Tuesday, 21 February 2017

Ankit Trivedi - Gujarati language poet, writer, columnist and comperer

Ankit Trivedi  is a Gujarati language poet, writer, columnist and comperer from Gujarat, India.[1] His significant works includes Gazal Purvak (collection of ghazal) and Geet Purvak (collection of geet). The Indian National Theater, Mumbai awarded him the Shayda Award of the year 2008 for his contribution in Gujarati ghazal. He has also received the Takhtasinh Parmar Prize, Yuva Gaurav Puraskar and Yuva Puraskar. He edited Gazalvishwa, a Gujarati ghazal poetry journal, from 2006 to 2007.





Early life

Trivedi was born on 9 March 1981 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat to Amarishktmar and Jayshribahen. He took his schooling at Ahmedabad and completed Bachelor of Commerce from Gujarat University.

Works
Harsh Chhaya, Ankit Trivedi and Abhishek Jain at GLF - 2016

He published his first anthology Gazalpurvak (collection of ghazal) in 2006, followed by Geet Purvak. Maitrivishwa (2006) is a collection of essays written by him.
Compilation


Native name     અંકિત અમરીષકુમાર ત્રિવેદી
Born     Ankit Amarishkumr Trivedi
March 9, 1981 (age 35)
Ahmedabad
Occupation     poet, writer, comperer, columnist
Language     Gujarati
Nationality     Indian
Education     Bachelor of Commerce
Alma mater     Gujarat University
Genres     ghazal, geet
Notable works    

    Gazal Purvak (2006)
    Geet Purvak

Notable awards    

    Takhtasinh Parmar Prize (2006-07)
    Shayda Award (2008)
    Yuva Gaurav Puraskar (2011)
    Yuva Puraskar (2016)

Signature    

Play

    Varsad Bhinjve
    Parpotana Gharma
    Urmila (Ekokti)
    Baa Ne Gher Baabo Aavyo
    Aa Kokilanu Kain Karo

Filmography

He wrote dialogues for 2017 Gujarati comedy film Carry On Kesar.
Recognition

Trivedi awarded the Takhtasinh Parmar Prize (2006–07) by Gujarati Sahitya Parishad for his book Gazal Purvak. In 2008, He won the Shayda Award instituted by Indian National Theater, Mumbai. His collection of Geet, Geetpurvak, was awarded by Bhanuprasad Pandya Prize (2010–11) instituted by Gujarati Sahitya Parishad. He also received the Yuva Gaurav Puraskar (2011) instituted by Gujarat Sahitya Akademi and Harindra Dave Memorial Award (2011).[7] In 2016, He received Yuva Puraskar for his book Gazal Purvak.

    Avinashi Avinash
    Mahendi Na Paan
    Masoom Hawa Na Misra (collection of the ghazal of new generation)
    Missing Bakshi
    Kahevat Vishwa
    Sambhare Re, Balpan Na Sambharna (2011)
    Jivan Na Hakarno Photograph (2014)
    Sol Varas Ni Mosam (2014) (Compilation of poems in Gujarati)
    Close Up Nu Smile Please

Ankit at Gujarati Literature Festival 2016 (cropped).png
at Gujarati Literature Festival, 2016

Monday, 20 February 2017

Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook Founder

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is the chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Facebook.His net worth is estimated to be US $53.6 billion as of 2017, ranking him the 5th richest person in the world.
Zuckereberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms on February 4, 2004. He was assisted by his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The group then introduced Facebook to other college campuses.








Facebook expanded rapidly, reaching one billion users by 2012. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.

In December 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that over the course of their lives they would give the majority of their wealth to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" in the spirit of The Giving Pledge. On December 1, 2015, they announced they would eventually give 99% of their Facebook shares (worth about $45 billion at the time) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year distinction. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People. According to Forbes Magazine, Zuckerberg has a net worth of $55.9 billion USD as of February 2017.

Early life

Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. He is the son of Karen (Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist. His ancestors came from Germany, Austria and Polan He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small Westchester County village about 21 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.Zuckerberg was raised Jewish and had his bar mitzvah when he turned 13.

At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classes. He transferred to the exclusive private school Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, in his junior year, where he won prizes in science (math, astronomy, and physics) and classical studies. On his college application, Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was captain of the fencing team.
Software developer
Early years

Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software in middle school. His father taught him Atari BASIC Programming in the 1990s, and later hired software developer David Newman to tutor him privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy", adding that it was "tough to stay ahead of him". Zuckerberg took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home while still in high school. He enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. In one program, since his father's dental practice was operated from their home, he built a software program he called "ZuckNet" that allowed all the computers between the house and dental office to communicate with each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.

According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas, "some kids played computer games. Mark created them." Zuckerberg himself recalls this period: "I had a bunch of friends who were artists. They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it." However, notes Vargas, Zuckerberg was not a typical "geek-klutz", as he later became captain of his prep school fencing team and earned a classics diploma. Napster co-founder Sean Parker, a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was "really into Greek odysseys and all that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from the Roman epic poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.

During Zuckerberg's high school years, he worked under the company name Intelligent Media Group to build a music player called the Synapse Media Player. The device used machine learning to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine.
College years

Vargas noted that by the time Zuckerberg began classes at Harvard, he had already achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy". He studied psychology and computer science and belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program that he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best looking person from a choice of photos. According to Arie Hasit, Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, "he built the site for fun". Hasit explains:

    We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking.

The site went up over a weekend; but by Monday morning, the college shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed one of Harvard's network switches and prevented students from accessing the Internet. In addition, many students complained that their photos were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran articles stating that his site was "completely improper."

The following semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to The Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation in response.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg in 2014
Born Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
May 14, 1984 (age 32)
White Plains, New York, U.S.
Residence Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation Computer programmer, internet entrepreneur
Years active 2004–present
Known for Co-founder of Facebook
Home town Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.
Salary One-dollar salary
Net worth Increase $55.9 billion USD (February 2017)
Title Chairman and CEO of Facebook
Spouse(s) Priscilla Chan (m. 2012)
Children 1
Relatives Randi Zuckerberg (sister)
Website facebook.com/zuck
Signature
Mark Zuckerberg Signature.svg


Following the official launch of the Facebook social media platform, the three filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg that resulted in a settlement. The agreed settlement was for 1.2 million Facebook shares that were worth US$300 million at Facebook's IPO.

Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project. In January 2014, Zuckerberg recalled:

    I remember really vividly, you know, having pizza with my friends a day or two after—I opened up the first version of Facebook at the time I thought, "You know, someone needs to build a service like this for the world." But I just never thought that we'd be the ones to help do it. And I think a lot of what it comes down to is we just cared more.









Education
Career
Zuckerberg listening to President Barack Obama before a private meeting where Obama dined with technology business leaders in Woodside, California, February 17, 2011. Also seen in the picture are Carol Bartz of Yahoo!, Art Levinson of Genentech, Steve Westly of The Westly Group, and Eric Schmidt of Google.
Facebook
Main articles: Facebook, History of Facebook, and Timeline of Facebook

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004. An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published its own student directory, "The Photo Address Book", which students referred to as "The Facebook". Such photo directories were an important part of the student social experience at many private schools. With them, students were able to list attributes such as their class years, their friends, and their telephone numbers.


Once at college, Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as just a "Harvard thing" until Zuckerberg decided to spread it to other schools, enlisting the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They began with Columbia, New York University, Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Yale.Samyr Laine, a triple jumper representing Haiti at the 2012 Summer Olympics, shared a room with Zuckerberg during Facebook's founding. "Mark was clearly on to great things," said Laine, who was Facebook's fourteenth user.


After Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and some friends moved to Palo Alto, California, they leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in California. They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy the company. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning: "It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me."

He restated these goals to Wired magazine in 2010: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open." Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for Facebook. On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500 million-user mark. When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:

    I guess we could..... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads..... That's the simplest thing we could do. But we aren't like that. We make enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are growing at the rate we want to.

In 2010, Steven Levy, who wrote the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker". Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better". Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project. The company provided music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg, regularly attended. "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night", Zuckerberg told Levy. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook now..... It's definitely very core to my personality."

Vanity Fair magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age". Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009. In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.

In a 2011 interview with PBS shortly after the death of Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on how to create a management team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good things as you are".

On October 1, 2012, Zuckerberg visited Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to stimulate social media innovation in Russia and to boost Facebook's position in the Russian market. Russia's communications minister tweeted that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged the social media giant's founder to abandon plans to lure away Russian programmers and instead consider opening a research center in Moscow. In 2012, Facebook had roughly 9 million users in Russia, while domestic clone VK had around 34 million. Rebecca Van Dyck, Facebook's head of consumer marketing, claimed that 85 million American Facebook users were exposed to the first day of the Home promotional campaign on April 6, 2013.

On August 19, 2013, the Washington Post reported that Zuckerberg's Facebook profile was hacked by an unemployed web developer.
At the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt conference, held in September, Zuckerberg stated that he is working towards registering the 5 billion humans who were not connected to the Internet as of the conference on Facebook. Zuckerberg then explained that this is intertwined with the aim of the Internet.org project, whereby Facebook, with the support of other technology companies, seeks to increase the number of people connected to the internet.
Zuckerberg was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona, Spain, in March 2014, which was attended by 75,000 delegates. Various media sources highlighted the connection between Facebook's focus on mobile technology and Zuckerberg's speech, claiming that mobile represents the future of the company.Zuckerberg's speech expands upon the goal that he raised at the TechCrunch conference in September 2013, whereby he is working towards expanding Internet coverage into developing countries.

Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the "Internet czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's online policy, at Facebook's headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he attempted to converse in Mandarin Chinese—although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the people and was at the university to help fuel the nation's burgeoning entrepreneur sector.

Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A session at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014. The founder and CEO explained that he does not believe Facebook is a waste of time because it facilitates social engagement, and participating in a public session was so that he could "learn how to better serve the community".

Zuckerberg receives a one-dollar salary as CEO of Facebook. On December 3, 2016 Forbes reported Facebook shares have declined 7% since November 8, 2016, reducing Zuckerberg's net worth by 3.7 billion dollars.In June 2016, Business Insider named Zuckerberg one of the "Top 10 Business Visionaries Creating Value for the World" along with Elon Musk and Sal Khan, due to the fact that he and his wife "pledged to give away 99% of their wealth — which is estimated at over $52.1 billion.

Friday, 17 February 2017

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II  born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African American to serve as president, as well as the first born outside the contiguous United States. He previously served in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state. He grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U.S. Senate. Obama received national attention in 2004, with his unexpected March primary win, his well-received July Democratic National Convention keynote address, and his landslide November election to the Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began, and after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. He became president-elect after defeating Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.


During his first two years in office, Obama signed more landmark legislation than any Democratic president since LBJ's Great Society. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 served as economic stimulus amidst the Great Recession, but the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives in 2011. After a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. In foreign policy, Obama increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U.S.-Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, and the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Barack Obama

President Barack Obama.jpg

44th President of the United States
In office
January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017
Vice President Joe Biden
Preceded by George W. Bush
Succeeded by Donald Trump
United States Senator
from Illinois
In office
January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008
Preceded by Peter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by Roland Burris
Member of the Illinois Senate
from the 13th district
In office
January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded by Alice Palmer
Succeeded by Kwame Raoul
Personal details
Born Barack Hussein Obama II
August 4, 1961 (age 55)
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Michelle Robinson (m. 1992)
Children
  • Malia
  • Sasha
Parents Barack Obama Sr.
Ann Dunham
Relatives Maya Soetoro (half-sister)
Education
  • Occidental College
  • Columbia University (BA)
  • Harvard University (JD)
Awards Nobel Peace Prize (2009)
Signature
Website
  • Organizing for Action
  • Obama Foundation
  • The White House (Archived)

After winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. During his second term, Obama promoted greater inclusiveness for LGBT Americans, with his administration filing briefs that urged the Supreme Court to strike down same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional (United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges). Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, following the invasion in Ukraine, initiated the sanctions against Russia, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized U.S. relations with Cuba.

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Aryabhata

Aryabhata (Sanskrit: आर्यभट; IAST: Āryabhaṭa) or Aryabhata I (476–550 CE) was the first of the major mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His works include the Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE, when he was 23 years old) and the Arya-siddhanta.



Biography

Name

While there is a tendency to misspell his name as "Aryabhatta" by analogy with other names having the "bhatta" suffix, his name is properly spelled Aryabhata: every astronomical text spells his name thus, including Brahmagupta's references to him "in more than a hundred places by name".Furthermore, in most instances "Aryabhatta" would not fit the metre either.

Time and place of birth

Aryabhata mentions in the Aryabhatiya that it was composed 3,600 years into the Kali Yuga, when he was 23 years old. This corresponds to 499 CE, and implies that he was born in 476. Aryabhata called himself a native of Kusumapura or Pataliputra (present day Patna).

Other hypothesis

Bhāskara I describes Aryabhata as āśmakīya, "one belonging to the Aśmaka country." During the Buddha's time, a branch of the Aśmaka people settled in the region between the Narmada and Godavari rivers in central India.
It has been claimed that the aśmaka (Sanskrit for "stone") where Aryabhata originated may be the present day Kodungallur which was the historical capital city of Thiruvanchikkulam of ancient Kerala. This is based on the belief that Koṭuṅṅallūr was earlier known as Koṭum-Kal-l-ūr ("city of hard stones"); however, old records show that the city was actually Koṭum-kol-ūr ("city of strict governance"). Similarly, the fact that several commentaries on the Aryabhatiya have come from Kerala has been used to suggest that it was Aryabhata's main place of life and activity; however, many commentaries have come from outside Kerala, and the Aryasiddhanta was completely unknown in Kerala. K. Chandra Hari has argued for the Kerala hypothesis on the basis of astronomical evidence.
Aryabhata mentions "Lanka" on several occasions in the Aryabhatiya, but his "Lanka" is an abstraction, standing for a point on the equator at the same longitude as his Ujjayini.

Education

It is fairly certain that, at some point, he went to Kusumapura for advanced studies and lived there for some time. Both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, as well as Bhāskara I (CE 629), identify Kusumapura as Pāṭaliputra, modern Patna. A verse mentions that Aryabhata was the head of an institution (kulapa) at Kusumapura, and, because the university of Nalanda was in Pataliputra at the time and had an astronomical observatory, it is speculated that Aryabhata might have been the head of the Nalanda university as well. Aryabhata is also reputed to have set up an observatory at the Sun temple in Taregana, Bihar.

Works

Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on mathematics and astronomy, some of which are lost.
His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines.
The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary, Varahamihira, and later mathematicians and commentators, including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I. This work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta and uses the midnight-day reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. It also contained a description of several astronomical instruments: the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra), possibly angle-measuring devices, semicircular and circular (dhanur-yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called the chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.
A third text, which may have survived in the Arabic translation, is Al ntf or Al-nanf. It claims that it is a translation by Aryabhata, but the Sanskrit name of this work is not known.
Probably dating from the 9th century, it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī.

Monday, 23 January 2017

Pan Nalin

Pan Nalin is an Indian film director, screenwriter and documentary maker. Nalin is best known for directing award-winning films like Samsara, Valley of Flowers, and Ayurveda: Art
of Being. His debut film, Samsara went on to win awards like "Grand Jury Prize – Special Mention" at AFI Fest and "Most Popular Feature Film" at Melbourne International Film Festival in 2002. His next film will be Buddha: The Inner Warrior, a biographical film of Siddhartha Gautama.



Contents

  • 1 Biography
  • 2 Filmography
  • 3 References
  • 4 External links

Biography

Nalin was born as Nalin Kumar Pandya, in a small town in Gujarat, India. His father owns a tea stall at Khijadiya railway station near Amreli He lives in India and France.
Pan Nalin studied Fine Arts at the M. S. University of Baroda and went on to learn Design at the National Institute of Design. He made four animation films and twenty short silent films before moving to Mumbai where he worked as production runner until directors realised his potential and started to give him opportunities to direct commercials and corporate films.
Pan Nalin, came into global limelight with his debut feature Samsara (2001).
As a child, Nalin disliked schools; instead he used to paint and draw. He also staged mythological dramas and folk plays.
He saw his first movie at age nine. As a teenager, he left his village in pursuit of cinema. After studies in Fine Arts at the M.S. University of Baroda, Nalin went to learn Design at the NID (National Institute of Design).
He travelled widely in India and finally moved to Mumbai (Bombay) where he worked as production runner. Producers recognised Nalin's talent and offered him a chance to direct commercials and corporate films.
Nalin lived in the US and UK for a short period and then set out for six-month-long nomadic existence in Europe. On returning to India, he roamed the Himalayas.
Nalin experimented with the short fiction film forms and made documentaries with BBC, Discovery, Canal Plus and other international networks. His multiple award winning feature documentary Ayurveda: Art Of Being was theatrically released worldwide with major success. Ayurveda celebrated a yearlong theatrical run in Spain and record-breaking three-year-long run in France. The film met with similar success in US, Canada, Germany, Holland…
His first feature film Samsara was a success worldwide and won him some thirty plus international awards. Many critics and spectators considered Samsara a groundbreaking film. Miramax/Disney has acquired the film for the US.
Nalin's feature film Valley of Flowers was presold to 35 countries and is considered a major underground hit. It continues to enjoy theatrical release with critical and commercial success worldwide. The film was filmed in remote, high altitude Himalayas and in Japan. It won Best Picture at IFFLA Los Angeles, and won four nominations at IAAC New York, including The Best Picture and The Best Director.
Nalin's tragicomedy script Slightly Sane won the CJ Entertainment's Award for The Best International Project at Pusan International Film Festival, South Korea. Nalin is also working on English language pictures, the line-up includes a film on life of Buddha, an action-adventure epic The First Warrior and supernatural thriller titled H2O.
For the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009, United Nation's project Visual Telegrams invited 30 popular filmmakers from 30 countries to make a short film on our environment. Pan Nalin is among the invitees and only Indian to join leagues of well known directors like Stephen Frears, Paul Haggis, and Emir Kusturica.
In 2006 Pan Nalin was awarded Spain's award Vida Sana for his contribution to ecology. Also in 2007, TMG (David Flint's Triangle Media Group UK) awarded Pan Nalin as one of the Top 50 Achievers in Global Mainstream Media in the field of film, theatre and drama.
Pan Nalin has served as jury member at international film festivals along with celebrities like; Roman Polanski, Maria de Medeiros, Jamel Debbouze, Ludivine Sagnier, David Wenham, Paz Vega, Sandrine Bonnaire and Teddy Chan.
Pan Nalin is probably the only Indian screenwriter to be twice invited to a Screenwriter's lab Equinoxe along with top Hollywood screenwriters like; Ron Bass, David and Janet Peoples, James V. Hart and Shane Black among others. Legendary Diva of French Cinema Jeanne Moreau headed the writer's lab. Pan Nalin's latest tragicomedy screenplay Slightly Sane won the CJ Entertainment's Award for the Best International Project at Pusan 2009.
Pan Nalin has been invited to be on panels at literature, arts or media conclaves. At the Jaipur Literature Festival Nalin was invited for " Art of Adaptation for Screen " conclave with Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. Nalin was also invited, along with the delegation headed by Mr. Amitabh Bachchan; to be on the panel for France-India Coproduction forum at Salon du Cinema in Paris.

Filmography

  • 1991 The Khajuraho (short)
  • 1993 The Tulkus
  • 1994 The Nagas (documentary)
  • 1995 The Doubt (short)
  • 1996 Kaal
  • 1997 The Devadasi (documentary)
  • 1997 Eiffel Tower Trilogy: Height, Weight & Gravity (short)
  • 1999 Amazing World India (documentary)
  • 2001 Samsara
  • 2001 Ayurveda: Art of Being (documentary) 
  • 2006 Valley of Flowers
  • 2009 Echo of Eco (short)
  • 2013 Faith Connections (documentary)
  • 2015 Angry Indian Goddesses
  • 2016 Buddha: The Inner Warrior

Siddhartha Lal

Siddhartha Lal (Hindi: सिद्धार्थ लाल) is an Indian entrepreneur and businessman. Siddhartha is the son of Vikram Lal and is the Chief executive officer and Managing Director of Eicher Motors, a Director of Eicher Goodearth Limited and Chairman & MD of VE Commercial Vehicles. Siddhartha Lal is credited with the turnaround and revival of the legendary Indian motorcycle "Royal Enfield Bullet" (manufactured by Royal Enfield)


Early life and education

Siddhartha Lal is son of Vikram Lal who was the Chief executive officer of Eicher Motors. Like his father, Siddhartha too attended The Doon School for his secondary education. After completing his twelfth grade, Lal attended the St. Stephen's College in Delhi and attained Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in the year 1994. Between 1996-1998, he attained Postgraduate diploma in Mechanical engineering from Cranfield University and Master of Science degree in Automotive engineering from University of Leeds in United Kingdom.

Career

Siddhartha Lal, after completing his education started working with MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG. He joined Eicher Group in 1999, working in various capacities in the Eicher tractor division, and then became CEO of Royal Enfield in 2000 (at the age of 26) aiming to end the unit's losses. From 2000 to 2004, he worked out of Royal Enfield's headquarters in Chennai, introducing cost-cutting measures and product upgrades.“Honestly, at age 26, it seemed a fun thing to do. I could eat, sleep, ride and talk motorcycles,” Siddhartha said in a 2015 interview.
In Jan 2004, Lal was appointed as the Chief operating officer of Eicher Motors. On 1 May 2006, Siddhartha Lal took over as the Chief executive officer and Managing Director of Eicher Motors.

Positions held

Position Company
CEO & MD Eicher Motors
Director Eicher Goodearth Limited
Chairman & MD VE Commercial Vehicles
Director Eicher Goodearth Holdings
Director Eicher Holding
Director Eicher Investments
CEO & MD Royal Enfield Motorcycles
Director Design Intent Engineering
Director Hoff & Associates

Personal life

Siddhartha Lal relocated from Delhi to London, in August 2015, in order to be close to Royal Enfield's new R&D centre in Leicestershire "We are in the process of developing engines for the international markets and lots of developmental work is happening in the UK. It is for that I have decided to move to the UK for one year," he said.

See also

  • Royal Enfield Bullet
  • Eicher Motors

Saturday, 7 January 2017

Sandford Fleming

Sir Sandford FlemingKCMG (January 7, 1827 – July 22, 1915) was a Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to colonial Canada at the age of 18. He proposed worldwide standard time zones, designed Canada's first postage stamp, left a huge body of surveying and map making, engineered much of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada and founder of the Royal Canadian Institute, a science organization in Toronto.



Early life

In 1827, Fleming was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland to Andrew and Elizabeth Fleming. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed as a surveyor and in 1845, at the age of 18, he emigrated with his older brother David to colonial Canada. Their route took them through many cities of the Canadian colonies: Quebec City, Montreal, and Kingston, before settling in Peterborough with their cousins two years later in 1847. He qualified as a surveyor in Canada in 1849.
In 1849 he created the Royal Canadian Institute with several friends, which was formally incorporated on November 4, 1851. Although initially intended as a professional institute for surveyors and engineers it became a more general scientific society. In 1851 he designed the Threepenny Beaver, the first Canadian postage stamp. Throughout this time he was fully employed as a surveyor, mostly for the Grand Trunk Railway. His work for them eventually gained him the position as Chief Engineer of the Northern Railway of Canada in 1855, where he advocated the construction of iron bridges instead of wood for safety reasons.
Fleming served in the 10th Battalion Volunteer Rifles of Canada (later known as the Royal Regiment of Canada) and was appointed to the rank of Captain on January 1, 1862. He retired from the militia in 1865.

Family

Fleming with his grandchildren in 1893
As soon as he arrived in Peterborough, Ontario in 1845, Fleming became friendly with the family of his future wife, the Halls, and was attracted to Ann Jane (Jeanie) Hall. However, it was not until a sleigh accident almost ten years later that the young people’s love for each other was revealed. A year after this incident, in January 1855, Sandford married Ann Jane (Jean) Hall. They were to have nine children of whom two died young. The oldest son, Frank Andrew, accompanied Fleming in his great Western expedition of 1872. A family man, deeply attached to his wife and children, he also welcomed his father Andrew Greig Fleming, Andrew's wife and six of their other children who came to join him in Canada two years after his arrival. The Fleming and Hall families saw each other often.
After the death of his wife Jeanie in 1888, Fleming's niece Miss Elsie Smith, daughter of Alexander and Lily Smith, of Kingussie, Scotland, presided over his household at "Winterholme" 213 Chapel Street, Ottawa, Ontario.

Railway engineer

His time at the Northern Railway was marked by conflict with the architect Frederick William Cumberland, with whom he started the Canadian Institute and who was general manager of the railway until 1855. Starting as assistant engineer in 1852, Fleming replaced Cumberland in 1855 but was in turn ousted by him in 1862. In 1863 he became the chief government surveyor of Nova Scotia charged with the construction of a line from Truro to Pictou. When he would not accept the tenders from contractors that he considered too high, he was asked to bid for the work himself and completed the line by 1867 with both savings for the government and profit for himself.
Sandford Fleming (in tallest hat) at the ceremony of the "last spike" being driven on the Canadian Pacific Railway
In 1862 he placed before the government a plan for a transcontinental railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.The first part, between Halifax and Quebec became an important part of the preconditions for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to join the Canadian Federation because of the uncertainties of travel through Maine because of the American Civil War. In 1867 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the Intercolonial Railway which became a federal project and he continued in this post till 1876. His insistence on building the bridges of iron and stone instead of wood was controversial at the time, but was soon vindicated by their resistance to fire.[8]
By 1871, the strategy of a railway connection was being used to bring British Columbia into federation and Fleming was offered the chief engineer post on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Although he hesitated because of the amount of work he had, in 1872 he set off with a small party to survey the route, particularly through the Rocky Mountains, finding a practicable route through the Yellowhead Pass. One of his companions, George Monro Grant wrote an account of the trip, which became a best-seller. By 1880, with 600 miles completed, a change of government brought a desire for a private company to own the whole project and Fleming was dismissed by Sir Charles Tupper, with a $30,000 payoff. It was the hardest blow of Fleming's life, though he obtained a promise of monopoly, later revoked, on his next project, a trans-pacific telegraph cable.[8] Nevertheless, in 1884 he became a director of the Canadian Pacific Railway and was present as the last spike was driven.

Inventor of worldwide standard time

After missing a train in 1876 in Ireland because its printed schedule listed p.m. instead of a.m., he proposed a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the centre of the Earth, not linked to any surface meridian. At a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute, on February 8, 1879, he linked it to the anti-meridian of Greenwich (now 180°). He suggested that standard time zones could be used locally, but they were subordinate to his single world time, which he called Cosmic Time. He continued to promote his system at major international conferences including the International Meridian Conference of 1884. That conference accepted a different version of Universal Time but refused to accept his zones, stating that they were a local issue outside its purview. Nevertheless, by 1929, all major countries in the world had accepted time zones.

Later life

When the railway privatization instituted by Tupper in 1880 forced him out of a job with government, he retired from the world of surveying, and took the position of Chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.  He held this position for his last 35 years, where his former Minister George Monro Grant was principal from 1877 until Grant's death in 1902. Not content to leave well enough alone, he tirelessly advocated the construction of a submarine telegraph cable connecting all of the British Empire, the All Red Line, which was completed in 1902.
He also kept up with business ventures, becoming in 1882 one of the founding owners of the Nova Scotia Cotton Manufacturing Company in Halifax. He was a member of the North British Society.[14] He also helped found the Western Canada Cement and Coal Company, which spawned the company town of Exshaw, Alberta. In 1910, this business was captured in a hostile take-over by stock manipulators acting under the name Canada Cement Company, which action was said by some to lead to an emotional depression that would contribute to Fleming's death a short time later.
In 1880 he served as the vice president of the Ottawa Horticultural Society.
His accomplishments were well known worldwide, and in 1897 he was knighted by Queen Victoria. He was a freemason.
In 1883, while surveying the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway with George Monro Grant, he met Major A. B. Rogers near the summit of Rogers Pass (British Columbia) and co-founded the first "Alpine Club of Canada".] That early alpine club was short-lived, but in 1906 the modern Alpine Club of Canada was founded in Winnipeg, and the by then Sir Sandford Fleming became the Club's first Patron and Honorary President.
In his later years he retired to his house in Halifax, later deeding the house and the 95 acres (38 hectares) to the city, now known as Sir Sandford Fleming Park (Dingle Park). He also kept a residence in Ottawa, and was buried there, in the Beechwood Cemetery.

Legacy

Fleming Memorial Plaque: "Inventor of Standard Time", War Memorial Gardens, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland
The town of Fleming, Saskatchewan (located on the Canadian Pacific Railway) was named in his honour in 1882.[20]
Fleming Hall was built in his honour at Queen's in 1901, and rebuilt after a fire in 1932. It was the home of the university's Electrical Engineering department.
In Peterborough, Ontario, Fleming College, a Community College of Applied Arts and Technology bearing his name, was opened in 1967, with additional campuses in Lindsay/Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton, and Cobourg.
Also, the main building of University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and Sandford Fleming Academy are named after Fleming (Sandford Fleming building).
Sir Sanford Fleming elementary school was built in Vancouver in 1913.
Sir Sandford Fleming Academy, formerly a public high school in North York (1960s-2011) and now Dante Alighieri Academy (Catholic) Beatrice Campus, was named for him as well.
Mount Sir Sandford, which is the highest mountain in the Sir Sandford Range of the Selkirk Mountains, and the 12th highest peak in British Columbia, is named after him.
On January 7th 2017 Google celebrated Standford Fleming's 190th birthday with a Google Doodle.