Test Blog for Templates

This is a Test Blog - not a live one - for testing out various features before implementing in www.MadrasNow.com

Sunday 21 May 2017

Best Android Apps of 2017


Here it is. The crème de la crème. The Android apps that stand alone at the top of the pantheon. These apps have become ubiquitous with Android and if you’re looking for good stuff it’s assumed that you have some of this stuff already. Without further delay, here are the best Android apps currently available! Make sure to come back because we do keep this updated every month!

The Battle for Champions League Place


Liverpool have Champions League qualification in their own hands and know that a win over already relegated Middlesbrough will guarantee them a top-four finish. There is the possibility that two of Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool will have to take part in a play-off to decide the final Champions League places.

 The following scenarios would require a 39th Premier League game: 

Scenario 1. Man City vs Liverpool play-off for 3rd
Man City would have to play out a high-scoring draw with Middlesbrough while Liverpool would have to thrash Middlesbrough at Anfield for the two teams to meet in a match to decide which team would need to enter the Champions League qualification rounds and which would progress straight to the group stages.

Scenario 2. Man City vs Arsenal play-off for 4th
If Man City were to lose 4-0 to Watford and Arsenal were to edge home in a 1-0 win over Everton at Emirates, then the two teams would need to meet to decide the final Champions League spot - assuming Liverpool manage to beat Middlesbrough. 

Scenario 3. Arsenal vs Man City play-off for 4th
If Arsenal draw 1-1 with Everton and Liverpool lose 2-0 to Middlesbrough, this is how they would finish tied for fourth

Who will win the IPL 7 title


Mumbai Indians will be eyeing a third Indian Premier League (IPL) title after they defeated Kolkata Knight Riders in Qualifier 2 in Bangalore on Friday to reach the final for the fourth time. However, they face an in-form Rising Pune Supergiant, who have notched up a hat-trick of wins against them in IPL 2017.

Steve Smith’s team will be eyeing a maiden title and they will head into the clash against Rohit Sharma’s side full of confidence. However, the title clash could bowl down to the contribution of some key players in the respective teams.

Cow Politics

Now that Donald Trump, a orange-white, bleach-blonde Orangutan remake of Narendra Modi’s political policies, and theories is the Republican Presidential candidate most likely to take down the GOP, let us take a look at different political systems, real and imaginary, through the old-yet-relevant Two Cow Politics.
Humans have evolved from Monarchy (which means that the British are as yet to get down from the trees), through Theocracy, Feudalism, Anarchy, Fascism, Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.  Truthfully, no country in the world can said to be a ‘pure-breed’ of any of the –isms mentioned, and are really a mix-and-match of systems.
Monarchy – You have two cows. The King takes the cream.
Feudalism – You have two cows. Your feudal Lord takes the cream and whips you.
Theocracy – You have two cows. You have to feed the cream to the fanatical Mullah or Priest.

Fascism – You have two cows. 

Thuglak magazine Fake News

It is not even a month since the passing away of the founding editor ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy, of the Tamil political magazine Thuglak, and it has already deteriorated into a Fake News peddler.  Till Cho was alive, the magazine was worth reading – even if some of the views, opinions, and conclusions were anti-liberal or against Centre-left policies.  Long time readers of Thuglak, like myself, used to feel that Cho Ramaswamy consciously tried to maintain or impose a sense of neutrality on the subject being discussed.
When I first heard that Gurumurthy is set to take over as the succeeding editor, I commented that Thuglak is set to become a outright BJP trash very soon.  But never in my dreams did I think it would happen so soon.
Before we go into specifics, let us understand the difference between a print media or a blog or a TV holding true to a particular political philosophy (liberal, conservative, left, right, etc.) versus becoming a wholesale propaganda for a particular party.  Take for e.g., The Washington Post.  It is more conservative than The New York Times.  Yet both endorsed Hillary Clinton in US Elections 2016 (but it is The New York Times which is taking most of the flak from President-elect Donald Trump!).  OTOH, Fox News is not only conservative, it is rabidly anti-Democratic Party and can only speak GOP propaganda.  Therein lies the difference.

To get back to point, when a media gets into supporting a ‘party’, not the ‘philosophy’ mode, it becomes very difficult to be objective.  Thus to keep toeing the party line, the writers start to pick and choose facts, obfuscate, mislead, and of late write outright lies.  This is the reason for the sudden rise of Fake News and Post-Truth.

The Crow and the DTH

The relationship between the pigeons and the statues is well known.  In fact, whenever I see statutes of leaders, which are like daffodils in spring in Madras, now Chennai, I feel both grief and glee.  Grieve to see the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, with a fair bit of ‘work’ by the pigeons.  Gleeful to see the statues of some politicians (who shall remain unnamed), and wish there were more pigeons in the area.

Where there are less pigeons, and traditionally Chennai was a pigeon free territory till 15 or 20 years ago, the crows used to fill in.  The crows are seen not as pests, but as a insect control and clean-up worker.  If not for them, the rats, the cats, and et. al, which die off on the roads would stink the town down.  There is also a tradition in some families of feeding the crows every morning with a spoonful of fresh cooked food, in memory of the ancestors.

You may wonder where this ramble about the pigeons and crows is leading to, and how it is connected with the modern DTH broadcast.  DTH is Direct-To-Home broadcast of usually TV signals from satellite, and also called satellite TV.  The terrace equipment consists of the parabolic dish antenna of around 1-1/2 feet diameter, with a contraption on a bracket at its focal point called LNB.  That contraption is a wave guide and a LNB (Low Noise Block downconverter) and the waveguide side which faces the 

Asteroid 2014 JO25 ‘The Rock’ safely passes Earth

The big asteroid that safely swept past Earth on Wednesday, April 19, 2017, night India time, is larger than expected as per the astronomers. The asteroid safely passed the Blue Marble at some 1,768,239 km (1,098,733 miles) distance or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The asteroid 2014 JO25 has been nicknamed ‘the rock’.

Astronomers with the aid of the powerful radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico,were able to ping asteroid 2014 JO25 to obtain radar images of the approaching space rock.  They found 2014 JO25 is a contact binary asteroid - two space rocks that were originally separate bodies - and each segment is about 640 meters and 670 meters (2100 to 2200 feet) to total 1.3 km approximately.  It also spins around every 3.5 hours.

The 2017 flyby is the closest by an asteroid this large since the encounter by 4179 Toutatis at 4 lunar distances in September 2004. The next known flyby by an object of comparable size will be the 800-meter-diameter asteroid 1999 AN10 approach within one lunar distance in August 2027.

Chitrai Amavasya Tharpana Sankalpam

As recounted in an earlier post, some health issues kept me off for the last six months or so from blogging regularly.  Thankfully, some recovery is on, though not in full, and which allows me to once more try to rebuild the blog in this new Tamil Year of Hevilambi.  In the process I have managed to revive the customized Tharpana Sankalpam for the Chitrai month Amavasya day of day-after (26 Apr 2017), and also the commencing of Vaikasi month on 14/15th of May.

Note that the Bodhayana Amavasya is on Tuesday 25 Apr and not on 26 Apr.  As earlier, an email would be sent with the copy of PDF file.

Here is a screenshot of the test file.  As usual, the GForm can be accessed from Download page (sl. 2).  We are correcting the rest of the downloads, please give us time.

Rajkumar 88th birthday Doodle

Of late, Google has really gone crazy.  For one, my Legacy GSuite is locked up, refusing me access to open and modify, recode the Google Forms, Docs, and Sheets to distribute public information.  Then there are complaints on G+ that there are quirks, and posts and streams do not appear or randomly disappear.  Google, is dragging its arse, if not doing its job – in a way they have become worse than Microsoft.

But the cream of the cake was yesterday’s Doodle.  In ‘honour’ of Kannada language movie star Rajkumar of yesteryears.  That too why? Not for his centenary of birth or death or other such milestone, but on his 88th Birth Anniversary.  Of all the things one could have doodled about, Rajkumar’s 88th birth anniversary is important enough for a Doodle? 

Though the reverence for the veteran actor is such in his home state Karnataka, which saw a situation of near political turmoil when Rajkumar was abducted by sandal smuggler, Veerappan in 2000, who was trying to negotiate the release of some of his men apprehended by authorities, is to be respected, does it deserve a doodle? Rajkumar was released after 108 days.

A Doodle on his 100th birth anniversary is understandable, but on his 88th birthday?  So what are they going to do on his 89th or 90th birthday? Wind up Google?

Spotting a Suvega Moped

Today morning while walking around in an area which I do not frequent too often, I came across some old two wheelers – motorbikes, scooters, and a moped – rusting away.  The motorbikes, scooter and scooterettes were not of much interest, as they were of fairly recent models.  They all were made during the last 20 years or so, and abandoned as their owners probably upgraded after running them down.

But what caught my attention was the old Suvega moped, the first ever moped to be manufactured in India.  From around 1965 or so till the late 80s, the Indian Suvega, the original of which is the licenced model of the popular Motobécane Mobylette of France, ruled the roost.  I rode my first every motorized two wheeler on one such Suvega in the early 80s.

And an experience never to forget.  The unique feature of those old mopeds was that you had to pedal them like a bicycle to get them started – there was no kick starter. One hot summer day, around 2 kilometres from my home, the Suvega I had gone on a joyride broke down and refused to start.  One very advertised advantage – not actually one, but probably would be of use in those days – of the Mobylette-Suvega was that you can flip a lever / remove a nut in its main drive chain, disconnect the engine and just pedal it like bicycle (being so long ago, don’t exactly remember it, but the approximate location is marked with a circle and an arrow near the 

Tuesday 2 May 2017

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