Animator Vs. Animation - Alan Becker

When we were working on the December issue of Kadzilla's Lounge, Shobhit sent me some flash (.SWF) files, embedded in Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel). We published one of those embedded .SWF files as our Lateral Thinking puzzle for that issue. It was quite a toughie apparently. We got only one answer on that post... not one CORRECT answer... just ONE ANSWER! Coincidentally, it happened to be correct too!

Anyways, I found the original .SWF file that was embedded in another one of those MS-Office files he sent me. This one is quite entertaining actually! Every time I play it, it leaves me watching the screen with so much concentration and absorption that I don't even realize my mouth is hanging wide open! Here's the flash animation... you can watch it for yourself.

Oh by the way, if you ever wish to embed a flash (.SWF) file in a blogger post, you can use this code:

<object height="H" width="W">
<param value="SOURCE SWF URL" name="movie">
<embed src="SOURCE SWF URL" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="H" width="W"></embed>
</object>

One important thing: When I embedded the flash file in that Lateral Puzzle post last month, we later discovered it wouldn't show up in the published post, even though it was working fine in the post preview of blogger. After much research on Google, I discovered that the file I was embedding was actually hosted on Google sites, and apparently, blogger no longer supports files hosted on Google sites. So I eventually downloaded that flash file to my own computer first, and then uploaded it on the third-party hosting I use for my files. It started working after that.

. . .

Here's more in Videos!

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Living A Dream -- Yours Or Someone Else's

This post has been sitting in my "to-blog" list for several days now. It was actually inspired by Garima's recent poem "Frozen Wings". I suggest you read her poem first, even if you have already read it before, because this post is like a further extension to her beautiful lines of verse.

Garima's poem is all about our dormant inner strength that, if recognized and utilized, can help us become the master of our own fate. But, for most of us, this never happens. We never DO realize our own potential. And we never even try converting many of our "seemingly unrealistic" dreams into a reality.

But the thing is... "reality" is so relative. Is the reality of Lata Mangeshkar same as that of Sachin Tendulkar? One is a legend in the world of singers, and the other is the God of cricket! Fifty Test centuries is a reality for Sachin, but not for Lata Mangeshkar. And I'm sure the world of the seven 'surs' is equally alien for Sachin too! Just as it probably is for Mark Zuckerberg. But then Mark's world is also NOT a reality for every 26-year old on the planet!

I am a predominantly male mind in a totally female body. I HATE shopping! Yes, with capital letters! In fact, you can make it bold too! And the term "window shopping" is non-existent in my dictionary! Just as the fashion world makes absolutely no sense to me -- clothes, makeup, accessories, high heels, the whole gamut! In other words, a world that is so "real" for at least 80% of the entire female population of the planet, holds practically no meaning for me! Sure... if doing these things was an absolute necessity for my survival, I would learn them and do them too, but that wouldn't be me, right? It would just be a sort of "role-play"?

So then, on what basis do we determine a generic reality for everyone? How do we ascertain that "thought ABC" is just a dream while "XYZ" is real?

And when we "jump out" of our dreams, back into reality, how can we be really sure that it is indeed OUR reality that we've come back to? What if we've just "conditioned" ourselves into believing someone else's reality as our own? What if we've just grown accustomed to "fitting in" with the rest of the world?

What if the reality is that we are living someone else's dream... a "dream" with mass acceptance... a "dream" portrayed as "real" by our media?

What if in our REAL reality, we had wings so powerful we could reach the stars? Wings... powerful, yet frozen! If only we knew... if only we dared to use our "frozen wings", we could all make ourselves the Kings! So aptly said, Garry...


So why do we confine ourselves within a "reality" that may not hold any meaning for us really, except for being a mere "role-play"?

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NaBloPoMo

National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, was started as an adaptation of the yearly event - National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo), in which the participants write a complete novel within the month of November.

This writing project was started to encourage people to write. More specifically, it was especially meant for those 'perfectionists' who usually end up not doing a thing if they can't do it perfect.

NaNoWriMo encouraged writers to just write whatever came to their mind, without caring about how good/bad their writing was or whether anyone liked it or not.

NaBloPoMo then happened to give the writers a freedom to write about anything and not just a novel, i.e. even shorter daily blog posts. All participants of NaBloPoMo are required to write 30 posts in 30 days, or, in other words, 1 post daily. You can read more about this project and also check out my NaBloPoMo profile at their official website.


Initially, the NaBloPoMo was also started as a November project, just like the NaNoWriMo, but then it started happening every month of the year, instead of just November. The NaNoWriMo still takes place in November every year though.

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Beautiful Artwork

I have made some temporary changes to my blog template. Have taken off the summary posts code and have also changed the number of posts being displayed on the main page. Just testing something here... trying to eliminate/verify a probable cause for a certain behavior being shown by posts published here from early August onwards.

For this testing work, I need to publish a post with multiple images. So sharing some random pictures I collected during the time I used to play PuzzleBee Jigsaw Puzzles on Facebook.





Once I figure out what I'm looking for, I'll revert to the previous layout settings. Thanks for putting up with all my experiments!

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Review 'miss_teerious'

My baby is now 4 years old, and has been through many changes and grown a lot. I decided it's time to solicit some reviews finally.

Despite the fact that 'miss_teerious' still uses one of the classic blogger templates, a lot of extra functionalities have been added to it. Keeping in mind that this is a personal blog, feedback on the following areas will be highly appreciated:

1. Design and color scheme
2. Ease of navigation
3. Speed of loading
4. Content (Including language, style of writing, and presentation)
5. Overall experience

I also request you to mention any further scope for improvements that you might feel. (Besides moving over to Wordpress, that is! He he!)

Well, so you can get started right away. Just click on this image below.

You will get a page that looks like this:


- Click on the "Write a Review" button (circled in red above).

- It will ask you to login. You can either Connect with your Facebook account, OR click on "Register for an account" to create a FREE account on the site.

- Won't take more than a minute, after which you can pen down your thoughts about 'miss_teerious'... :)

If you want to read what other people think about 'miss_teerious', please click on the button below.

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Happy 4th Birthday!

miss_teerious turns 4 today...

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