.farshid sedghi’s personal blog.

These days the big boys of software, e.g. Microsoft or Google keep releasing small application in a silent mode. Some of these are very useful, but unfortunately because they are so small and get released here and there, you don’t always hear about them. Today I came across Windows Live Toolbar and so far I have discovered a couple of really useful features with it. To demo something I have been wishing for a long time is highlighting an address and getting a map rather than cut and pasting it into one of the map sites. Here is an example:

There are other useful things you can do but I will leave that for your own exploring. You would need Internet Explorer 6 or higher.

The other day as my wife and I was about to start a movie, I thought to myself that I no longer seem to find myself particularly excited about watching movies these day. Sure, some movies I am curious about in terms of special effects or some other shallow aspect. But apart from that it felt like it has been a very very long time ago since I saw a really good movie, one of those movies that really makes you reflect on things or stirs something deep inside you.

Tonight we saw a movie called What the Bleep Do We Know? A description from IMDB says: “This film plunges you into a world where quantum uncertainty is demonstrated - where neurological processes, and perceptual shifts are engaged and lived by its protagonist - where everything is alive, and reality is changed by every thought.”

Although the description sounds complicated, it really is an awesome movie. And as a Baha’i, it was so wonderful to see distinguished doctors in quantum physics and other fields come to the conclusion that the fundamental purpose (and I am quoting from the movie itself) and message of the universe is unity and that we are all one. Something, that Baha’u'llah, proclaimed almost 150 years ago.

Now,as good as all these doctors were doing, most of them went on to miss the point by dismissing religion (as a unifying force) and God as the Creator of all things and this due to their own preconceived notions or simply by looking at how mankind has turned religion and God into a man made set of traditions and rules. But at least they all agreed in the existance of consiuosness which some of them called ’soul’, so I guess they have made a bit of progress. I am not particularly familiar with quantom physics, so this movie was also a wonderful practical experience of seeing what harmony between religion and science would look like, i.e. having what I already know as a Baha’i explained from a deep scientific perspective.

Highly recommend watching this movie.

I like Kayak.com simply because: a) it pulls data from several sites (including orbitz.com which was my preferred travel site until now) and b)the user interface is much nicer and more efficient with lots of AJAX features (which translates into a lot less page reloading)

I have used CallWave for 3 weeks now and in a nutshell here is how it works after you activate your phone by punching in a few numbers:

1. Someone calls you and you can’t/don’t want to pick up (in a meeting, not in the mood, don’t know who it is etc)
2. You reject the call or can’t get to it in time so it goes to voicemail.
3. The service now calls back your phone. Once you pick up, you can listen in to the voicemail that the caller is leaving as they are talking without them hearing you.
4. You can either intercept the call by pressing ‘1′ (like good old answering machines on land lines) or hang up to ignore.
5. You voice mail is now emailed to you as well as you can listen to it from your phone.
6. The cost? nothing apart from minutes that you would have paid if you use the voicemail service from you provider.

My question is, why doesn’t every provider offer this as a standard service??

It should be noted that this only works in the States as far as I know.

For my own reference…Tips on digital photography of fireworks