want it to get out,” Winslow said. “But it’s my teammates’ right to know what’s going on at the facility to protect them. Their safety is at risk, too, and I didn’t agree with the Cleveland Browns, because they are protecting the organization and not the players.”
Winslow says that this is the 6th case of staph infection at Browns in the last 2 years! Well, either it’s the sport or it is the facilities at Browns. Now since I had never heard of Staph disease (sorry, infection) befoew and considering that this is the 6th case, I wouldn’t play for Browns if I were one of the healthier team members.. 😉
Staph (again, pronounced “staff”) infection is caused by staphylococcus aureus bacteria. staphylococcus comes from a greek word meaning grapes… and thats what the bacteria look like when seen from a microscope.
How does staph infection happen?
The bacterium (staphylococcus) is so common that 25% people almost always carry the bacterium in their mouth, nose, genitals etc. Problem arises if it enters your blood stream through a cut.
What happens if you have Staph infection?
Generally Staph infections produce pus in the body. Some examples of Staph infection are:
Folliculitis – Often when you clothes rub against skin, hair follicles get filled with white puss (sounds disgusting)
Boils – On the face, chest, neck or anywhere else, when you have puss filled rounded, heightened skin (c’mon you know what a boil is)
Styes -Have you seen anyone with a swollen upper of lower lid of the eye? I’ve seen some people – again happens because of the hair follicles of eye lashes getting infected.
Impetigo – When kids get red scabby skin or blisters around their mouths or noses?
Abscesses – Pus or normal swelling on the skin or anywhere else in the body.
Food poisoning – Mostly even food poisoning is caused by the staph infection or staphylococcus bacterium.
Other life threatening health problems – In worst cases, it can also cause pneumonia, endocarditis (heart infection), bacteremia (blood infection), toxic shock syndrome and others!! Jesus Christ!
There’s much more info available if you search for staph infection on Google.
Yahoo has recently revamped its site explorer. You will know what that is, if you own a website and use Yahoo to get stats like – number of incoming links, pages indexed by Yahoo, incoming links on particular urls or subdomains within your website and cached snapshots of your indexed pages. The new interface you’re taken to, when you type “link:www.yoursitename.com” is the Yahoo Explorer.
Yahoo’s new site explorer has the following new features: None. It’s just a design change as far as my exploration goes.
Yahoo's new site explorer designYahoo site explorer new sidebar
Simliarities Google webmaster central and Yahoo site explorer
Just like Google Webmaster central, Yahoo Explorer provides more detailed/advanced information about your site after you authenticate. You’re required to either upload a file with a particular filename and a unique key (downloadable in your Yahoo site explorer login) or add some Yahoo meta tags, similar to Google WMC.
Boo Yahoo!
Your sites don’t get authentcated instantly on Yahoo Site Explorer, unlike Google Webmaster central, where all you do is upload a file and you have all the info you’ll ever require.
Before Google Webmaster Central
Before Google Webmaster Central came in, Yahoo! rocked. It gave you highly accrurate info about the number of incoming links to a site – any site, whether you owned it or not, which Google preferred to keep secret. After Google webmaster central, I realised that Google always had that info, only it was meant only for the website owner. Yahoo’s site explorer still is and will continue to be the destination for SEO specialists worldwide looking for detailed site linking information.
Advantage Yahoo
Although both have pretty much standard features. The biggest Yahoo advantage is that it’s open for all. You can go and see any site’s indexed pages and incoming links. Very useful for Search engine marketing/ Internet marketing companies and SEO professionals.
Advantage Google Webmaster Central
Google webmaster central dashboard
1. Diagnostics: Detailed info about web crawl – HTTP errors, not found, URLs not followed, restricted by robots.txt, URLs timed out, unreachable URLs.
2. Content Analysis: Very important for your Google rankings – Duplicate meta descriptions, long meta descriptions, short meta descriptions, missing title tags, duplicate title tags, long title tags, short title tags, non-informative title tags (new) and non indexable content issues.
3. Search statistics: Top search queries (both impressions and clicks) (highly inaccurate in my case), what Googlebot sees – external link anchor text (very important again for your SEO), crawl stats (when was the site last crawled, no of pages crawled, PageRank of pages crawled etc), subscriber stats (how many people have subscribed to your site’s feeds).
4. Other tools: Some advanced options like setting your web site’s geographic target (for regional sites), set preferred domain (how do you want your site to display on Google – with www or without), analyse and generate robots.txt (for selective indexing of your pages), set crawl rate (for big sites that incur bandwidth expenses when spiders crawl their sites), enhance 404 pages (Google offers custom 404 – page not found pages so your users see the 404 page with relevant links in stead of an error page), enhanced image search (for sites that want to be listed on Google image search) and finally URL removal (if you want some URLs not to be indexed by Google).
In brief, if you’re a webmaster and your site’s not authenticated on Google webmaster central, you’re probably losing out. Google’s webmaster central has all the tools you require to diagnose and get your site polished and up those search rankings.
Yahoo will continue to sustain because of its “open to all” poilcy.
Came across the Google website trends and couldn’t believe my eyes. Yes guys, it’s all in the open now and there no hiding from it and the good old Alexa “highly manipulable and inaccurate” ranking days are over. Or are they?
Alexa, although pretty accurate for very high traffic sites, often showed weird patterns for smaller sites. I personally have access to about 25 sites’ data and from various stat/analytical software I use (ya ok, its Google Analytics). I always knew which site was getting higher uniques, pageviews, contrary to Alexa, which almost always showed incorrect rankings. i guess it must’ve been me, hanging around my favourite “self owned” sites, thus improving their Alexa rankings.
Have been running the same tests with Google Trends for websites and Voila! they’re accurate. It’s just something you expect of Google – precision.
Never really got around to the third tier – sites like Compete.com and Quantcast.com. Now i know I wasn’t the only one who stuck to Alexa! Here’s proof.
I now know where to go for accurate site traffic analysis. It’s like an addictive game where you just can’t stop yourself from comparing sites of different genres, geographic locations, subjects etc. And once you’ve decided to stop, you remember another one and bingo! Google Trends is open on your Firefox again (yeah, I love open source and am sick of the bulky IE).
Advantage Alexa
Having said that, you still can’t get away from Alexa. If you’re used to checking the Alexa ranking of every site you visit (and then semi consciously upgrading or degrading that site in your mind respectively), I bet no matter how inaccurate or manipulable, Alexa will continue to rule people’s toolbars. In my case, it’s Sparky that sits on the lower right hand corner and right now, it’s showing me no ranking for my Blog.
Cafe Arjun - 15 times Wordpress Top Blog! 