Firefox is a clear winner when it comes to visitors of blogulate. A whopping 47.54% of all visitors to blogulate for the month of Dec09 used Firefox.

Sitepoint reported that Firefox 3.5 was becoming the World’s Most Popular Browser. Rock on, Foxy.

There are a few things you could learn from spam:

• Spammers/Scammers would definitely CAPITALIZE words they DON’T WANT you to miss. Try reading the mail aloud gently  and SHOUT at capital letters.
• They’ll repeatedly use the fake title they’re using in the mail. I like this one. It’s like you mailing your contacts “Greetings from Stunt Artist Mike” or “Hi from Community Worker Dave” every friggin time.
• There will be quite a few engleesh words and awesome grammar.

Actual spam samples for corroboration

CALVARY GREETINGS(From Pastor Paul).

Dear Beloved in Christ,

I am Pastor Paul and I got your contact on my personal search of the person I want to will my money to. Please I willed the sum of EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS to you. Please if you really want to know why I have willed this money to you and you want this money to be transferred to you please contact the bank manager whose name and address I will give you as soon as you reply this mail.

He will help you transfer this money that I have willed to you. Right now I am in the hospital emailing you with my lap top computer and I will tell you my story as soon as I hear from you. Please reply me back to this email stated here: (pastor.paul@sify.com)

God Bless you.

Pastor Paul.

GREETINGS FROM MAJOR PATRICK

I know you will be very surprised to read from someone unknown to you. My name is Major Patrick, a member of the U.S. ARMY USARPAC Medical Team, which was deployed to Iraq in the beginning of the war.

I will like to share some highly classified information about my personal experience. Though, I will hold back certain information for security reasons for now until you have find time to visit the BBC website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

I will be vivid and coherent in my next message. Meanwhile,could you send me a mail confirming that you have visited the site and we can partner in the project. Please email me on:(majorpatrick@sify.com)

NOTE: you must not forget that this must surely be of a mutual benefit to both of us, i assure you.

Thanks
Best Regards,
Major Patrick.
majorpatrick@sify.com

MAJOR PARTRICK: A US veteran. Now uses Sify Mail (TM), India’s Mailbox with Themes.

Next step in making spam fun: The Reply. Now using the skills you have acquired from them, make a reply and send it back.

Sample reply

Greetings acknowledged (from ENGINEER DEEPAK)

Dear Pastor Paul,
I am ENGINEER DEEPAK. I am OBLIGED that you chose me for giving away all that money when you had over a gazillion  other email IDs. I am speechless at your love for me. Hope you have not recovered and is still unwell (I really need the money). But I shall prey for your recovery.

EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS is quite a lot. Before anything happens to you, could you write if off as a donation or something so that I can get some tax rebate? Also, would you be needing that  LAP   TOP   COMPUTER of yours now? Could you give me that too? Which Brand/Model is the  lap  top  computer? If it’s that 100$ laptop, forget that I even asked you for it.

Please send me the name of the branch manager asap. Call it divine or call it a miracle. But something tells me he must be in Nigeria.

Awaiting your reply for funds transfer,
Engineer Deepak

So, the next time you see a spam mail, dont just delete it. Read it, LOL and then REPLY. If everybody does that, we can spam the spammers and have some phun

Try it yourself. Visit Cameroid.com ( What? No, a headphone wont do. You’ll need a Webcam… Webb-caaam… Web-b-ca-aa-m. Nah, forget it )

I have the habit of searching for information and trivia related to a movie after I finish watching it (esp. if it were based on true incidents). What follows is what I got from Sylvia Nasar’s biography of John Forbes Nash. The movie is quite biased and taken such a way that the audience feels sympathetic towards John Nash. It doesn’t tell us that:

• John Nash fathered an out-of-wedlock son with a Boston nurse.
• He had made numerous anti-Semitic comments during his period of extreme mental illness, most of which linked Jews and world Communism.
• Nash had recurring liaisons with other men.
• He shared the Nobel Prize with Reinhard Selten and János Harsányi.
• Nash blamed Alicia for twice committing him to a mental institution and the copule had divorced in 1962.
• More can be read in detail here.

Matt Drudge says the movie makers thought that including Nash’s homosexual experiences would hurt ‘A Beautiful Mind’ at the box office.

And finally, the speech he gives at the Nobel Prize Ceremony. It never happened.

I’ve always believed in numbers, in the equations and logics that lead to reason, but after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, what truly is logic, who decides reason, my quest has taken me through the physical and metaphysical, the delusional, and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life, it is only in the mysterious equation of love, that any logical reasons can be found, I am only here tonight because of you, you are the reason I am, you are all my reasons. Thank you.

The only speech he gave was at a party at Princeton. Sylvia Nasar mentions:

He was not inclined to give speeches, he said, but he had three things to say. First, he hoped that getting the Nobel would improve his credit rating because he really wanted a credit card. Second, he said that one is supposed to say that one is glad he is sharing the prize, but he wished he had won the whole thing because he really needed the money badly. Third, Nash said that he had won for game theory and that he felt that game theory was like string theory, a subject of great intrinsic intellectual interest that the world wishes to imagine can be of some utility. He said it with enough skepticism in his voice to make it funny.

Well, its true that if any of the above were actually included in the movie, it’d have lost its charm. I pay my respect to Alicia Nash.

• IE thinks CSS stands for Crappy Shitty Styling and tries to follow it
• IE thinks transparency means { background: #a_puke_inducing_grey; }
• IE’s got a lame JS engine borrowed from the scrap shop
• IE is not compliant to w3c standards
• HTML5 tags like <canvas> make IE poop in its pants (even IE8)

Advantages

• Employers can ask designers to make a site look the same way in IE and other browsers and lol at the designers’ plight
• Can make IE run Acid3 test and lol yourself

Please consider getting Firefox if you still haven’t used anything other than IE. If you’re that big an IE fan, atleast consider an upgrade to IE8.

Some Interesting Links : Say Goodbye to IE6 via twitter | Make pages display in black and white for IE6 users using Dan’s script

A dog has no use for fancy cars, big homes, or designer clothes. A water log stick will do just fine. A dog doesn’t care if your rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb. Give him your heart and he’ll give you his. How many people can you say that about? How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special?

Pretty good movie. Something that only dog lovers could comprehend. Especially the end.

Told in first-person narrative, the book portrays Grogan and his family’s life during the thirteen years that they lived with their dog Marley, and the relationships and lessons from this period. Marley, a yellow Labrador Retriever, is described as a high-strung, boisterous, and somewhat uncontrolled dog. He is strong, powerful, endlessly hungry, eager to be active, and often destructive of their property (but completely without malice). Marley routinely fails to “get the idea” of what humans expect of him; at one point, mental illness is suggested as a plausible explanation for his behavior. His acts and behaviors are forgiven, however, since it is clear that he has a heart of gold and is merely living within his nature.

The strong contrast between the problems and tensions caused by his neuroses and behavior, and the undying devotion, love and trust shown towards the human family as they themselves have children and grow up to accept him for what he is…

Check out the IMDB comments too.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain Vishal speaking. We thank you for choosing um (after three seconds of thought) XYZ airlines. Ms Preethi would be assisting me during the flight. The cabin crew would be headed by lovely Ms Shruti [start muffle]Am amanetat fiecare Liric şi Poetique calitatea vieţii hierdie electrische van assebliefn sa má cândva după ce am Poëzie început scrie sa. and Ms Keerthi si pan fee bjork soin gnarlf soin bjork fee si gork bork[/end muffle]
Here at XYZ airlines, your safety is our primary concern. Please follow the instructions demonstrated by the crew [muffle] biz gonet fione sis todk hioe instruction spoate întâmpla cu minjiera safety. Scrie sasi pan fee bjork soin gnarlf soin bjork fee si gork bork[/muffle]
The distance between Pune and Trivandrum is 702 Kms and we’ll be covering it in 1hr and 55mins.
[muffle] biz gonet fione sis todk hioe instructions hark bork gork seat belts fastened Bork gork sie sign turned off pan fee bjork soin gnarlf soin bjork fee Government of India has puntile sak smoking on all flights bMerde punctul în dansrk[/muffle]
We’ll be doing everything to make your flight as smooth as possible. Thankyou.

Anyone who’s travelled by plane would find this is actually true. Im still not sure if its the in-flight announcement system or a conspiracy amongst all the pilots in the world.