George Bush joke

US president George Bush is very popular among late night show hosts like Jay Leno, David Lettermen, etc. and butt of jokes among a lot of American people. But internationally too he is equally popular. At a recent diplomatic level meeting between North and South Korea officials, to ease out the tension one of the officials cracked a joke on Mr. Bush's liberty. The joke goes something like this.
One spring morning Mr. Bush was having his jog around the White House as usual he was in deep thoughts about solving world issues ( read Iraq war). A speeding car was heading towards him, the driver honked but there was no affect on the president. Just then a group of children heading towards school dived towards Mr. Bush and saved his life.
Mr. Bush was so impressed by the act of bravery that he asked the children what they wanted. He gave them the freedom to ask anything and since he is the president he will fulfill their wish. The children replied that they would each like to get a cremation spot at the Arlington Memorial cemetery.
Mr.Bush was surprised with the answer. He asked the children for the reason behind such an unusual wish. To which the children replied "when our parents come to know what we have done they will kill us."

Keyboard shortcuts

The more time you spend everyday working with computers the switch between keyboard and mouse sometimes becomes an annoyance. And if you are using a laptop then don't even ask about the issues between switching from keboard to the laptop mouse.
I recently came across a great artcile about Productivity Ninja 101 keyobard short cuts. The list is simply amazing and Firefox short cuts are my favorite especially quick search using / and reopening closed tab using Ctrl + Shft + T.
A very very useful shortcut key mentioned in the post is F2 to edit a cell in Microsoft Excel. I will let you enjoy the article and make good use of the shortcut keys.
To add to the list are couple of more shortcuts you might want to try out

1.Windows
-alt +spacebar = Display shortcut menu for current window
-alt + spacebar + n = Shrink (minimize) current window
-alt + spacebar + x = Maximize current window

2. IE, while typing the web address press Ctrl+Enter enters the www. and .com and for Firefox additional support with Ctrl=Shift-Enter adds .org, and shift-enter fills in .net is provided.

3. Ever wondered the use of Windows key between Ctrl and Alt, it can be used for opening the Start menu and it provides some great shortcuts too

• Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
• Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
• Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
• Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
• Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
• Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
• Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)

If you know more such useful keyboard shortcuts please do share with us.

the man, the machine ....Street Hawk

How many of you can remember Street Hawk. If you cannot then let me refresh your memory, Street Hawk was a TV series telecast in India in the late 80's on Doordarshan at Sunday noon (originally it was telecast in the US for one season in 1985 on ABC). It probably the first show which showed how cooool bikes are. Well I am trying to recollect some good TV shows which I used to enjoy as a kid. Let me try to list them as I can remember them in no particular order.

1. Giant Robot (today I came to know the right name of this series - Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, for us it was alway Giant robot) - a Japanese series about this huge robot controlled by a kid, who fights the bad guys and weird creatures. This program was telecast on DD Metro and was a favorite (more info).
2. The World this Week - one of the best new programs to be telecast in India. I still miss the coverage by Pranab Roy and his team. They later on went to work with Star News and then created NDTV 24 hour news channel. But ' The World this Week' was the best.
   
3. Flop Show/Ulta-Pulta - a comedy show by Jaspal Batti and his group. This show consisted of just 13 episodes but all the shows were simply hilarious. It was probably the first comedy show which made Indians laugh at them selves. There were countless reruns of the show. Ulta-Pulta was a small segment program of 5 mins in the morning where jokes were presented.
4. Fauji - 'I say chap' who can forget this cool line. I guess now this show enjoys more popularity because it had Shahrukh Khan (a very popular Bollywood star) in his early struggling days on television. But a great show.
5. Didi's Comedy Show - One of my favorite foreign comedy shows. The show was orignally from Germany.
6. Wagle ki duniya - one of the best portrait of common (middle class) man 's life and problems in India
7. Malgudi days - "Swami .........ta na tana naaa....." , a kid's life growing up in a small South Indian town Malgudi. There were a number of short stories part of this program.
   
8. Dekh Bhai dekh/ Aa bail mujhe maar/ Idhar Udhar - a great bunch of actors thrown in together and results were very hilarious
9. Neev - one of the best serials about hostel life. It was great to watch kids getting in trouble learning from mistakes and how different hostels used to compete among themselves to be the best.
10. Spider Man - well not the movie series, it was the animation version which made us familiar to this Marvel comics super hero.
    
11. He-Man - this show was great fun, He-man and the Master's of the universe.... tune nu nu tu .........(music). Orko, Ramman, Skeletor, etc great bunch of characters.
    
12. Surabhi - great cultural educational program. I doubt any other program came close to it.

There is one more program which I really liked but couldn't recollect the name. It used to be a one hour segment on Sunday mornings sponsored by Tata Steel about animals. It was very informative. Well these were some of my favorite childhood programs. Feel free to share with us your favorite childhood programs.
Note: The following link has title song for some of the mentioned TV programs and many more, thanks Aditya for the link

Mother's Day

This post is a guest post written by my sister Darshana Chaube. I invited her to write a blog post and she chose to write on mother's. So enjoy reading her post.

Mother, Maa, Amma, Mummy, Mamma, Mom there are n number of ways you can call her but she is and will always be the MOST important person in every one’s life. Today on Mothers day I want to honor, celebrate motherhood and especially Thank them for what they are. It is rightly said, “GOD can not be everywhere that’s why he made Mothers”.
We don’t need a special day to tell our Mothers how important they are to us. It is something that should be felt and done daily, as the unconditional love and blessings that a Mother gives enables a normal human being to achieve the impossible. Like Fathers are the backbone of a family financially a Mother is the backbone of a family emotionally. Being a full time Mother is one of the highest paid jobs in the world as the salary is pure Love.
Mothers are the most selfless people as they always think about their children before they think about themselves. We all know how important she is to us but still we forget to appreciate her. Its sad these days to see children just avoiding or throwing their parents after they feel they are too grownup to take care of themselves. We need to be more responsible and thank our Mothers for all what they have done. Small gestures speak volumes.
On today’s special occasion I want to thank my Mother for being the most wonderful and beautiful person ever. I can go on writing about my mother, but to sum up today’s special day I would like to say .

“Ma, some day I would like to grow up to be Just like you –PERFECT “.

Contradicting Oneself

Couple of days back I wrote a blog post about looking back at one year of blogging. In the post I mentioned about having a more focussed blog with posts related to one topic or a group of topics. I asked for inputs from my readers too what they would like to read. One of the comments for the post from Aditya Ayre mentioned the following

Well, isn't it "Rohit's nukkad"?
Write whatever is in/around your 'nukkad'.
and keep us amused

This comment put a smile on my face, it made me realize that my new approach of having a focussed group of topics on the blog was not in compliance with my blog title "Rohit's Nukkad". "Nukkad" is a Hindi word meaning "street corner" which is an ideal meeting place for friends to hang out and talk about anything under the sun. So changing the blog title should be the first step if the new approach of specific topic posts has to be put in practice. Well I won't do that, I will continue to write on Rohit's Nukkad on topics which I find interesting and keep my readers amused.

Mother's Day story

Second Sunday of May is celebrated as Mother's day in the United Sates and number of other countries. This year it falls on the 13th of May. The story behind Mother's day celebration in US is an interesting one.
Anna Reeve Jarvis, a young West Virginia homemaker, during the Civil War started something called Mothers' Work Days. The idea was group of women to work for better sanitary conditions during the war. After her death her daughter, Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first Mother's day was celebrated in her honor in 1908. Though it started as a local West Virginia tradition soon it spread throughout the nation and by 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's day to recognize and honour all those mothers whose sons have died in war.
Very soon commercialization creeped into the holiday and materialistic things mattered more than the sentiments and trueness of honouring our mothers. Seeing all this Anna Jarvis, became a major opponent of the holiday and worked against removing it as a national holiday till the end of her life. However as it is seen today, Mother's Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful US holidays.
I hope you won't make this Mother's day a commercial and materialistic affair and thank your mother just one day of the year.

You can read more about mother's day celebrations in other countries here

Why Cricket World cup 2007 blog FAILED ?

In my previous post I mentioned about my failed attempt to continue a second blog - Cricket World Cup 2007. The whole purpose of started the blog was I wanted to have a blog with focusing on one topic, with cricket world cup 2007 just 2 months away (I started writing the blog in January 2007) it proved to be an ideal topic to write about. I started off with a lot of curiosity and did some ground work like understanding the tournament format, studying the teams, their pre tournament standing, which team will perform good in Caribbean conditions and which teams will surprise.
But soon I realized that websites like cricinfo, the official cricket world cup 2007 website were very well at giving updated information related with the world cup. It didn't make sense to just copy material from these websites. I was finding it dificult to get original blog material. I couldn't find any other well written blog related with the topic. Yes jorunalists and reporters of major TV channels and newspapers have there cricketing blogs but an open, unbiased view was missing. Another thing which contributed towards my loosing interest with the blog was "India's inconsistent performance". If you are an Indian team fan you will understand what I trying to say. India has a great bunch of players, but everything is holds good only on paper. The team is always full of surprises. This contributes to a love and hate relation with the game for its fans including myself. One time the team gives some great performance that we(fans) just have cricket to talk about but the other times the team will be defeated by some lowly ranked teams in the most pathetic manner and we just want to hang our players and never want to see a game of cricket ever(though soon everything gets forgiven and foregotten pretty soon).
Truly speaking the blog never took off in reality. When I started the blog World cup was 2 months away hence it was expected that I make at least one blog post per day but I just didn't contribute to the cause. After writing just three article I just let the blog sit there.
Anyway the experience helped me explore another blog hosting website - wordpress. After exploring their tools and services I was very impressed and I will get back to them with another blog topic in the future. The blogging experience made me realize that I enjoy cricket more to play than to watch and read about it.

One year of blogging

Today marks one year of blogging on "Rohit's Nukkad. Well quite an achievement with 48 posts and about 100 comments made in the past one year. It depicts a consistent blog updating effort at the same time keen interest from my readers. I was just going over my first blog post Express yourself and trying to analyze how the blogging experience has been over the past one year and what I plan to make changes in future.
I started of writing pretty long posts and mostly discussing about myself. I was under the impression that blog would be like an online diary. But soon I realized there is tons of blogging material around me like office love story or inspiration about life from common people like - Lala (this is my favorite article). Movies and articles related with movies have been a good chunk of my blog posts. May be about 30%, however I have tried to refrain myself from being a movie critic and just focusing on things which strikes me in the movie like some dialogue or may be some scene which just blew me off.
My initial months of blogging were the most enthusiastic ones however a good five months from August to December 2006 I went into hibernation. I just contributed 9 posts over this period with no posts in the month of November. However a new year resolution and determination to continue with blogging helped me. And since January 2007 I have made it a point to write at least one post per week.
In January I started another blog about Cricket 2007 World cup. I failed pretty miserably with it. The reason why this blog failed and what I learned from it I will discuss in a future post.
My blog has been very inconsistent with the choice of post material. In one post I might discuss some cool Internet tool and the next I discuss about some movie. This is one of the things I would like to change and focus on one or group of related topics in future. I would love to get feedback from my readers what they would like to read on my blog. Another aspect of my blog which I would like to change is write more interesting post and not just write for the sake of writing.