Martyrs' Day

The anniversary of the deaths of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru on 23 March, 1931, is declared to be Martyr's Day. Letter of Bhagat Singh to his Father.

In love with the song Between the bars by Elliott Smith

Drink up, baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make

Drink up with me now and forget all about
The pressure of days, do what I say
And I'll make you okay and drive them away
The images stuck in your head

People you've been before that you
Don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Drink up, baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again, between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there, with your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught.

When IoT devices are everywhere, the security headaches just get worse.

Billions more everyday items are set to be connected to the internet in the next few years, especially as chips get cheaper and cheaper to produce -- and crucially, small enough to fit into even the smallest product.

Potentially, any standard household item could become connected to the internet, even if there's no reason for the manufacturers to do so.

Eventually that processors needed to power an IoT device will become effectively free, making it possible to turn anything into a internet-enabled device.t as IoT devices become more and more common, people will start to ignore them

"The reality of the human mind is as we embed things, we tend to forget about them, we get complacent about them. Many of you are probably wearing a smart device on your wrist to monitor your behavior and exercise routines. But no doubt two weeks after you started wearing it, you forgot it was there," he says.

"The danger from a psychological perspective is that people forget about that technology and forget about the risks associated with it and our own personal mitigation of that risk.

"Even now, consumers are too blasé about connected devices, keen to jump on the latest technological trends failing to realize the associated security risks. Then even if they do, they remain unclear on how to secure the IoT devices -- that is, if there is the option of securing it in the first place.

BeagleBoneBlack

 Recently, an acronym
highlights the important Beagle features: Bring your own peripherals, Entry level costs, ARM
Cortex-A8 Superscalar processor, Graphics accelerated, Linux and open source community,
Environment for innovators.

All about Beagle Bone Black

The BeagleBone Black (BBB) board is a low cost, open hardware and expandable computer
launched by a community of developers sponsored by Texas Instruments. The size of the board
is small enough to fit in a mint tin box. It can be used for a variety of projects from high school
fair projects to prototypes of very complex real-world embedded systems. BBB is the newest product in the Beagle family. 

This board features a powerful TI Sitara™ ARM Cortex™-A8 processor which runs at 1 GHz. And a 2 GB on-board flash memory acts as the “hard drive” for the board to host a Linux operating system and other software development tools. With a user-friendly, browser-based Bonescript programming environment called Cloud9,a learner can easily program the BBB board to rapidly prototype electronic systems that interface with real-world applications. 

As the knowledge of users develops, the board provides more complicated interfaces including C/C++ functions to access digital and analog pins aboard the ARM Cortex A8 microprocessor.  

The full power and capability of the BBB board can be programmed in the underlying onboard Linux operating system, such as Angstrom or Ubuntu.

Moreover, the Beagle community provides a useful repository of example projects, forums and
hardware/software documentation. The Beagle family currently consists of BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard–xM, the original
BeagleBone and the new BeagleBone Black. All have been designed by Gerald Coley, a
Hardware Applications Engineer from TI responsible for hardware design and manufacturing
issues. Gerald temporarily named his new designs as “Beagle”, as a movie “underdog” was showed in local theaters during the early Beagle line development period. 

Recently, an acronym highlights the important Beagle features: Bring your own peripherals, Entry level costs, ARM Cortex-A8 Superscalar processor, Graphics accelerated, Linux and open source community, Environment for innovators. Jason Kridner, another Software Applications Engineer also from TI is responsible for Beagle software. 

The BeagleBoard community with the support from TI ensures the BeagleBone project remains sustained. Its most important members are the users of the Beagle family. The goal of this community is for the entire community to openly share their application successes and encourage the next generation of STEM practitioners.

Beauty and the Beast....

 Beauty and the Beast might remind you of Cinderella, another live action adaptation of an old Disney classic, but the parity is pointless as Beauty and the Beast moves on to reveal a stunning musical treat for your eyes, ears and heart. Amazing movie. Everyone must enjoy this movie!!

Kalpana Chawla

On this day in 1962, she was born. The first Indian-born woman to fly in space and only the second Indian person to do so. Kalpana Chawla — the name that leaves almost all Indians with pride —  would have been 55 today had it not been for the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003 which led to her death and six other astronauts. On her birth anniversary today, we bring you some facts about the Indian astronaut whose achievements continue to inspire many.

* Kalpana Chawla was born and brought up in Karnal, Haryana. While she completed her schooling from Tagore School, Karnal in 1976, she went on to get a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in 1982. The same year she moved to US to pursue a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. In 1988 she got a PhD in the subject from the University of Colorado.

* Chawla knew early on in her life that she wanted to be an aerospace engineer. “Every once in a while,” Chawla said to NASA, “we’d ask my dad if we could get a ride in one of these planes (planes from local flying clubs). And, he did take us to the flying club and get us a ride in the Pushpak and a glider that the flying club had,” she was quoted as saying. Kalpana had been inspired by JRD Tata’s work in aviation.

*  Even in school, Kalpana would often ask questions about space. According to an excerpt from Dilip M Salwi’s book Kalpana Chawla: India’s First Woman Astronaut, 2003, during a school project on making physical geography map of India, Kalpana had covered the classroom ceiling completely with dots marked on blackened newspapers. Apart from this, young Kalpana had always been more eager to draw aeroplanes flying in the sky over a scenery, with mountains, rivers and houses.

LET IT GO... CAN'T HOLD IT ANYMORE

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation,
and it looks like I'm the Queen
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn't keep it in;
Heaven knows I've tried

Don't let them in,
don't let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don't feel,
don't let them know
Well now they know

Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore

Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don't care
what they're going to say
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway

It's funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can't get to me at all

It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right,…

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry
Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on

My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I'm never going back, the past is in the past

Let it go, let it go
And I'll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand
In the light of day
Let the storm rage on

The cold never bothered me anyway!

Songwriters: Robert Lopez / Kristen Anderson-Lopez / Emanuel Kiriakou

Let It Go lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company

THE POWER OF MUSIC...

Music the most important part of my life. Music is part of our lives whether we realize it or not, whether we actively participate in it or not, whether we appreciate its power or not. This is, in fact, the real power of music ? that it can affect us whether we are aware of it or not. We need only think of the music heard on the soundtrack of most movies. We may be aware of the action and the dialogue, the scenery, costumes and special effects, yet music is supporting it all and guiding the emotional context. In the best films, music is an active team player, but in the worst of films, sometimes the music is the only thing holding the story together. So important is music to film that studio executives sometimes watch “rough cuts” with a temporary music track, even before the actual score is written, to get a feel for how a particular scene will play over it.