Swine Flu : is it a pandemic waiting to happen ?

Swine Flu : is it a pandemic waiting to happen ? This is the question on everybody's mind. Daily news of spreading of swine flu. World Health Organization has increased threat level to 4 to 5. This decision by WHO to increase an alert at Phases 4 or 5 triggers signal that the virus is becoming increasingly adept at spreading among humans. Phase 6 is for a full-blown pandemic, characterized by outbreaks in at least two regions of the world.

Flu happens because of virus. These viruses have multiple strains . They do mutate into more dangerous strains and become vaccine immune over a period of time. Time to time flu virus migrate from birds or animals to humans. Because of the newness of the protein strains humans do not have immunity against those migrated flu viruses. Due to this reason, it spread faster in human.

There are tons of good information about H1N1 virus and its scientific explanation about how these viruses evolve, spread and vaccinations been used against them.

In case pandemic happens, as a worst case scenario, definitely countries are already prepared for such outbreak. The reason for that preparedness was bird flu threat. The vaccination research is going around the clock with very faster speed.

In such condition, common people like you and me, what can we do.

1. Of course, first important thing is not to panic.


2. next is to build own immunity towards influenza/flu.
   
   • There is no vaccination available for swine flu.
     
   • But still health organization are advising to be updated with common flu vaccination. Though the existing flu vaccination is not effective, it still protects from other strains of flu viruses.
     
   • Staying healthy by eating statin enriched food or may getting statin medicine prescribed
   • Keeping immune system in well condition to fight in case required. This involves sleeping enough, eating healthy food which are rich with anti-oxidants
     
   
   
   
   
3. wash your hands before eating and after eating with soap and warm water.


4. Sanitize your hands after touching door knob, phone, public places or shaking hands etc using alcohol based sanitizer.


5. In case of sneezing and coughing to cover mouth and nose. Dispose that napkin in proper bin. Make sure to sanitize hands with alcohol based sanitizer,


6. • Avoid traveling to areas where swine flu outbreak is happening. If it is unavoidable due to business or personal reasons, take precaution as mentioned above.
   • Depending on your daily routines and requirements, avoid crowded public places, schools, public gathering places. This will reduce risk of getting infection.


7. Keep updated information about swine flu development, vaccinations, any new precautionary measures which is been published and various health organizations announcements.

There is an interesting tool 'Google Flu Trends'. I come across while looking for flu trends. Interestingly this tool shows currently flu activity and trends are very low. Here is an explanation from Google.org about this flu trend tool:

How does this work?
We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity in the United States. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate possible flu activity at a state level in near real-time.

There are lots of good information resources on Flu from US Government as well as from Center of Disease Control and Prevention.

• On pandemic flu ( swine flu, bird flu etc) there is a PandemicFlu.gov website.




• The website dedicated on Swine Flu by Center Of Disease Control and Prevention shows statics about current swine flu cases and other information.

• What are your thoughts on staying safe in such pandemic ?




• Do you think Swine flu would become a pandemic?




• Do you recommend any precautionary method against swine flu?

Stay healthy...enjoy life...

Fun Feng Shui Horoscope : Make a wish

Take just a minute to take this test & see what happens!
If you are honest this tells the truth -- it's pretty good.

Write your answers on a paper, NO cheating!!

There are no tricks in this, it is straight forward !

The answers are at the bottom...

1. Which is your favorite color: red, black, blue, green, or yellow?
   
2. Your first initial?
   
3. Your month of birth??
   
4. Which color do you like more, black or white?
   
5. Name a person of the same sex as yours.
   
6. Your favorite number?
   
7. Do you like California or Florida more? ( You might not know the difference ! but does not matter)
   
8. Do you like a lake or the ocean more?
   
9. Write down a wish (a realistic one)

When you're done, scroll down. Don't cheat?
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Answers:

1. If you chose:

   Red - You are alert and your life is full of love.

   
   Black - you are conservative and aggressive
   
   Green - Your soul is relaxed and you are laid back
   
   Blue - You are spontaneous and love kisses and affection from the ones you love.
   
   Yellow - You are a very happy person and give good advice to those who are down.

2. If your initial is:
   
   A-K - You have a lot of love and friendships in your life.
   
   L-R - You try to enjoy your life to the maximum and your love life is soon to blossom.
   
   S-Z - You like to help others and your future love life looks very good.

3. If you were born in:
   
   JAN - MAR: The year will go very well for you and you will
   discover that you fall in love with someone totally unexpected.
   
   APR - JUN: You will have a strong love relationship that will
   last forever.
   
   JUL - SEP: You will have a great year and will experience a
   major life-changing experience for the good.
   
   OCT - DEC: Your love life will be great, you will find your soul mate.

4. If you chose...
   
   Black: Your life will take on a different direction, it will be
   the best thing for you, and you will be glad for the change.
   
   White: You have a friend who completely confides in you and
   would do anything for you, but you may not realize it.

5. This person should be your best friend.

6. This is how many close friends you will have in your lifetime.

7. If you chose:
   
   California : You like adventure.
   
   Florida : You are a laid back person.

8. If you chose:
   
   Lake : You are loyal to your friends and your lover and are very
   reserved.
   
   Ocean: You are spontaneous and like to please people.

9. This wish will come true if you send this to 1 person in one
   hour. Send it to ten people, and it will come true before your next
   Birthday.
   Enjoy...

Apple iTunes Store Top Featured Items

The Earth Day April 22nd 2009

The Earth Day April 22nd 2009.

A day specifically to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment.

Mother Earth has given us so much. It would keep blessing us and our future generations. This day we celebrate those blessings. Share our gratefulness towards our mother planet The Earth. While going through those grateful moments towards Mother Earth, we the earthlings would have to look forward. To realize our responsibility towards our Mother planet. We would need to use each resource like water, food, forests, animals, fishes, land and oceans very thoughtfully. The thoughts and rigorous practice of those thoughts which would enable our future generations to re-use, to preserve and to protect these resources and our Planet for years to come.

On March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm World Wildlife Fund society has asked corporations and individuals to switch off light for an hour calling it as an Earth hour. This is to signify that if we all put efforts together, smaller thing can make big impact on the climate.

On this day,in humble manner, I am too planning to practice earth day resolutions.

• Turn off water tabs.
• Switch off each light in the room which is not occupied and not used. Or which is well lit and ventilated.
• Recycle all used papers, older newspaper and magazine as well as other goods.
• Use Energy efficient bulbs and electronic equipments.
• Dry washed cloths in open air.
• Most importantly teach ( or preach) these principles to my future generation so they can practice it too.

Some Interesting Websites for The Earth Day:

• How the First Earth Day Came About? By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day
• The Earth Day : US Government Portal
• Earth Day Network. Protecting the Earth and its people everyday.
• World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour US

May I ask what are your resolutions or practices on this Earth day to protect our Mother Planet and its habitants?

What do you think the Earth Day celebration?

Please do share your thoughts, inputs, ideas about the Earth and protecting it. :D

Happy Earth Day ...

Special Thanks to Bobbie Peachey,http://webclipart.about.com for copyrighted Clip art.

Tips & Tricks : How to open .daa or .uif file ?

There are so many disk image, compression and archival formats available now a days. These file formats allows you

• To archive various files
• To compress it
• To rip CD or DVD disks into it and let it share across
• To transfer images over network or internet securely

These file formats comes with extension like ZIP, RAR, DAA, UIF, ISO and so forth. For each of these file formats, there are tons of tools to open, to extract and to create these archives and images. There are lots of freewares and open source utilities which can allow you to perform those functions on windows, mac, linux and unix. But still sometimes we come across some compressed file with extension like daa and/or uif and we do not know how to open .daa or .uif file?

You may think what on the earth somebody are using these formats. These formats allow you to encrypt the private file, to protect it with password , to save it in compressed mode or to transfer it over internet or network securely.

There are couple of tricks to open .daa or .uif file. Before jumping into those tricks, let me share what are these file format means.

• .DAA

stands for Direct Access Archive. It is a disk image file. It is a proprietary format. It was invented by PowerISO DVD Software company. Being proprietary format, it can not be read using any freeware or open source utility.

• .UIF

stands for Universal Image Format. UIF is created by MagicISO Maker.

To open .DAA file there are two methods.

1. Use PowerISO.

   This is free to try and $29.99 to purchase.

2. Use DAA2ISO and then mount it using Daemon Lite Tools or Magic ISO Virtual CD/DVD Manager

   DAA2ISO is a open source utility. It allows you to convert DAA file to ISO format.

   You can download DAA2ISO from either from it's author's site Luigi Auriemma or from Softpedia.com DAA2ISO download.

   Once you download, you can unzip it in a folder.

   Then click on DAA2ISO, it will open a windows command window as well as it will ask for the location of DAA file opening windows file dialogue box.

   You give the directory and file and it will happily convert the DAA file to ISO.

   

   Then you can use a virtual CD/DVD manager like Daemon Lite Tools or Magic ISO. Mount ISO drive and browse the contents of the mounted image.

To open .UIF file there are two methods

1. Use freeware MagicISO

2. Use UIF2ISO and then mount it using Daemon Lite Tools or Magic ISO Virtual CD/DVD Manager

   UIF2ISO is a open source utility. It allows you to convert DAA file to ISO format.

   You can download UIF2ISO from either from it's author's site Luigi Auriemma or from Softpedia.com UIF2ISO download.

   Rest is easy. Extract it in folder

   Then click on UIF2ISO, it will open a windows command window as well as it will ask for the location of UIF file opening windows file dialogue box.

   You give the directory and file and it will happily convert the UIF file to ISO.

   Then you can use a virtual CD/DVD manager like Daemon Lite Tools or Magic ISO. Mount ISO drive and browse the contents of the mounted image.

These are the methods to open these ubiqutous file format on Windows. Do you know any other method to open these files formats? Please do share.

Enjoy...

Tips & Tricks: How to find a java class in a jar under subfolders?

It happens so many time that you are working on Enterprise Application Deployed on AIX or other unix or linux. You suddenly want to see if one of the java class is made to the deployment. Or you want to search some java class is part of which jar. All these jars are deployed deep down various subdirectories.

Please use this script on AIX:

for f in `find . -name "*.jar" -print`
do
   jar -tvf $f|grep 'YourClassName.class'
done
echo "Done.."

In case of YourClassName.class please add your class name.

If you have script like this or a utility, please do share...Thanks

Enjoy…

I am back !!!

I have been in hibernation or stand by mode for such a long time. Like a deer in front of car head lights. Like a bee smitten by pollinated honey filled flower. Like a poet mesmerized by sun rise. So forth.

While living life like a car which zooms between two intersections to wait for next green signal, I have been observing this fast changing, interesting, lovable yet testing world.

Reading various phases of economy. Sensing hardships of the common people like me. Smelling rather unusually interesting period of life. I have been introspecting myself while absorbing each and every moment of the life like a spilled perfume on the carpet. During this introvert moment, I have left windows of my mind, eyes, ears and heart open for every waking sound of the world.

Rather capturing each difference, each change since my childhood world and experiences, I am learning that the human life is a journey between beginning and end. This journey takes various stations like childhood, teenage, middle age and elder age before stopping for final stations of the truth of mortal life. Who knows this journey may have even started well before arriving to this world and may continue beyond this existence of physical body.

With positive rejuvenation of the life continuum, I am back !!!!