Playing For Change

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

Their first production “Stand by Me” bridges the physical distance between the many musicians and cultures of this planet.

As Gizmodo says, “If this video doesn’t bring a tear to your eyes and makes you smile for the rest of the day, you are a cold hearted b**tard. Watch it from beginning to end—you won’t regret it.”




Four years ago while walking down the street in Santa Monica, CA the voice of Roger Ridley singing “Stand By me” was heard from a block away. His voice, soul and passion set us on a course around the world to add other musicians to his performance. This song transformed Playing For Change from a small group of individuals to a global movement for peace and understanding. This track features over 35 musicians collaborating from all over the world. They may have never met in person, but in this case, the music does the talking.

Which platform would you choose for your personal blog?

Which platform would you choose for your personal blog where you would just share a few links, vids etc?

Vote here: http://twtpoll.com/jlgrhj

Gadget Orchestra

I came across this amazing video on YouTube and could not resist sharing it here.

This guy here is using just a few gadgets to compile a trance music!

The gadgets used in the above video along with the their softwares are:

  • Korg Kaossilator Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer
  • iPod Touch with Mokugyo
  • iPhone with Bloom
  • Nintendo DS Lite with Electroplankton
  • Nintendo DSi with KORG DS-10
Amazing?

He finally did it!

The Escape key has made it out of the keyboard, and started the big journey of his life.

via Flickr.

Physics Doesn’t Exist, Its All Gnomes

I came across a super interesting Facebook group which is seriously one of the weirdest group I have ever seen anywhere. It’s called “Physics Doesn’t Exist, Its All Gnomes” and their group description is worth reading even if you don’t want to join it.

Here are a few things from the excerpt I liked:

We believe that all the main physics principles can be explained away by the existence of tiny gnomes.

Electricity:
Inside cables there are hundreds of tiny gnomes ‘high-fiving’ each other and running around swapping messages. This transfer of messages allows things to work, e.g. the gnomes in a plug socket tell the gnomes in the wire, who eventually tell the gnomes in (say) a kettle to fart in the water allowing it to boil.

Computers:
Computers are run by tiny gnomes. They do all the work sat at tiny desks inside your PC. When you turn it off they can all go home and have a rest before they are needed again. The screen is in fact an arrangement of gnomes wearing different colour hats.

Atoms:
Atoms are infact miniscule gnomes, all holding hands and feet etc together to form an intricate web from which nearly everything in this universe is comprised of. Radioactivity occurs when a rebel gnome is catapaulted by his freinds from their structure. Should this gnome come into contact with the gnomes from our body, he will offer them beer, thus making the local area benign or ‘cancerous’.

Gravity:
As we are all well aware gnomes like the ground. They all strive to be in the ground, and this is where the basic theory for gravity comes from. Gnomes throw tiny (obviously unseen to the human eye) ropes to the ground. These ropes attach to unseen hooks allowing the gnomes to pull themsleves towards the ground. There is minimal gravity away from bodies (e.g. in space) because very few gnomes have long enough ropes. All bodies have a gravitional attraction to each other because gnomes are sociable creatures and enjoy large gatherings.

Anti-matter:
Now this is a little more complicated. There are evil gnomes. These make up anti-matter. Done.

Gnomes:
So what are gnomes made up of themselves? They are surely not fundamental? They are comprised of billions of even smaller gnomes. These smaller gnomes are known as ‘Super-gnomes’. Super-gnomes are made up of billions of even smaller gnomes known as ‘Hyper-Gnomes’. Hyper-gnomes are the fundamental building block of everything.

Now that we have covered the basics of gnome theory we are going to discuss and ‘explain away’ certain physical phenomena.

Mobile Phones:
‘Scientists’ may try and fool you with talk of ‘waves’, but please dont believe these distacting and frankly stupid theories. Mobile phones are built (by gnomes) to incorporate a gnome catapault. These devices are worked by gnomes in your mobile phone (which coincidently is made up of gnomes) to fire their gnome freinds upwards when you place a call. The gnomes are fired into space where they land on ‘satellites’ (also made of gnomes). The gnome satillites then catapault seperate gnomes to the mobile you are trying to contact (if you are attempting to ‘connect’ with a land line the gnomes are fired at a landing station where they run and hi-five down wires to the other phone reciever). When the gnomes reach the reciever you are connecting with there is an exchange of messages, hi-fives and presents (the unwrapping is the crackle you hear). More catapaulting occurs back to the satilite and then to your phone. This process continues so that what you say is ‘transmitted’ to the other phone and vice-versa (the process is VERY quick, as these gnomes travel at the speed of light-gnomes). A call ‘breaks up’ or has no ‘signal’ when the presents exchanged are so good the gnomes dont bother coming back, but just sit and play.

Alcohol:
As all things are made of gnomes, it follows that even alcohol is made of gnomes. These are without doubt the rowdiest of all gnomes (except anti-gnomes). Alcohol gnomes divide into several groups. The first type look kindly and loving (which they indeed are) but have a stupendous sense of humour and love to play practical jokes. They will quickly travel to the brain gnomes upon arrival in the body and will wreak havoc with the head region; taking other gnomes clothes while they are in the shower, throwing eggs at nearby gnomes and the like. This causes the brain gnomes to become distracted, so the body doesnt work as efficiently as normal running. The senses become distorted (e.g. vision) and the human seems to think they are invincible, and the other sex is more attractive. Wine is mostly made up of these gnomes and Females are particularly succeptable to this type. The next type are Beer (subdivided into Ale and lager subspecies) gnomes. These gnomes produce similar effets to the wine gnomes (especially if mixed – gnomes love to party) but…(read the rest of the description on the Facebook Group)

Haha! The group’s creator really did some hard work writing the description of the group.

Nominate me for TwitterGuru!

Hey all my Twitter friends! Nominate me(@Archit) for TwitterGuru so that I can be called India’s TwitterGuru.

iTwote has come up with this award concept and as they say on their website:

Our first campaign is for the most popular twitter user from India. And by popular, we do not mean the user with the most tweets, but rather the one who’s so popular on twitter, that everyone loves him.

Oh, we’re calling him TwitterGuru.

So help me become the TwitterGuru by first following @itwote and then tweeting “@itwote #twitterguru @Archit” without the double-inverted commas(ofcourse!). Thanks!

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter too!

Yahoo! Profiles Getting Spammy?

I got am email from some *spam* Yahoo! Profiles user telling me how hot I am looking in my profile’s picture. Thanks, but the thing is that my profile picture is my logo! LOL! and I haven’t uploaded any of my pictures on Yahoo Profiles.

This is the screenshot of the email I got:

Yahoo Profiles Spam Message

For more Internet and Technology related news, visit my newest tech blog TechPlug! Don’t forget to subscribe too!

Today is Blog Action Day!

One Laptop Per ChildThose of you who serve the web frequently and drop by different blogs must have come by something called Blog Action Day. This year the topic is Poverty and so I will blog about something which will help us to help the poor, something that can help us make this world a better place.

All of you must have heard about the One Laptop Per Child Foundation whose mission is to ensure that all school-aged children in the developing world are able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning.
One Laptop Per ChildThe OLPC Association focuses on designing, manufacturing, and distributing laptops to children in lesser developed countries, initially concentrating on those governments that have made commitments for the funding and program support required to ensure that all of their children own and can effectively use a laptop.

A single laptop costs $100. A donation of $200 will pay for and deliver one XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, $400 will pay for and deliver two XO laptops, and so on. Your entire contribution will be tax-deductible. So To give a laptop to a child in the developing world, please visit Give a Laptop.

The OLPC Foundation has volunteer opportunities too. Please visit the Participate Page in for more details.

Let us join hands and make this world a better place. Visit the One Laptop Per Child Foundation website today or read more about it on Wikipedia.

No More Tech Blogging Here

As I wrote in my previous blog post that I had one more announcement to make, I am writing this post to say that from now onwards I will not blog about Internet and Technology on this blog so those of you who have subscribed to this blog for Tech related stuffs, please subscribe to TechPlug‘s RSS Feed as from now on I am going to blog there on Internet and Technology related stuffs. It would be the same as here just at better and bigger!

Why are you doing this?
I am getting too busy with NextPlug.in now and don’t have too much time to maintain 2 technology blogs – this one and TechPlug which is a part NextPlug. And it doesn’t make any sense maintaining two technology blogs as it just drains out both the blog’s capabilities.

So what now?
Subscribe to TechPlug‘s RSS Feed for updates on Internet and Technology. Regarding this blog, it is going to be my personal blog from now on where I will post my personal views about anything which I may like, be it the Internet, technology, gadgets, life and bla blas.

Site Overhaul – Finally!

Those of you who visit this blog regularly must have been sick of the plain old them this blog had. I did not change the theme since one year now – you may say I was just too lazy to do that.

But today, finally lifeOmaniac gets a new design! Customization is almost complete with just a few more changes to be made.

Please let me know in the comments how you like the new design and what else would you want in the design to be introduced.

I have one more announcement to make but that’ll be in another post later this week.